Friday, November 21, 2008

Exhaustorama

October was cruisy. October was cool. New work was on the horizon and everything was at peace.

It was peaceful until this week, when upon me fell a ton of bricks: I truly had to work harder than I have ever had during my working life; I had to endure more tiredness than I've usually have. It also sets a few new personal records too.

The next few weeks will quiet down till the new year and then hopefully it will open up afresh.

1 comment:

Crypticity said...

The blessing and the curse for the week was, of course, the Business Writing course. It was a course created by me 2 years ago, sold to my client, used once and not used again until now, where it was used twice in a single day!

The first run through was interesting. I remember the first time I did it I had the shakes. It was rather exhilarating. This time apart from a little bit of verbal diarrhoea at the beginning and in parts it went rather well. The participants were great. I hadn't facilitated anything for quite some time; but this has given me another taste of it.

The second run through was funny because the participants were from a different department and noticeably quieter. I delivered it smoother though, and upon completion, I got some quality feedback from the Learning and Development person.

One crucial development since the first use of this course was the addition of pre-work and post-work: in this case, the submission of a piece of professional writing. That is easy for them: They just attach a file and send it to me. I underestimated the sheer quantity of work I had to do associated with it. I was planning to spend Wednesday evening rehearsing the points I wanted to say in the actual session but instead went past midnight administrating the pre-work! (This wasn't just my fault; the company had only got the participants to send the 26 participants to send me their work within the last few days.) I only prepared the actual content for about an hour: mostly finicking with the powerpoint. As a result, embarrassingly, a presentation that mentions proofreading was ironically cursed with a couple of slip-ups.

3 hours of writing training doesn't necessarily sound like the most enlivening session but I believe I delivered what I promised. And what's more entertained (I still don't know where I get this capacity from). In a long session you need a sense of humour and innate enthusiasm for the topic, both of which I have.

So to sum up: Mission accomplished and long live the Business Writing course!