Turtle Training Session

Today I held a training session. I made and printed out packets, made a schedule neatly organized into time segments and had all of my notes. Last night I couldn’t sleep. I’m not a teacher. How am I going to stand in front of these men and women, who are all over 30, and have them listen to this big haired 22 year old just out of grad school? That’s bad enough, now add the huge communication barrier. Is all they’re going to hear “waa waa waa waa turtle”?

I woke up in the morning dizzy from lack of sleep. Laid out all the packets, cleared off the white boards for fresh notes, tied my curls back into a serious bun, and waited for my team. I arranged for us to have tea and biscuits at 11am, lunch at 1pm and more tea and biscuits brought to us at 3pm. I brought my miniature French press with me to the meeting. I made everyone some precious American coffee as gesture of peace and bribery. They all sipped the bitter delicious drink and I’m sure all their lips puckered at the difference from their sweet and milky cha tea.

But let me tell you. Once I started, I started. It began by me slowly pacing and asking questions to the audience. Then it accelerated. Soon I was a cup of coffee short from jumping on the table having them ripping out pages from their textbook and having them call me Captain. I was on fire. At one point I was on the floor acting out what it would be like for a little child to drown in a bucket.

A little kid came in and we demonstrated what the turtle is like on him. He liked it so much he kept trying to steal it back when we took it off!

And the best part was they were really learning! They were answering all of my questions correctly! So rewarding. At one point, I swear to you, I almost started crying. I was so happy that I was good at this and this was really happening. Fuck yes I can do this! I AM doing this!

At the end of the meeting at around 3pm, I held a session wrap up and quizzed everyone from the meeting on topics we went over. They got almost everything right.

As soon as the Bangladesh IRB has approved this project, we got this.

Asalam Walaikum,

Chelsea