There and Back Again

Pondering: Is boredom anything less than the sense of one’s faculties slowly dying? (Arthur Helps)
Song Playing In My Mind: X & Y (Coldplay)

I am sitting here in the big conference room trying real hard to keep my eyes open and my mouth closed – not yawning. Across from me sits my boss who happens to be facilitating today’s training session on meeting facilitation. This is – thank God! – the second to the last session of the mentoring program I have been tasked to provide support. What does provide support mean? That’s means I have to be in every session of the semester long program, provide technical support, collect evaluation forms and set-up/clean-up the room. Not a very thrilling assignment especially if I have other pressing work waiting on my desk, but all of us in the office had to put in our time. This year here is my year. After this year I shall be excused from mentoring program duty for the next four years - kind of like jury duty,

Back to today’s class. I am trying not to fall asleep in front of my boss. That would just be embarrassing. I feel the urge to yawn every fifteen seconds but I control myself. I think yawning in front of people is one of the rudest things to do. It’s one of my pet peeves, when people yawn without covering their mouth or without trying to be discreet about it. Me, I’ve managed to learn the art of yawning without opening my mouth and I’ve been practicing the art for the last hour and a half or so. Thankfully, I’m sitting far from the boss so she can’t see my nose flare every fifteen seconds as I yawn through my mouth.

Discreet time-check: 4:10 p.m. Number of slides to go in her PowerPoint presentation: four. The way things are going with her slideshow and discussion, I’d say I have about twenty more minutes to go. We just might get out of here sooner than the 5 p.m. schedule. I have to think fun thoughts for the last stretch of this class. I’ve managed to stay awake for two and a half hours I can’t fail now. My boss is smiling at me while she waits for someone to answer her question. What was the question? I don’t know. I’m not a participant in the class and not required to answer.

Focus, Lisa! Focus. Time is almost up.