Thursday night was the gala banquet for the conference. The lady presenting with me was honored with an award for longevity in the state music teachers' association. Wow, congratulations to her! What an honor and what commitment! I had no idea she was receiving it. This is pertinent for a reason, as I'll outline below.
Friday morning comes. Our presentation is at 8:30am. Not knowing how traffic would be into downtown Phoenix, I left early and arrived the conference location just after 7am. Cool, I have time to set up and review stuff. By 7:45am, I was beginning to wonder if anyone was going to be there. At 8:00am, I went in search of others. The other lady I was presenting with had just showed up, but she had left all her stuff in her hotel room, could I go get it please? Um, well, okay, but we only have 25 minutes now until our presentation and I'm still trying to get my computer hooked up to the projector. So I went and got her stuff. I come back and try for the second time to relay the fact that my computer is NOT hooked up to the projector, could I get some help? (I should note here that both Brian and I were surprised after the fact when I told him there was no computer there to use. What if I hadn't brought my laptop? What if no one had brought a laptop? Screwy.) At that point, she tells me to just find someone "who knows something about computers" to help me. Um, like who? I don't know who knows stuff and who doesn't! The lady presenting at the same time as me graciously let me look at how her computer was hooked up into her projector, and that helped. However, my computer (being a Mac) didn't have an adapter to fit the hook-in provided, so we had to try using my co-presenter's computer. Didn't work either (PC). We finally tracked down a laptop that would work and it was from the guy selling music in the hallway. Wtf. So thankful for him, but still! So, our presentation started at 8:40am instead of 8:30am.
We had decided to start with me doing the introduction, and then she would review levels 1-4 while I played the technique for levels 1-4. As soon as I was done with my introduction, I turned around to head to the piano and she was sitting on the goddamn bench. She smiled at me and said "okay, I'm ready to play!" WTF. I did NOT prepare for this! Okay, well, fine then, go ahead and play, I'll discuss stuff on the Power Point presentation (which is what she was playing). I couldn't really get through 3-4 sentences at a time when someone from the audience (more of the original founders of the program) would interrupt me and say that I was incorrect. Um, really? Because you wrote the workbooks and I'm taking my information straight from there! "Well, you must have the old ones." Um, no, you don't even sell the old ones anymore, how the F* would I do that?!?? Ugh. We get through levels 1-4 and I'm getting ready to continue with 5-8 when my co-presenter went "okay, we switch!" WTF?!?? I'M NOT PREPARED TO PLAY THE LEVEL 5-8 STUFF!!!!!! Omg, it was terrible. I think I played levels 5 and 6 only and she said TO EVERYONE THERE "well, that's a great example of an unprepared student, K." I could have murdered someone right then and there. Then she went off on tangent after tangent, reviewing things that we had decided NOT to review, and when we had five minutes left to go, there was some random woman sitting at the piano playing through a Russian technique routine. W. T. F. I had to wrap it up really quickly in five minutes (I basically cut off the woman playing and my co-presenter to do so) and hope that no one walked out of there thinking I was a moron for not knowing anything WHEN IT WAS ACTUALLY THE FACT THAT WE DIDN'T FOLLOW OUR OUTLINE THAT SCREWED ME THE ROYAL F* UP.
The entire reason I wanted to meet with my co-presenter on Tuesday was to make an outline of what we were going to do, so that way I knew what was going to happen, how it would flow, and what to expect. I've never presented at the state conference before (national, yes, but that time all my co-presenters did as we had agreed!) and was nervous. After Friday's experience, I can honestly say that I'd like to go hide my head in the sand for about 10 years until this blows over and no one remembers it. I was so upset, sad, angry, pissed off, and felt defeated by my co-presenter. I mean, here is a woman with 35+ years of experience as a teacher that knows this program inside and out, who clearly didn't feel the need to keep the presentation the way we had agreed. WHY?!?? I just can't get over it. It doesn't make any sense. On the other hand, I'm angry enough to want to go back next year and present on a different topic (maybe by myself, maybe with someone from my national conference presentation experience) to show them (and her!) that yes, I'm capable, intelligent, can play, have something to offer, and can do this! Ugh. Just...really up and down about the whole thing.
I took this picture before the presentation started. I was hopeful! Then...not so much. I felt bad enough about it all that ended up buying music from the guy that loaned his laptop to me for his generosity (lol). Good bye $40!
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