After looking at that last paragraph, my husband would say I'm the queen of run on sentences. I can't disagree on this. I tried to pick up "Elements of Style" for some light and fun reading. It's not light and fun. It reminded me why I threw away my copy from 1986 from my Great Aunt Ada who was an English professor at UNC. Not exactly what a 11 year old likes to read. Not exactly what a 33 year old likes to read. However, I can't help but re-read all of my sentence structures in the past paragraph and cringe. I know I can do better.
All of this aside, I must share a very funny story. Our very last weekend-in-residence was an emotional one. I brought a box of tissue and by the time the weekend was over I only had 3 left. On Saturday each of us had to present their final project to the class. Several did some sort of self reflection. One peer mentioned that when she is in difficult situations, ones that require sweater sets or Ann Taylor suits and boardrooms, she carries around a little of *Sue*
with her. All of us looked particularly confused until she enlightened us with the story.
*Sue*, now a senior VP at a very reputable business, used to be a VP of a very stuffy old-boys-club, well established, international financial institution. When she knew she was going into a very difficult meeting or long boardroom discussion she would put on her sexiest pair of red lace panties and think to herself, "Yeah, you don't even know what's going on under this." Apparently she shared this story in confidence to our peer, who then went public with it during her presentation. *Sue* was the color of her now infamous panties...but, I felt worse for our professor - the only male in the class. Something else that made it even more funny? The Dean was sitting in on these presentations. (Yes, yes, I realize I'm now taking it a step further by putting it out into cyberspace, but names and situations have changed.)
It took a long time for our professor to compose himself to stop laughing. He tried to gain control back by stating, "Look, this is how we uncover our hidden talents." Well, that started us all off laughing again. Nothing like a Freudian slip, but he was determined. We gave him outs to break for lunch, etc, but nope, he was going to continue his agenda.
That evening we had a graduation party over at *Sue's* house. We invited the professors and my husband was the only honorary significant other who was welcomed. The team decided he almost was part of our team considering how he was carrying in my things for me, picking me up, and bantering with everyone in the autumn/winter with my stupid back problems. He also met us for drinks a few times. By the time we arrived, everyone had a few in them. Everyone was telling stories sitting out on the deck and enjoying the beautiful early summer evening.
As we were gearing up for dinner, our Dean stepped up wanting to recognize the class and professors. She passed out individual gifts to all of the students and said that she wanted us to have a significant reminder of all of the hard work, qualifications, and expertise we have learned in the past 10 months. With that we each opened our gift: red lace thong panties. From the Dean. I was now laughing so hard I was crying. I kept trying to explain this to my husband who just kept telling me he didn't want to know. One teammate actually modeled them over her jeans while several took photos. I kept thinking: uh oh, this is the problem with Facebook. Sure enough, the photos were posted within 15 minutes. In the land of Hahvard, I went back for my graduate degree in organizational psychology and I wound up with a pair of red lace panties from the Dean.
One thing's for certain: my whole class will be debuting their secret weapon of confidence underneath that graduation robe next Sunday afternoon.
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