The Dreaded Question

I hate the first day of any sort of small class, discussion, or meeting of a group. There is always that beginning, "Let's get to know each other," time. Personally, I always hate this part of class because whoever is in charge feels the need to ask that question. You know the one. It's differs from class to class, for film classes it was always "What is your favorite movie?" For Art History, "Who is your favorite artist?" Once a creative TA asked, "If you could be any cartoon character, who would you be?" I hate these types of questions. They might as well say, "Sum up your entire existence in a one short and concise sentence."

Last night I had my first wine class and the instructor asked us to say our name and what we expected to learn from his class. That's the worst one of all the first day questions. "What do I expect from your class? I expect to get buzzed off of expensive wine and learn a few fancy words so I can impress my friends and family at dinner parties. That's what I expect to get from your class." I felt that this was probably not the best way to represent myself to a roomful of strangers. Everyone took his or her turn and nice insightful things. As it got closer and closer to me, my palms started to sweat, my mouth went dry, and my heart began to race. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to say, how I ultimately wanted to be judged. It was my turn and everyone was looking at me, "I'm Shelly and I would really like to broaden my horizons as far as wine is concerned. I would like to taste a variety of wines so I can get out of the rut of drinking Shiraz all the time." At least that's what I think I said, but to me it sounded like "Mwagh, chwow, scieop." Let's hope for the former.