This is going to be another of those non-RPG, exceedingly personal posts. It seems I write at least one a season. Feel free to skip. I’ll be back soon, this post explains why I’m not really ‘here’.
I find it interesting that I made the exploration of failure in RPGs such an intense interest of mine because I’m currently living with the consequences of failure in my own life right now. Don’t worry, nothing major, but important enough that it may affect “The Plan” if I don’t play my cards more carefully from now on.
As many of you know, in my quest to free time to write more, I’m currently prepping a series of teaching seminars for a local university. I started teaching them to corporate clients that require short technical and management courses to train their employees. So far I did 2 classes and I have my 3rd on Wednesday this week.
The idea behind this is that since these seminars pay 3 times my current hourly salary, I will be able to progressively phase out my old day job and work less hours to maintain my family’s quality of life.
However, as I’m just starting and have 5 or 6 courses to prep for, I have to work MORE in order to get the ball going. As I had initially planned my schedule, I thought that if I would be able to cover my D&D game prep, do some short blog posts and do the course prep by making notes for myself and giving all participants a book on which I based my material on.
Last week, I had to teach a one day introductory MS-Project 2007 course to a private client group. It was a last minute request from the Uni and I got about 2 weeks to prep it. No sweat I thought, I had taken 3 MS-Project classes in the last 8 years and I had about 90 hours of Project Management training in 2006. Heck, that’s what my day job currently is, this should be easy right?
I built a course on the basics of MS-Project. Since there are no recent, easily available French manual for the current version of the software, I ordered English ones. I mean what could go wrong right? I could wing the rest!
The class was a fucking disaster… and not the kind where an insufferable keener says that getting 95% in a test is a disaster. As the course progressed (the first half was great), I realized that I didn’t know enough about many of the software’s functions that the participants wanted to know about. Moreover, instead of coming out and saying I didn’t prepare the course to go much deeper than basics, I tried to wing it by doing some exploratory teaching…
Those who’ve worked with MS-Project will likely groan out loud by now. That piece of software is exceedingly finicky and does not respond well to the ministrations of an increasingly panicky teacher.
Bottom line, the clients became visibly and vocally frustrated as I flustered more and more and lost all confidence.
Those who follow my antics may know that I have long suffered from anxiety attacks when I’m in a depressive states. They have always been focused on one thing, and only one thing:
“Oh Shit, I’m going to fail and lose everything!”
And here I was, in front of 11 confused and frustrated adults, living exactly what I dread the most: I was making a damn fool out of myself because I didn’t prep properly and I didn’t check with the client enough to target their specific needs.
Of course, I came back home after the course, my spirit crushed and my dreams of making it as a seminar hot shot seriously jeopardized. The next day, at my day job, I was displaying clear signs of slipping back in depression and I could read the worry on the faces of my colleagues.
Then I got an email from the client asking me to call her…
I had 2 choices here. Let my feelings take over and go into full on anxiety spike or bite the fucking bullet, call the client and see how I could salvage this. I was scheduled to give the same course to the second half of the client’s group this week.
As I expected/feared, I got served with a list of things that the participants didn’t like or would have preferred (better examples, better preparation, better mastery of content and more importantly, French class notes that they could written on during class and brought back home ).
The client was cordial, empathic even, but quite firm.
As she spoke, anxiety made way to annoyance and anger. Yes, the course went bad, and it was mostly my fault… but hey, I had 2 weeks to build it, I had other shit going on and I only spoke to the client like 5 days before the course while my prep was already done based on the course’s catalog description!
Instead of lashing out, a lose/lose proposition for all parties, I took note of her feedback, thanked her for taking the time to share it with me and we agreed on a clear set of things I would implement in the next class, with the rest of the group.
Chiefly among those was preparing the aforementioned set of class notes that would replace the 20 manuals I had the university order.
Again, I was angry, mostly at myself for falling for rookie mistakes. I have 5 other courses to prep for, I could not really afford spend more time on this. But that’s what being a professional means, You put your name on the line, you deliver or you give the spot to the next contestant. I agreed to the list and went about my business so that hopefully I could salvage the contract and my rep with the university if I pulled the next one off.
I also focused my anger and promised myself that I would NEVER make myself the fool again in a seminar.
My anger became near-monomaniacal focus and triggered the mother of all work crunches, one I hadn’t had in ages! What followed was 30 straight working hours (i.e. I slept, ate and took about 2 hours of breaks a day) over 3 days where I produced a formatted and fully edited 35 page MS-Project course booklet complete with screen shots and exercises.
