June 26th: Sitting in on the Boys' Club!

It's a really strange, intimidating, and yet exhilarating experience to sit around a table with a bunch of the key players in Vancouver's industry as not only the only female around the table, but also probably the only one still in their 20's.  Surreal would be the appropriate word for it!

There are a lot of people who I consider mentors in my career as a theatre administrator in Vancouver.  Or at the very least people who I would hope to consider mentors if only I could get  to spend even 10 minutes listening to them talk. And now imagine those people around a small board room table, and then imagine me with them.  I was more than just a little out of place.  Even so, it was bizarre to not feel completely out of my league.  

I was not that big fish in the little pond that just found it's way to the ocean.  Not at all.  I would say I was the tiny gold fish, who out grew it's fish bowl and then was dumped into the ocean.  It definitely felt that I skipped the pond part of the process.  Though the ocean seemed vast, I felt that I had some friends there that made me feel like I belonged.  I don't know if I convinced everyone that I belonged, but enough of them were convinced to at least keep me from being eaten alive.  

As weird as it was, it was pretty amazing sitting in on the Boys' Club Meeting.  I hope to sit in on more of the meetings.  Perhaps one day they will consider me one of their own!