Ingemar, the teacher responsible for the journalism program is finishing his eleven years long career at the university, we will be the last class that had him as responsible, sad news for the new students. The good part? The way we said goodbye. In Swedish we call it an "avtackning", literally "offthanking" I can't seem to find a good word for it in English but it works a bit like a birthday party in the way that one person is in the center of the attention of the party. But instead of getting one year older the person is thanked for all he/she has done. And he deserves to be thanked. He's the best or the second best teacher I've ever had, not sure which.
We had been planning this event ever since this semester started and due to a lot of work from especially some impressive people we managed to book a classroom for this Friday. We had also decided what gifts to give him and made a schedule for the event and checked his calendar and everything. My teacher had no idea that anything was planned of course, the rest of the teachers did tho. Everyone but him knew.
We got the two receptionists in our building to ask him to join them for lunch, which he did. As I was inside a classroom I have no idea how it played out but I guess he was a bit surprised when the receptionists took him to a nearby classroom door instead of to the school restaurant. I'm quite sure he was even more surprised when he got inside and saw something like 100 students, many teachers and even his wife.
After letting him sit in a chair in the middle of the room in front of the stage, imagine the room like a movie theater. it was time to start with some speeches. First the one in my class who had been the hero organising most of it, the title of hero well deserved. Then I was up next, and of course I didn't just go with a normal speech.
The very first time I held some kind of speech in front of my teacher and the class was one or two weeks after I started my education, meaning some time in the middle of September two years ago. It was a group presentation and should be a certain length but ours was fourty seconds short or so. To solve that we decided that I would write and read a poem to fill out the time. I'm not sure what my teacher thought of the journalistic merit in that or what kind of an effect it would have had on my grade, had I gotten one, but he did say it was unique. So I decided to simply repeat it and make another stand up poetry.
It doesn't really trouble me to do it in front of a large crowd as I have done it multiple times before and once actually in a school competion. The new thing was that the speech wasn't just a funny thing but actually meant for someone. During my first large stand up I lost my cool, funnily enough because they were too entertained. I had planned to just immidiately continue after a joke but the crowd burst out cheering, and I made panicky gestures to get control back. Not very professional but I learned my lesson after that and now I can handle that people cheer and laugh at times I didn't expect by some techniques to let them laugh it out without it getting awkward and then get back on track.
The thing this time was that I wasn't just entertaining a crowd, I was holding the speech for someone so I felt a bit more pressure. My throat was quite dry when I went on stage. Unlike a normal speech when you can't really mess up with a paper with notes in your hand it can go very wrong if you lose track while using rhymes. At the end it all worked out fine and I kept my cool. After me several other speeches followed, then presents and an invitation to our finishing dinner and party in the evening.
Now three hours of lunch and then working pass.
We meet up at a friends place and the evenings theme is glitter and glamour. A pink boa, green hairspray, pink heartshaped glasses, green pants and shirt and some pink and green glittering nail polish I'm good to go. The polish and hair spray with some help from a friend.
It was a really nice dinner that later turned into a party. Good things to eat as well as entertainment, not least from two of our teachers. They had made a promise two years ago that if anyone in our class managed to interview the prime minister they would dance, sing and play music. One of us managed so said and done. All in all a really great last time all together. Of course I'm going to meet many classmates the last weeks but this was probably the last time we're all together at some event.
The next day I woke up with a bit of a problem. How on earth would I get the nail polish off? I was going to a christmas market and I didn't fancy going there with it still on, as this is the second time I know of that I use it I didn't have anything to remove it at home either. Thankfully the same friend that helped me apply it was awake enough to help me remove it too. After that a nice christmas market, a calm sunday and since then I've been working on my study.
I'm not sure what my teacher would say about a picture of him on my blog so I'm just going to use my nails, looks quite funny. My hair looks a bit awkward after a shower and the beard looks very awkward regardless, I know. When I asked my father to keep his santa claus beard that he got for some reason until christmas a few weeks ago he told me he would if I did the same so I havn't got much of a choice. Just focus on the nails.
Also, glad that Magnus Carlsen defended his title as world champion in chess, the championship was going on during my last post. He didn't play as well as he usually does but he had a really beautiful finishing mate in the last game.