Week 9 Reflections

I had my book club last week and I think it went extremely well. I always get very nervous before that kind of thing but after it started it almost just ran itself, although part of that might have just been that we had a group of chatty opinionated people. If nobody wanted to talk I bet the whole thing would have been really nerve-racking and painful. Surprisingly, our biggest problem was that the time went so quickly. I thought twenty minutes a piece sounded really long but it wasn't at all. We had a list of about twenty-five questions and I think we only asked five. There were a few I really wanted to ask too, but we ran out of time. I think there were multiple times where we should have cut people off and moved on, especially during the opening introduction. I was really just expecting people to say their favorite fairy tale and move on, not talk about it in detail. Both Natalie and I are fairly quiet people and it was a little hard to assert ourselves in a group of much more talkative people. I think if the book club had been with actual teenagers it would have been a little easier because I would have felt a little more like an authority figure. It's much harder to direct your peers. Other than that, though, it went really well and I appreciated all of the ideas the other book club members brought in.

The other book clubs went well too. I enjoyed them a lot and I felt completely comfortable sharing my thoughts, which doesn't usually happen for me. Everybody brought up points that I hadn't thought of (like Cinnamon... How did I not catch that reference?!?!?!) and made me think much more about the stories. I think for all of them we were supposed to act like teens and that was really difficult. For most of them we eventually gave up. I don't feel old at all, but I realized that I don't think at all the same as I did in high school. So hurray! I'm growing up!

In class we learned about how to do workshops. It was really interesting and helpful to hear all the different techniques and strategies for designing a workshop. In particular, it was good to see how it should be broken up. This makes it a little less intimidating. You can just look at a specific part that has a certain time allotment and plan that, instead of trying to figure out how to fill up a larger amount of time. Obviously all the parts have to fit together and flow, but still. I am very nervous to do the workshops tomorrow, but hopefully it will be like the book clubs and end up being not nearly as scary as I originally thought.

We also had a video webinar with Bobbi Newman. It was a little strange not being able to see her, but I totally understand why she would feel more comfortable that way. Overall I enjoyed it a lot. The views she expressed were much less intense than some of the blog opinions I read, which I thought was good. I wonder if some of that has to do with the way people write blogs. I think it is easy to go on rants and not actually be as hardcore for or against something as it seems. Like I wonder if the Librarian in Black would have come across as more toned down if we had talked to her too. I think blogs can be kind of strange. Anyways, I really appreciated hearing her views on everything.