a departmental retreat

I have my own strong ideas about what would constitute an effective - and enjoyable - departmental retreat.  Let's start with - ok, our department administrators had organized a great breakfast spread, so let's start with that, even if the coffee was [USC] hotel coffee.  And then - how about half an hour's guided meditation, and then twenty minutes gentle yoga.  By then - perhaps we'd be ready for a hands-on art project - working on a group collage, say, or a mosaic (smashing some crockery for that could be therapeutic, too).

Then I'd make sure there was a taco truck outside for lunch, and maybe a build-your-own ice cream sundae station.  Then a lengthy country/forest/beach nature walk (OK, not so easy around the USC campus - maybe we'd have to settle for a guided tour of the rose garden outside the Coliseum ... but a walk, at least.  But maybe we'd be away for campus for this whole day, anyway).  Then some free time - a choice of the swimming pool (we're definitely away from campus, by now), or the hot tub/sauna, or a well equipped art studio - followed by a class in something that none of us know how to do (and what would that be?  The tango? - though I did once, long ago, learn to tango for a production of Goethe's Faust at the Young Vic, come to think of it.  And if you don't remember that bit of Faust, we're talking witches on Walpurgisnacht).  Then twenty minutes free writing - then happy hour, a barbecue, and a few rounds of charades.  That's my ideal ...

Instead of which, what do we get?  I should add - this was mandatory, even for those of us on leave.  Two hours - well, more like ninety seven minutes - with a pleasant-enough-seeming woman from the Ombudsman's office, who told us about various forms of emotional intelligence; reminded us about Perspective, and the fact that not all of us might have the same perspectives (gosh! never thought of that!); shared - that's the chart that you see in the left of my pic - a color-coded feeling wheel; and then asked us to sort pictures - a variety of super-kitsch stock pictures - with the other people at our tables so that they would represent our vision for what we wanted from the department.  Only I imagine other tables were just like mine - we went "yuk" or "hmm, I like that," very fast, and then carried on bitching about the university administration, as one does.  The point, of course, wasn't our Vision itself, but to get us focused on a task.  A group howl might have been more effective.

We were told that we didn't have to absorb everything that we were being told: we could "sip the nectar."

And there's another one in six weeks.  It felt like punishment - it had, after all, been centrally mandated - though of course what the punishment was for was never elucidated.