Doing Onto Others as You Wish Others Had Done unto You--the worst presentation I've ever witnessed

A CATESOL presentation called "Doing Onto Others as You Wish Others Had Done unto You" given in 1998 (I think) was the worst presentation I've ever witnessed, and I was the one who gave it.  I don't know what happened, but when the time came I was so incredibly nervous that I just stopped at five minutes and asked that lame questions teachers sometimes ask in the classroom, "Any questions."  Thankfully, almost no one was in attendance.  But my husband was, and a few friends who'd been in the MA program at SFSU were also there.  Even one of my professors, Mr. Thurston Womack, who in the classroom looked at his watch every time I began to speak because he knew mine wasn't The Silent Way, was there--and he lied through his teeth about how well I had done and even showed me his evaluation--four stars--because he was so alarmed by--and maybe a little grateful for--the stage fright that had put so quick an end to my presentation.

So...why am I mentioning this now?  Two weeks into retirement, I've had the chance to do whatever I feel like, and today I felt like reflecting on trips to New York, specifically the  trip I took when I chaperoned a couple, two graduate students of my dad's at USC, to New York, and in an effort to figure out just when that trip was, I started a timeline that led to my opening a trunk labeled "Childhood and High School" and doing a lot of reading, listing, and even tattling on people--to those people themselves-- about their pasts.  (I found a long letter from 1962 from a friend who spoke about her reading--Brave New World and Eyeless in Gaza--and the boy who'd given her the reading list, so I had to write to her.  I was also writing him--less--because we've been trying to arrange a time for Javier and me to visit him and his wife up at Napa.)

But...more to the point, I came across the mimeographed questionnaires I gave to teachers to see what they had learned from their experience as teachers.

I'll type up the form and give it in the next post.