I dumped it at Staples this morning to get it printed and bound at my expense.
Now that the red mist is slowly receding, I realize that the experience was cathartic. First, I’m no longer anxious or angry (well less angry). Second, I learned how to create some pretty kick ass course notes, how to manipulate a rather complex French grammar and spelling app, how to prioritize my stuff better and how to plan my time around it.
Far more importantly, I’ve learned, hopefully once and for all, that even if I fail miserably, even if I see my perceived credibility drain from the looks of people in front of me, even if people start challenging me about what I know or what I do…
It. Didn’t.Fucking.Kill Me.
It never did.
It never will… at least if I manage not to be dangerous (a must read! 5 Chattys!).
Being a very bright, risk adverse, rules abiding child, I grew up with very low exposure to failure. yet I grew being deathly afraid of it. Fearing failure to the point of developing a psychological pathology is one of the biggest barrier to development and growth a person can have to deal with.
That’s probably why I try so hard not to fail at DMing and as a writer. I’ll likely struggle with that crap all my life.
But fuck me if I didn’t kick part of these stupid inner demons to the curb this week. It felt GOOD to fight back!
So yeah… I’m starting to learn that falling down is part of life… Getting up is the real trick. Took me only 37 years to realize it.
That’s why I slowed blogging to a crawl. I also suspended my D&D game so I could save the prepping time (we’ll play boardgames instead). I have to prepare several more courses that are scheduled for the month of March, April and May. I want to do them right and I will make sure they are up to my (now adjusted) quality standards before focusing on other projects.
Wish me luck for Wednesday.
Good luck 🙂 I know exactly how you feel and it’s beatne me more than once. It does feel good to fight back.
.-= Viri Cordova´s last blog ..Pamphlet Prop =-.
I remember a few years back, I was teaching a karate class, and I was told to teach this particular form to the advanced students. Problem was, it’d been a LONG time since I’d done it. I couldn’t remember a damn thing, and I tried to wing it. That failed miserably, and eventually one of the STUDENTS had to help me out with it. I looked like a total incompetent. You can bet your ass I know that form now. I’m relatively certain that when I die, if you applied an electrical shock to my corpse, it would perform it perfectly and then collapse again.
That being said, I think winging it was the only thing you really messed up. You should always know when to say “I don’t know, but I’ll find out and tell you later”. It’s much less embarassing saying it up front than having everyone find out slowly over the course of an hour. 🙂 Granted, in your seminar format this might be a little more difficult – but that just means finding out from the client if specific things need to be covered. These programs are huge and complex, a lot of times “oh, just the usual” doesn’t fit everyone. Teaching takes a lot of practice, and you’ll have plenty more “oh shit” moments before you’re done.
Phil, this isn’t the first time I’ve found something of yours to latch onto when I run into similar problems, and I doubt it’ll be the last. IMO you’re taking your lumps and rocking it out, sir. Keep it up! 🙂
.-= Vanir´s last blog ..Like manna from Washington… =-.
Double kudos for you, Phil. Firstly for how you tackled it, and secondly for writing about it here – which is, in a way, also a part of dealing with it.
Everyone fails. Anyone who claims they’ve never failed is either a liar or….. no, they’re a liar. What matters is how you pick yourself up afterwards. Failure doesn’t have to /be/ failure – it can easily be just the kick up your ass you need, and those moments are more precious and important than any number of small victories.
Now (if I read things correctly) you know more about what’s involved, and you know more about what you’re capable of. And I guess also more about what MS Project is capable of too, which is a Good Thing 😀
Good luck my friend. Not that you will need it. Luck is for the unprepared.
.-= greywulf´s last blog ..Beauty is sin deep =-.
Good luck man!
Yipes, talk about your close-to-home. Reading this post gave me some post-traumatic flashbacks, and I had to verify a couple of times that I didn’t write it. It gave me the shaking willies, thinking back to that horrid eternity when I was a software trainer and had to run out classes with 1) short notice, 2) insufficient preparation, and 3) dodgy technology.
Much goodness on you for scoring criticals on those inner demons, and my best sort of wishes for the revisit. It’s going to be better. It has to be. You’ve done the prep, you’ve got your mind in the right place, and there’s no way the situation is going to lay a single icy claw on you. Full speed ahead!
