Gritting Your Teeth or Smiling?

Do you hate sitting in meetings?  Would you rather go to the dentist than be a meeting participant?  

Oh, good!  Come sit by me!

Today was a day for virtual meetings.  

I had a couple of one-to-one Google Hangouts with a couple of teachers and that was fun.  We could just be ourselves and it was almost like sitting in my office with the teacher across the desk and we were just chatting.  

Then, the entire afternoon was filled with Zoom meetings.  This was more the kind of meeting that makes me wish I was in that dentist chair with some instrument going drrrrrrrrrring and making my head vibrate a little bit.

You see, the only thing worse than a big group meeting of teachers held in the library where everybody is scattered here and there at tables with their friends and a stack of papers and pens or a computer in front of them and somebody talking like the Charlie Brown teacher about some sort of topic you've heard about countless times and you could really lead the group in a much more exciting sharing time about the topic - the only thing worse than that is a virtual meeting with a lot of people like that.

You may be asking me why I think that.  Well, let me tell you.  It is worse because you never know who is looking at you and you are right there covering the little square that is the screen with nothing else to look at - no big slide projected on the wall behind you or anything.  So, if you don't sit there looking like you are eagerly learning about whatever is being shared, it could come back to haunt you.  

You see, somebody could be just as zombie-like as you and they could see you nodding off and take a screenshot of you to share later and giggle about it with their friends.  Somebody could see you leaning on your palm with your cheek all smushed up just trying to hold your head upright.  Somebody could be watching you scratching your ear.  Somebody could zoom in and see that you have a drop of salad dressing from lunch smeared across your shirt.  Any number of things could be showing up and somebody could take a screenshot of that unpleasantness and post it on social media or put it in a presentation and project it on the big screen when you are sitting in a really boring in-person meeting in the library and the entire faculty would burst out laughing and you would have no idea where that came from.  

Can you tell that after my second or third virtual meeting I was pretty much a waste and useless?

Can you imagine the look on my face as I'm sitting here thinking about the three meetings I have tomorrow?

When I closed my laptop for the day and strolled all the way from my bedroom into the kitchen to start scrounging something up for dinner, my jaws were hurting.  I think I was following my Granny's advice.  "Grit your teeth, honey.  People will think you are smiling."