I had my first school-based lecture today. To get there, we had to ride a tricycle to the pier, and then get a ticket and board the barge which takes around 15 to 20 minutes to finish boarding passengers and cargos, and then take a motorcycle ride to the highway where a public van drove us to the terminal, and then take a tricycle again to finally reach the school. It was a hot sunny day, but the room was air-conditioned so it was no trouble.
My audience was going to be a group of graduating 4th year Nursing students, who were going to take the board exam next year in December – such a long time away. I discussed for half a day – although the entire process above made me an hour late – and then waited at the back of the room the entire afternoon while the staff facilitated the exam (300 items of Emergency and Disaster Nursing, which I had submitted weeks before). I had gotten a headache right after the lecture, and my head kept bothering me until I arrived at the hotel at around 6:30 in the evening (the entire trip to the school and back took 2 hours or so).
I took a very refreshing shower right after, ordered room service, and went to bed right after dinner because my head just wouldn’t let me go on.
The staff told me today that during my lecture the day before, when the class refused to have break and chose to go on with the discussion instead, that was truly actually a good thing. The group, they said, was the kind that left if they didn’t find the lecture interesting or if they didn’t feel they could learn anything from it. The staff had also received feedback from the students, saying that they really did choose to listen to me instead of taking a break, because I gave out a lot of relevant information – they were actually learning. And also, I was told that the boys in that group were usually the ones to leave first, or “walk out” of class, but that didn’t happen either. They all came back.
Yippee!!!