@Viri: Thanks Viri. Yeah, it does feel good and I don’t mind having spent so long. I do thank my loving wife for making the ‘space’ available in our schedule for me to hack at it. I owe her a trip to Paris soon for sure.
@Vanir: Dude, thanks! Yeah, winging it was likely my worse offence as well as sub-preparing the part about doing progress reports and adjusting projects. I know how that works now… believe you me.
@Greywulf: I am grateful for your kind words. Yeah.. I know more stuff anout MS-Project… but more importantly, I know more about what I din’t know about MS-Project! And that makes a big difference!
@Denis: You know what? While this is like a total obvious spam comment… your is actually quite useful! I’ll leave it there but please don’t do this again. I know where your IP is 🙂
@Dixon: Hey man! Thanks! I bow to your kind words and exuberantly phrased empathic prose. I too am beggining to suspect we may be time-shifted clones… 🙂
*hugs* I know how you feel. But I think how you handled it was great and writing about it here is even better. Hopefully you’ll get a lot of relaxation and gaming in during PAX East!
.-= Sarah Darkmagic´s last blog ..A Dragon and His Minions =-.
Right frickin’ on. Way to go, Chatty!
@Sarah: Thanks dear! Pax will be all about fun and games for sure! Hell the 5 hour ride there will be an awesome fest!
@Sherp: Word man! Thanks!
.-= ChattyDM´s last blog ..Fall Seven Times, Stand Up Eight =-.
When will you be invading our fair city?
.-= Sarah Darkmagic´s last blog ..A Dragon and His Minions =-.
I should arrive in Boston early in the afternoon on Wednesday (the day before the Con). I’d like to check in, park the car and maybe organize some sort of dinner get together. Like Dick’s last Resort or something… ideas?
There ya go. This sounds like one of those epic hero moments, in a sense. Keep up the fight!
.-= Andy´s last blog ..An Unexpected Interview =-.
There is no such thing as failure. There is only a learning experience – and I cherish every one of those I’ve had in life (yes, even those I would gladly have done without), because it’s made me the person I am today, and strengthened my ambition and determination to further become the person I want to be.
You go. There’s nothing that can hold you back but you.
.-= James Chartrand – Men with Pens´s last blog ..How to Succeed In Freelancing: Say No to Your Clients =-.
Long time reader, first time commenter.
I really needed this tonight! I had a tough night teaching tonight (halfway through my first college class this semester). I was under prepared, not up on the material, and just plain boring during lecture.
Thanks for the encouragement, even if it wasn’t meant as such. Needed to hear some of this stuff.
My own blogging has fallen off a cliff recently due to work/life balance issues, but reading about your struggles inspires me to get back on track. It reminds me that while success requires both skill and a little bit of luck, the most important component is your willingness to work hard and not let the obstacles life throws in your path stop you.
Thank you for sharing this and good luck with your upcoming projects.
.-= Rob a.k.a. “A Hero”´s last blog ..New Decade, New Spider-Man =-.
@Andy: While I wouldn’t go as far as calling it being heroic… (I’ll let you know tomorrow night) it certainly felt good to go on the ‘offensive’ and do something productive about it rather than calling it quits.
@James: A failure becomes a failure when we let it beat us down. When we let it tell us that we need to quit and accept defeat before giving it a honest try. Learning experiences FTW.
@Tim: Welcome to the blog Tim. I appreciate your de-lurking. You know, I used to teach high school Maths (pre-calculus) way back when. When I hit a snag where I was underprepared… I’d call the class off, promising my students we’d catch up in the next class… and I prepped like hell before the next class. The students seemed to appreciate… writing in their yearbook that I was learning Math at the same pace they did… making me cooler 🙂
@Rob: I think that obstacles are life’s way of telling you that you can try a little harder, that there’s one mopre lesson about it all to be learned today. Best of luck Rob… we’ve all been there for blogging. Hell, I’ve had so many slumps, I’ve stopped counting! 🙂
Be well, good sir. Glad you were able to turn this around and head in a positive direction.
Yeah, around my office I’m known for three things: The absolutely crazy crap I can pull off in excel, the speed at which I can pull it off, and that if the head phones are on, disturbing me is a bad idea. I pretty much run on anxiety and caffeine, so when I get an uber-crunch assignment like the one you talk about (just yesterday I had to run 4 forecasting scenarios on a largely unknown project within 1 hr before a conf call, and had to include time to show my boss how to fidget the widgets). And my biggest tool in getting this all done is well, NoDoz of course, and loud, angry punk music that I use to just whip myself into a full on manic frenzy. Nothing makes me move faster or breaks down mental barriers easier than me being on a righteous rampage.
