2022.10.28. – Who am I? (A lecturer, apparently.)

Had my first ever lecture today. I’ve been teaching one-on-one and small groups for more than 7 years now (wow, that sounds so much), and actual groups at actual universities for almost 2 years, at this point. But my only experience, when it comes to lectures, is obviously being a student listening to the lecturers and maybe giving presentations in class or at a student conference – and I always made sure to have interactive, engaging presentations instead of just, you know, me talking. Also, all of those were in person. This morning, I gave a lecture to about 90 students, online.

After waking up way too early (for the second day in a row, as yesterday it was morning practice), I forced some breakfast down, and went over to the university to take my place at my desk in the teachers’ room very much in advance for my lecture. I’d known that I’d need to print all my material out for my language class before the lecture, since I would only have 10 mins to grab my stuff and get over to the classroom once the lecture was over. So I prepared all my stuff, both for the lecture and the seminar.

When it was time to log into the Zoom meeting and wait for my students (I did that 10 mins before the lecture was supposed to start), I was already very nervous, painfully aware that I am no lecturer and that the lecture topic (Europe) was no expertise of mine. Right after logging in, I tried sharing my screen to have a welcome slide for the students joining the meeting so that they would know that they are in the right place (and to give a professional air off). However, I had to realise that as I was not the host of the meeting (it was the ‘National University of Mongolia’, I am guessing an admin), and the host had disabled screen sharing. I quickly fired off an email to Otgontuya – suspecting she wouldn’t be of any help at 9 am on a Friday morning – and went to look inside the other teachers’ rooms to see if I could find someone who might be able to help. There was a guy but he had no idea what to do (he knew even less about Zoom and the problem than I did), and so I went back to my laptop and sent a message in the Zoom chat saying I have a problem sharing my screen and I’m working on that, so that my students would know what was up. Another round at the other rooms, still no one to help. As I went back to my desk, already texting Otgontuya’s number, I saw that the admin (or host) had appeared in the meantime and gave me permission to share my screen. By this time, it was about 10 minutes into my lecture time. I don’t even know what I’d expected – this is Mongolia, after all. Nothing seems to work here properly or at first try; you need to ask for help/make demands/plead several times for a problem to get solved, and even that will take time and won’t be perfect, and nothing will ever happen on time. (Even if you are doing your best to have everything ready, are in your office an hour early, you open your presentation, test your systems, make sure you have stable internet connection, make sure your laptop’s plugged in so that it cannot possibly turn off, join the Zoom meeting 10 mins earlier… nothing you do can possibly make you counteract the fact that you are in Mongolia and dealing with Mongolians. That is not meant to say I have anything against Mongolians, it’s just a fact you’d better get used to.)

The lecture itself wasn’t a disaster – I think – so that’s good. I realised about halfway through that I might be going too fast and might run out of slides and things to say before my 90 mins were up so I slowed down and started explaining things in more detail from then on. It was kind of multi-tasking, talking about stuff (trying not to read it from my notes bc that would have been too obvious), moving between slides, keeping a close eye on the time, muting students whenever they unmuted themselves (or joined with sound) so that there was no unnecessary, disturbing noise from their parts, and also keeping an eye on the chat in case anyone had a question (no one did). With all this going on, my stress from not being able to start properly, on time, my dissatisfaction with the whole chaos, and my anxiety over the lecture itself had no chance of resurfacing, luckily. I managed to finish my presentation with about 5 mins to spare and I dedicated that time to questions (there were only two, pretty irrelevant ones, but they were questions at least), and to getting feedback (again, not many students interacted, but for those who did I was grateful for). To be able to finish my lecture on time (quite a feat, considering I have never even given a presentation longer than 20 mins before and I haven’t timed or practiced this lecture AT ALL), have no huge failings, and hopefully (possibly) manage to come across as someone who had given lectures before, or at least wasn’t a complete moron – I think I’ve done great.

I am actually proud of myself. I had less than 4 days to prepare a lecture on a topic I have no expertise on (sure, I am European, but to give an academic lecture on Europe?), with no previous experience to rely on, really… yes, I did rather well. Not that I look forward to my next two lectures (because I don’t) but at least now I know I am capable of this too. I really am a teacher, am I not? (Also, I started my lecture with a short introduction, just one slide with my name, picture, nationality, and field (Hungarian as a foreign language) on it, but before this slide I had one with a picture of Lockhart’s book ‘Who am I?’ in the middle, to lead into my introductory slide and as an inside joke to myself, because I could not pass an opportunity for being a huge Potterhead up – and I was wearing my Hogwarts T-shirt too.)

Main slide of my presentation

So anyway, finished with my lecture, I grabbed my stuff, hurried to the bathroom, waited in line (there must be a teacher’s toilet somewhere, there’s no way they wait their turns with all those students queueing, they would all be late for their next classes), and was indeed 2 mins late for my class. We learned numbers, how to express our age and the languages we speak/are learning (verb conjugation and suffixes all in one!), then some ways to express time (days of the week, mostly, and some vocab related to that). Again, I made a mental note to make them practice pronunciation (vowels especially) in our next classes. But overall, they did great. (And they are almost all 18-year-olds, there’s even a 16-year-old – how are my students getting younger and younger while I am only getting older?)

Coming home for an instant ramen lunch with pan-fried tofu (made by my husband who had also cleaned and did the laundry, bless his heart), I was really tired and had a slight headache so the afternoon was spent chilling and napping. In the evening, I spent some time reading – feels so good to read on my Kindle, I really should read more (not just fanfics). And here I am at 1 am, way too late for someone who plans on getting up before 8 am in the morning to go to swim practice.