Sevenzest

Babble

22 August 06

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I'm still Here!

And in one piece too! The days of sleep deprived nights and random wine binges have come to a nice mellowing. As those of you who don’t know, I have been teaching for the first time during the last 4 weeks while still holding my two other jobs – freelance and inhouse for The Star. Design animation was the subject and I managed to survive the worst of tummy churning nervousness, uncomfortable silences, self doubt and hours sifting through FLASH basically freaking out the night prior to class.

Thank god I also felt the more enjoyable sides to the experience, with many reasons that confirmed my aspiration to teach in the first place. As I didn’t know FLASH very well I knew I had a lot of learning to do. So I looked up Adobe, and even found myself reading the FLASH 5 tutorial (it was sitting dusty on my shelf since 2003) into the night to get a basic understanding. For a while I had no idea how I could teach my new understanding when I was not completely confident.

It sure was a bumpy ride of switching between PC to IMACs in Class, discovering new additions to programs and trying to translate all of it to students. But by doing the sweaty stuff and blind flumbling I finally began to understand what I was doing with the program and how I could animate with FLASH! I know this sounds terrible “how could they ask me to teach something I didn’t know???” but I know how to design, the process of brainstorm and conceptualise and drawing etc, but I just was not familiar with FLASH, or teaching for a class’ sake! The indescribable sense of achievement from being safe in knowing what I know is almost euphoric. It feels like being a student again, but the reward is even better because now I can relax in knowing that I have achieved far beyond what I thought I was capable of. Suddenly my attitude that I was teaching something I don’t know, has translated to being confident in teaching something that I have learnt!

So right now, for me it’s like a giant rock being lifted from my shoulders. There’s still a bit of ache from the heaviness (I have weeks of sleep to catch up on!), but I know that I am OKAY, and that all is well in my world once again!