Summer
Summer time is here at last in Michigan, and at Calvin College, that means that it is now time for the summer conference season. As a member of the OCCE Summer Crew, I assist with doing Tech for the various conferences that come through the college, usually running Front of House or the Lighting, and in addition setting up staging and exhibit space. The job involves a lot of personal contact with clients, and determining what they need and how to provide it, but it also involves a lot of getting people extension cords and Gaff tape. Most recently, Calvin played host to a men’s retreat type deal, and next week will be hosting the United Methodist Church’s West Michigan meeting. This time of the year is always full of some sort of odd tension, because there is this underlying pressure to get everything just perfect, but it never works out like that. It was sort of like commencement, which was the first major event in the new Van Noord Arena on our campus since it has been finished (with the exception of a concert, but that was a full rental gig). The pressure was on to make the place look nice, but the pressure got to the point that there was more direction than work going on, and things were actually being screwed up because of the pressure. I think that is for me the most difficult part of working here this summer, that there seems to be a lot of pressure applied for no particular reason. It is at the point where I feel like I work better in earplugs than actually listening to people, because I need some space just to think about the event, much less doing it properly. I guess that you cant control that, however. Only how I react to it. I think I have been reacting in the wrong way, however, by kind of ignoring what everyone says about shows. I think i need to work on that, learn to filter better.