I can feel your anger. It gives you focus, makes you stronger…
Teaching is tough, and one thing I’ve found over the years (moving from the corporate environment to the educational) is that just because someone does something or uses a program every day doesn’t mean that they are automatically able to teach it to others. So, what you experienced is perfectly normal and your response was exactly as it should have been. Especially the getting back up, looking at what they suggested and then knocking it out of the park.
In following your blog for a couple of years now, I honestly feel that there is nothing you cannot accomplish when you set yourself to the task. Set backs and temporary failures are part of life, just like you said. It’s all part of the game and you are an expert gamer, so you should have no trouble bouncing back. Also, I am sure I speak for everyone who reads your posts when I say this, but you have a supportive following here and I for one am willing to help in any way I can.
Good luck. Take whatever time you need and we’ll all be here when you get back. 🙂
Good luck Phil! And even if you failed once, it is lessen learned for next time.
So good job 🙂 You came back and ready for another round.
I am sure you will make it.
Some links about depression:
http://lifehacker.com/5483797/the-evolutionary-reason-for-depression?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+lifehacker/full+(Lifehacker)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.html?em
“In a survey led by the neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen, 30 writers from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop were interviewed about their mental history. Eighty percent of the writers met the formal diagnostic criteria for some form of depression. A similar theme emerged from biographical studies of British writers and artists by Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, who found that successful individuals were eight times as likely as people in the general population to suffer from major depressive illness.”
Cool…
There is nothing harder than this. There is nothing harder than the sickening, freezing feeling of failing, in your own terms, in full view of a group.
Well actually that’s not true. It is much, much harder to mobilize sheer bloody cussedness to pull you out of the dive and back into action.
That is truly courageous and my best wish for you is that you always remember that you can do this. You can always get up and try again.
I do not know what or who you believe in, but I am sure that when that entity sees one of us do that she or he sits back, smiles and says “not bad, not bad at all” and takes the day off.
Have to finish with a Batman quote. “Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”
Hey everyone!
The second seminar went a lot better! In fact, I think that everything that was under my control went near flawlessly. I also learned many new lessons about not trying to satisfy everyone all the time (impossible) and about not accepting to customize the content of standardized courses passed a certain point. Also, MS-Project is a 2 day course, periods.
Thanks for your support, interesting links (Yo Baboune, great stuff… check “Touched by Fire” too”) and cool Batman quotes.
Now Back to prepping course.
Glad you seemed to pull though it. Almost everyone gets that crap appointment, crap meeting crap class once in a while. A friend of mine, a top salesperson, got *frogmarched* out of a company once.
It messed him up a bit, until he realized it was nothing to do with him. Sometimes it’s best to be straight up rather than wing it too much though. A miscommunication of goals is a nightmare, I’ve had it happen to me as well, you were right to get angry about it.
There is one famous teaching axiom though, fail to prepare….prepare to fail. It’s also a good idea to allow at least 3 times as long to prepare for anything you need to present. Once you’ve got your notes and stuff though it should get easier, putting together the first batch is always the hardest.
One thing I do when I have to present an application like say MS Project is to “Role Play” in my mind with the app a day or 2 before going in. I imagine that I am in the class, and what questions I would ask, how I would try to mess up the presentation. If you do this in advance it helps prepare the ground.
Often times there’s *not a way* to do it in the app! Sometimes if you know this you can just straight out tell the class. Knowing what an app *does not* do is as important (and often more critical) than what it does.
Having done this for a while, if I don’t see a feature advertised on the product, *I assume it does not do it* More often than not I’m right. There’s nothing worse than looking for a “common sense” feature that surely must exist!…live in front of a class. Anyway good luck with your stuff.
I only just got around to reading all of this post… but my wife used to suffer from anxiety about the same things to the same extent. Had to quit uni for that reason, the prospect of oral exams and the chance of failure was too much.
Thanks for sharing, so that i can share it with her, and *massive* congrats on pulling through it, and i often think we would all be lost without our knowing wives! I know how hard it can be, and i’m *very* thankful that my current position leaves very little need for having to make things up on the spot.
“It felt GOOD to fight back!” keep on fighting!