Learning to talk all over again

You know how sometimes in dreams you have an urgent need to get a message across to someone but you can't find the words or your voice stops working or no one understands your language or your teeth keep falling out but you have to keep talking while hoping against hope that no one in the audience notices that teeth are dribbling all down the front of your shirt? That feeling came back to me this morning when I gave a 50-minute presentation on the meaning of a Liberal Arts education to 15 presidents and vice presidents of colleges and universities.

In China.

No wait, I wasn't in China and neither were they, but the colleges and universities they lead are in China. They're traveling around the U.S. to learn about American institutions of higher education and my purpose was to give them a brief introduction to the idea of the Liberal Arts foundation. I started with a poem ("To the Stone-Cutters" by Robinson Jeffers) and examined some of the questions the poem raises about how we leave a mark on the world, and then I went on from there to talk about how a Liberal Arts education equips us to do so.

It sounds pretty easy, but I've never spoken with an interpreter before and it was a bizarre experience. I had to slow down my normal speaking rate and pause after every sentence or two so the translator could convey my message. I like to make eye contact with an audience, so I would look at the Chinese visitors while I was speaking and then look at the translator as he was speaking and then look at the visitors to see if my ideas had made any discernible impact, but at about that time I had to move on to the next point.

It's hard to get any momentum going when you have to stop after every major thought, and then sometimes it seemed the translator would go on and on until I wondered, "Did I really say all that?" He was very helpful, especially during the question-and-answer time: he explained the background for some of the questions and provided added insight when translating my answers. At least I think that's what he was doing. Maybe he was just sharing the latest gossip about Jon & Kate.

How did it go? I don't know. I think I got some ideas across and I think the Chinese scholars appreciated them. On the other hand, I could be dreaming--but If this is a dream, why aren't my teeth falling out?