Blog #3 - Forget the Plan

            Before my first Chat Café, I had written out a thorough page of notes complete with different topics my group could cover, ideas for icebreakers, questions to ask in case the conversation fell flat – the list goes on.  I didn’t use any of it.  People in my group immediately started talking and asking each other not only the standard, get-to-know-you questions, but also questions about how everyone was doing with their new lives in the U.S.  Everyone was offering advice, telling personal anecdotes and asking me all sorts of questions, ranging from how they should approach pop-culture references in lecture to why the heck Americans like donuts so much.  It was easy to get caught up in this conversation and forget all about my plan.

            I still write out some “back-up plan” notes every week and I always bring a deck of cards with me, just in case.  But I don’t do this because it’s essential to keep the conversation going, I do to it ease my own anxieties and address my own “what ifs.”  Since attendance has been irregular to say the least, each Chat Café is strikingly different from the last.  There are many different personalities in my group and, of course, we talk about different things depending on who is there.  Having a plan in my back pocket makes me feel more comfortable with this uncertainty, but it’s actually pretty far removed from what it means to facilitate a conversation.  Facilitating is much more about reacting appropriately to what’s going on in that moment than it is about preparing a list of conversation topics.  It’s about knowing when to speak and when to listen.  It’s about knowing when to make fun of yourself to make everyone else feel more at home and when to be serious. 

            I think I am beginning to get the hang of the adapting aspect of facilitating, and not just in terms of the conversation itself.  I’m accepting that I’m probably never going to have a full Chat Café and that I just have to make the best of the time I have with the people who do choose to come.  A group trip to the Natural History Museum ended up being just me and one other girl wandering around and chatting about the exhibits.  And that’s okay.  It was actually really fun.  It hasn’t been easy for me to let go of “the plan” and my preconceived notion of how each meeting was going to go, but now that I’m starting to do that, I’m realizing how much better this experience can be for us if we do just that.