Second City

So, I took my first class in storytelling from Second City.

Here is my script for my first homework assignment. I don't think I was supposed to write the whole thing out, but I couldn't think of another way. And the teacher didn't specify, so I took that as permission to figure it out for myself.

She said to write out the "beats." Beats is an artsy word that means heading. To reherse, I recorded, listened to the whole piece. I also and made a page of beats. But I think I have too many beats. I think she said we should have six. I have 14. I'll let you know what she says.

But anyway, here it is. I think it's pretty good for my first one. It is supposed to be a story of when we overcame something. It's one of my favorite stories. :)

My story of overcoming started when I was five years out of college. I gave a presentation about safe dating to college students in Bridgeview, Illinois, as part of my job in social work.

Presentations were my favorite because, to be honest, I loved being the center of attention. But the pay was crappy, and middle of the night, on-call work was getting to me, so I knew I couldn’t do it forever.

Anyway, back to the presentation, I stood for that first time at the front of the classroom, and … it was like I got hit with five arrows right from the bow of the Cherub of Job Hunting. Job love at first sight. This was the group of people I wanted to work with adult learners, who were coming back to college after they have had…whatever they had, maybe they dropped out of school, maybe they had their families young, maybe college didn’t occur to them.

These folks were working all day, then every night, trudging through whatever Chicago weather threw at them to sit through classes, which is commendable but not rare. The difference at this place was that everyone I met wanted to do all this…for someone else. for someone else. Most wanted to be a good example for their kids, provide a better life, or step up in their community. My classroom overflowed with stories of inspiration. I remember one, Jaynie, who was in a wheelchair; she had a job and four kids. I said how do you expect to finish school with a job and four kids. She said watch me. And I did, all the way to her graduation day.

She’s a programmer now.

The only problem with my brilliant plan…was that I was totally unqualified. I had a degree in Speech Communications Arts and studies, which qualified me to …I don’t know, talk? So I went each term and gave my speech to the incoming freshmen I made sure they knew that my bachelor degree self would be great as a teacher. Every time I went, I told someone I was interested in a teaching job. Every time, they said well, we USUALLY don’t hire people unless they have at least a Master’s degree. I never gave up because they never said no. they said Usually.

I figured if I showed them how good I was, eventually, I could be that exception.

No, it was more than that; I knew they would eventually make an exception. I mean ...the Cherub of Job Hunting doesn’t lie!

Three years later, Three years later! My proverbial big break came because they could not find anyone to teach on Saturday mornings, so they offered it to me, and I was teaching the same class I had been giving my safe dating presentation.

I’d love to tell it I rocked it but I didn’t. It was a huge learning curve, making the jump from a couple of presentations to motivating people for an entire 17-week term. No onboarding no training like we do today, for adjuncts, it was, be great or your fired. But I did ok and got better each term, I taught that class on Saturdays for the next 10 years or so.,

There’s a lot of cliché’s I can end with here, the ones that come to mind are don’t take a no for an answer, don’t take a no from someone who can’t say yes. Don’t stop believin’.

Whatever

All I can tell you is that’s how it went down for me. I kept at it because, truthfully, giving those presentation was my job, and I didn’t have anything better to do in my free time.

Once I got that job, I worked more and harder than I thought I could.

With no further education, I became a teacher in the school of IT, teaching introduction to the internet (yeah, it was a LONG time ago), PowerPoint, Excel, access, and Word. but that, as they sort of say, is a story for this storyteller to story another day.