I am spending the first part of today in training. When I was signed up, I was given some homework to do so I would be prepared come Monday morning. I found the pre-work interesting enough that I did more than the minimum required. I’m glad I did because now I feel very prepared coming in.
The experience reminded me of some reading all incoming students were assigned the summer before we started our first year in college. I, of course, did all of the reading before flying out for orientation. Others read it enroute to orientation, and some on their first few days on campus.
I will admit to being shocked by the number of people who hadn’t done the reading at all during the summer. Our professors factored that in, and provided some extra time to get the reading done. I found that accommodation disheartening. After all, weren’t we all coming in to learn?
With the benefit of both time and hindsight, I now understand that 17 & 18 year olds do not always make the best decisions. Especially when faced with the prospect of the kind of independence one has when entering college. The extra time allotted was simply the professors being pragmatic, based on their years of experience. And to be completely fair, that is the last time we were cut any kind of slack.
I still encounter similar issues on nonprofit boards. That really gets my goat. Sometimes it can be like pulling teeth to get board members to read their materials before a meeting. We all have jobs and several have kids, but reading the material before-hand is part of what folks signed up for. I will admit that there have been times I didn’t do my reading before hand. We all have crazy weeks where the to-do list grows instead of shrinks. But they are the exception rather than the rule. And on those days, I try to show up to the meeting early so I can get my reading done before the meeting actually starts.
Because people come in unevenly prepared, meetings and trainings tend to cater to the least prepared. I am as guilty of this as anyone. I hate teaching trainings where I am forced to choose between penalizing those who have done their pre-work or leaving somebody behind. That is why I prefer teaching workshops that require no prep or one-on-one sessions.
Ok, stepping off my soapbox here. This post seems to have gotten to be more of a rant than I intended. My point is that I am one of those people who comes into situations as prepared as possible. And, if the materials are interesting enough, I might even come in over-prepared. I don’t judge those that didn’t do as much prep as I did. After all, who knows what is going on in their lives. But, I do reserve the right to feel frustrated.