The trainer was odd. She was assertive, almost agressive, in her first interaction with everybody. I was fourth or fifth into the room. She let me sit down in one of the chair-desk hybrids with which we were blighted.
And then she came over, stood square in front of me, thrust out her hand and said, "Sue." Trapped under the chair-desk, I couldn't stand up to shake her hand on a level standing. Power games from the off, I suppose. She went back and sat in her chair in the middle of the horseshoe. Chair, not chair-desk. As the other five or six people walked in, they got the same treatment. This was one assertive trainer. And then I looked over at her desk, on which lay Statistics for Dummies.
My favourite review of this book that I've seen is "Statistics for Dummies is for dummies." Anyhow...
As the room filled, my heart fell. I'd been on a terrible course on report writing, which was made even worse by my partner not being able to discuss the technique of an example, only its content. For example, when we were asked to criticise an overly wordy report about replacing a boiler, he looked for flaws in the arguments used to justify buying a new boiler rather than flaws in how the report was written. Mr Too-Specific walked in, saw me, and smiled. I smiled back, without wanting to. He came and sat next to me. We'd be working together again. Joy. I sort of enjoyed his unease as Sue pulled out the handshake move. Ain't I a stinker?
The dramatis personae also included Mr On-Message, who wore his name badge halfway down his shirt, between the nipple and the navel, and worked for the department whose job is making sure the other departments are doing their job right. Like checking that the phone is answered in three rings. Given the opportunity he'd bleat out this week's buzz-phrases about "best value" or "service improvement" as if he was in a job interview. Another guest, Ms Bloody-Obvious, could be relied on to fill any silence during plenary sessions with sonic junk.
"Well, we all have our learning needs, don't we?"
"Well, it's not all black and white, is it?"
"Well, what a good learning curve, don't you think?"
Equally as empty as Mr On-Message, but in a different way. Duo-directional drivel dribbling Dave-wards. Delightful.
I don't think Sue wasn't from a training background, but from academia. Her language was loaded with social sciences fieldwork terms that I recognised from my psychology A-Level - "the participant" and "research ethics," - and peppered with references to hypotheses-centred, experiment-based research methodology. The autonomy of the researcher isn't a reality outside of academic circles, in my opinion, but was central to Sue's approach to data. I started to listen out for more tell-tale signs, but noticed something else entirely.
"...quantitative data, mostly is numehhwical..."
Huh?
"...numehhwical..."
She'd learned to control it very well over time, but Sue had a slight rhotacism - she pronounced her R sound as a W sound. Like finding a spot on your tounge, once I'd noticed it, it became very conspicuous. The mild speech impediment (that she'd vitually conquered), coupled with her regularly referring to Statistics for Dummies, led to me not feeling as scared of Sue, and soon I started to like her a lot more.
The sandwiches were wonderful. The tea was terrible. The cups were tiny. Look at my mobile phone in this picture. To the left, my normal cup. To the right, the cup from the course. And you know how much I like tea, right.
I'm just looking for a course called Understanding Dating now. Actually, I think I'm done with courses. For a bit at least.
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