You used to call me on my cell phone
New words: Sludgy, motion carries, ICCTA (ich da?)
On Tuesday night, I was sworn in as a Rock Valley College Trustee. I got to raise my right hand and repeat an oath read by the board attorney that presidents and United States Attorneys and Mayors swear. I assumed we would be swearing some RVC specific oath with maybe a reference to Arvee or the parking lot in winter or the Papa Johns, but no, this was *the* oath about the United States Constitution, and it was very cool and official and repeating it is not as easy as it looks on TV.
Perhaps the most surprising event of the evening for me was when I was nominated, without warning, for board secretary. I was voted secretary unanimously and began sweating profusely and then needed to assume my role RIGHT AWAY. With the help of the immediate past chair, I did 1 million roll call votes with only a few foibles. Like the oath, this is much harder than it looks on TV. However, I think it will be a good role for me, as it will help me stay engaged in the meeting and allow me to memorize everybody’s name and probably hear the roll call in my dreams. Just as I was getting the hang of it, we adjourned.
My new colleagues were warm and friendly toward me, which I sincerely appreciated, as I had not been that nervous sitting around a bunch of tables since grad school.
In the parking lot after the meeting, my family and I kvetched and marveled at all of the mystery of the world. When we look at RVC, we see a successful institution, but we rarely think about what makes it so successful. It’s run by people: people who have been doing this for a long time and people who just showed up tonight; people with recent deaths in their family and people with imminent deaths in their family; people with an entire calculator in their head and an entire legal system in their head and people with balls of cotton in their head (me).
In this season of my on boarding, I’ve had to purchase a burner phone so a personal phone number can be listed on the RVC website. This— along with Robert’s Rules— feels arcane. I was certainly not going to list my personal cell phone number on the world wide web, as I’ve got some real looney tunes haters in this community, but I needed to provide a way for constituents to call me. I’ve been wanting to get back to basics with a pay-as-you-go phone for a while, so I reveled in the opportunity to go to Meijers and pick out a Tracfone. These new Tracfones ain’t your mama’s Tracfones, let me tell you. Unlike my brick Tracfone of the early 2000s, these are sleek and connect to Wifi (sort of) and you can’t spend all of the money you earned working at the pool buying ringtones or thin plastic phone covers at the kiosk at the mall. The damn thing took me an hour to set up! Alas, nostalgia is the mold of the brain. Still, if you live in Community College District 511 and want to call me with your needs and desires as they relate to Rock Valley College, you can now do so.
Trust me, I’m your Trustee.