Here I am again! For those of you who were impatiently waiting for news from me and who might have even been worrying about me: don't worry anymore, I'm OK ;o) I just didn't have much to write about...Nothing special happened during last week (I was just enjoying commuting by bus, working and fighting mosquitos) and I was ill last weekend (no, I didn't have neither diarrhoea, nor malaria, I just caught a cold) and spent it whole in my bed...So, no new breathtaking experiences. However, I have one now and surprisingly I have it from work!
A client called on Tuesday 2 hours before the end of our working hours (1 hour before the end of mine because I start earlier in the morning and finish earlier as well) and she wanted us to conduct a 2 hour training on Time Management at her College on Wednesday morning (yes, just next day...welcome to India!!!) and today's (Thursday) morning and afternoon (the same training given three times to three different groups of students). Well, I was a bit surprised but then I said: "Yes, we should be able to do it, 2 hours is not that much and I have already seen so many presentations and had several trainings on Time Management that it should be a piece of cake." I was thinking about how the presentation should look like when my colleague (Hema) told me: "Come on, you can't just give them a lecture about principles of efficient Time Management! They would booo you out, they will yell that you're boring and they won't listen to you at all! You only give them some theory and then you need to make it funny and to make them participate in games and other activities as much as possible. " I was like: OK, no problem and I came with a nice team competition in which teams of 5-10 students are supposed to do 4 different tasks in a very short time, so they need to organize themselves, decide who will do what depending on their abilities and respect the time limit. Could be fun, is related to the topic and shouldn't take that much time. What a naive fool I am!!! Only after explaining the whole activitiy to Hema she told me: "Yeah, sounds good. So how long do you think this can take if we have 200 students?" What the f...?! 200 students? How the hell are we supposed to make an interesting and interactive training for 200 students?!?! Hm, this information annoyed me a little bit...
Well, to make it short, finally we (or rather Hema, I was still quite sceptical) decided to start the whole training with the activity, eventhough it would take us more than one hour. Then I came with the idea to make the students brainstorm about all the activities they do, present them the Four Quadrant Rule (classification of activities depending on how urgent and important they are or they aren't) and make them think about their own four quadrants. And if we still have some time, Hema will give them Role Plays related to Time Management. So, eventually, we managed to prepare the whole training (which should be really interactive and funny as well) just in few hours, we rehearsed on Wednesday morning and walked into the lion's den...
Hema explained to me that Indian college students (these were 18 year old) were just immature kids studying only because their parents forced them to it, they had very bad manners and they wouldn't be interested at all in what we were going to show and tell them. I was like: well, many students are not that interested in their studies, it's quite normal. What a naive fool I am again!!! When we entered the auditorium, all boys (they were 120 or even more!) started to yell, whistle, stump and clap (many of them saw a white girl for the first time, so they really needed to share their emotions!!!). I was shocked! 18 year old college students!!! Basically, they didn't stop their yelling till the end of the training. Whenever we were explaining them their task, they were presenting their results or we were giving them short presentation, thay were shauting, whistling and making all possible types of noise. Even with micro we were not able to calm them down. Only when they were working on their tasks (which was unfortunately only 20 minutes out of 120), they were quite. When one team was presenting its results, other teams (mainly boys) were yelling, laughing and shauting that it was boring. They didn't have any respect neither for us, nor for their teacher who was there with us and tried to help us to calm them down.
To sum it up: it was the worst experience I've ever had!!! I felt so helpless, so useless...whenever I tried to calm those yelling beasts down, they were of course yelling even more because nothing is more funny than pissing a white European girl off. And after 2 hours of listening to that terrible noise, I was so exhausted. Well, but we had survived and had two more trainings ahead of us...and I didn't want to give it up! Never!!! I will subdue those creatures!!!
Since Hema (and me neither ;o)) had never had a training for so many people, this was quite a good lesson for both of us. So we did some corrections in the program to make it shorter, more dynamic and to eliminate any idle times and walked to the lion's den again. And I must say that two today's trainings were much better. We were better organized and also the students were not so mean and did quite a good work. To be frank, I was really surprised how creative and smart the students were! They were able to write very good poems, solve quite hard riddles and write funny stories in huge teams (one team had 20-25 students!!!) and in such a short time!!! Their only problem is that they don't have any manners and they don't care about their studies and their future life...they only do what their parents tell them to.
