Day 2 in the UAE: Kindness

 I confess that I was very nervous this morning.  This was the first day of a three day workshop.  What if I didn't have enough to say?  What if they didn't ask questions?  What if they got bored and started looking at their phones?  What if I couldn't answer their questions?  I'm sure everyone who teaches goes through some form of this internal drama.

And it was fine.  They were very engaged all morning long asked great questions, and I was able to answer!  This is a workshop on collections assessment and stretching your collections dollars so this is something that I've been talking about, writing about, or something that we're tackling here at Penn State. 

I almost had a disaster though.  I was so pleased that the morning went well that I left for the hotel from the library without my purse.  I left that in the seminar room and it had my passport, ID, money, and hotel key in it.  I asked the driver to return to the University because I knew I couldn't wait for an hour without knowing.  I happened to be riding in the car with one of the staff who was delivering books to another university.  She was so gracious and kind.  She is from Yemen and she's lived in the UAE for many years.  Each year she goes back to see her family but this year, she might not be able to return.  She kindly called back to the library and asked them to look for my purse.  Sure enough, it was there, and a possible disaster was avoided. I learned my lesson: keep the purse in the bag with the papers!

In the afternoon we got down to some very specific details.  Only they know what story they want to tell and what they want to do with the data.  I made some very specific suggestions which they liked and tomorrow I will make sure they know exactly where they can get the data.  They use the III Millenium ILS an I remember enough of that even now.  It's unfortunately that I know more about that system and Voyager than I do Sirsi but I've decided that's a function of my position (our AULs at UIUC didn't know how to use the ILS well either) and the fact that the Head of Acquisitions just makes it his/her business how to use the system and to be able to create the correct reports.  They also have access to the Journal Citation Reports so I gave an abbreviated session on how that works and how we can use it in Libraries.  By the end of the day I was pooped, and I was so glad when Moza came in and said that she had heard people were very pleased.  One of the best things about teaching? Immediate feedback.  Of course, now I'm worried that Day 2 won't go as well as Day 1! Tonight I'm coming back and creating material for tomorrow.  I'm just taking one day at a time and trying to respond to what they state their goals are for the next day.  Many thanks to folks like Becky and Ellysa who have given me tutoring on teaching.

Yesterday Moza and I talked a bit about her culture.  One of their core values is to be kind and not inflict pain on others.  If you hurt someone, you hurt them and yourself and their pain becomes your pain.  I've been thinking about that a lot in the past day.  We sometimes have a tendency to group people together, to stereotype, and not view people as individuals.  What I can say is that each person I have met has been kind and thoughtful.

Finally, I saw rows and rows of date trees today.  They aren't ready for harvest yet, but they will be this summer.  I'll never look at the dates I buy in the store in the same way again.