A Case of the Giggles

Last week, I "graduated" from my 8-month long mangagement training series, hosted by Indiana University and held at Bradford Woods, an outdoor retreat south of Indianapolis. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the interaction with other higher education professionals in the IU system.

For the final meeting, we did team presentations. We had been divided up way back in October to come up with a "client" to solve problems they were having and make recommendations based on the training we had gone through. So, we had about 6 months to get this ready. The great thing about it? We didn't really start preparing the presentation until mid-March. Yes! I was on a team that didn't feel success was measured by how many times you met or how thorough an outline you had two weeks after getting the assignment. I've been on those kinds of teams before, the overachiever extraordinaires. One of the other teams did indeed meet several times throughout the months and even made a visit to one of the IU campuses. Wow, that's so impressive.

We threw our presentation together towards the end and guess what? We did just fine. How did we measure up against the overachievers? Actually, we did quite well. The parameters were that we present between 15-20 minutes. Ours clocked in at just over 15 minutes. The overachievers droned on for about 45 minutes. They had a lot to share, but hey, I'd give them an F. Not because I thought they were overachievers and felt miniscule in their presence, but because they broke the rules.

So, after 8 months of training, it all came down to the presentations. But during this time, one of the more memorable moments occurred, known only to those team members at my table. As one of the groups was presenting, the chef, an older retired gentleman, was cleaning up after lunch. As he stood right beside us, he, uh, let one rip. I turned my head slowly to one of my colleagues and quietly asked, "Did he . . .?" The other two also came to the realization as to what had happened. Now, you know when you were young and got the giggles in a situation where you simply cannot bust out laughing? Well, this is the situation we found ourselves in. The overachievers were giving their presentation, it would be rude for us to laugh out loud. But my, oh my, how difficult it was. In addition, some very high ranking administrators from IU Bloomington were in attendance, so we really had to behave ourselves.

So, here we were, John (director of business programs at his campus); Brittany (director of financial aid); Leesa (position in information technologies with a direct reporting line to the IU President) and myself (director of student support). All of us mature professionals doing our best to suppress laughter and trying oh so hard not to make eye contact with anyone else and bust out laughing.