Well, so this was my first experience with giving a training at an Indian college. It was hard but interesting as well. Let's see what my next experiences are going to be.
A client called on Tuesday 2 hours before the end of our working hours (1 hour before the end of mine because I start earlier in the morning and finish earlier as well) and she wanted us to conduct a 2 hour training on Time Management at her College on Wednesday morning (yes, just next day...welcome to India!!!) and today's (Thursday) morning and afternoon (the same training given three times to three different groups of students). Well, I was a bit surprised but then I said: "Yes, we should be able to do it, 2 hours is not that much and I have already seen so many presentations and had several trainings on Time Management that it should be a piece of cake." I was thinking about how the presentation should look like when my colleague (Hema) told me: "Come on, you can't just give them a lecture about principles of efficient Time Management! They would booo you out, they will yell that you're boring and they won't listen to you at all! You only give them some theory and then you need to make it funny and to make them participate in games and other activities as much as possible. " I was like: OK, no problem and I came with a nice team competition in which teams of 5-10 students are supposed to do 4 different tasks in a very short time, so they need to organize themselves, decide who will do what depending on their abilities and respect the time limit. Could be fun, is related to the topic and shouldn't take that much time. What a naive fool I am!!! Only after explaining the whole activitiy to Hema she told me: "Yeah, sounds good. So how long do you think this can take if we have 200 students?" What the f...?! 200 students? How the hell are we supposed to make an interesting and interactive training for 200 students?!?! Hm, this information annoyed me a little bit...
Well, to make it short, finally we (or rather Hema, I was still quite sceptical) decided to start the whole training with the activity, eventhough it would take us more than one hour. Then I came with the idea to make the students brainstorm about all the activities they do, present them the Four Quadrant Rule (classification of activities depending on how urgent and important they are or they aren't) and make them think about their own four quadrants. And if we still have some time, Hema will give them Role Plays related to Time Management. So, eventually, we managed to prepare the whole training (which should be really interactive and funny as well) just in few hours, we rehearsed on Wednesday morning and walked into the lion's den...
Hema explained to me that Indian college students (these were 18 year old) were just immature kids studying only because their parents forced them to it, they had very bad manners and they wouldn't be interested at all in what we were going to show and tell them. I was like: well, many students are not that interested in their studies, it's quite normal. What a naive fool I am again!!! When we entered the auditorium, all boys (they were 120 or even more!) started to yell, whistle, stump and clap (many of them saw a white girl for the first time, so they really needed to share their emotions!!!). I was shocked! 18 year old college students!!! Basically, they didn't stop their yelling till the end of the training. Whenever we were explaining them their task, they were presenting their results or we were giving them short presentation, thay were shauting, whistling and making all possible types of noise. Even with micro we were not able to calm them down. Only when they were working on their tasks (which was unfortunately only 20 minutes out of 120), they were quite. When one team was presenting its results, other teams (mainly boys) were yelling, laughing and shauting that it was boring. They didn't have any respect neither for us, nor for their teacher who was there with us and tried to help us to calm them down.
To sum it up: it was the worst experience I've ever had!!! I felt so helpless, so useless...whenever I tried to calm those yelling beasts down, they were of course yelling even more because nothing is more funny than pissing a white European girl off. And after 2 hours of listening to that terrible noise, I was so exhausted. Well, but we had survived and had two more trainings ahead of us...and I didn't want to give it up! Never!!! I will subdue those creatures!!!
Since Hema (and me neither ;o)) had never had a training for so many people, this was quite a good lesson for both of us. So we did some corrections in the program to make it shorter, more dynamic and to eliminate any idle times and walked to the lion's den again. And I must say that two today's trainings were much better. We were better organized and also the students were not so mean and did quite a good work. To be frank, I was really surprised how creative and smart the students were! They were able to write very good poems, solve quite hard riddles and write funny stories in huge teams (one team had 20-25 students!!!) and in such a short time!!! Their only problem is that they don't have any manners and they don't care about their studies and their future life...they only do what their parents tell them to.
Well, so this was my first experience with giving a training at an Indian college. It was hard but interesting as well. Let's see what my next experiences are going to be.
Woooow...klobouk dolů! Pokud jste zvládly ukočírovat to, co tu píšeš alespoň trošku, pak vážně smekám a gratuluji :-)
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