no accident that I graduated summa cum loudly

I have been assigned a mentor for the remainder of my training at the Chinese Gardens. She is knowledgeable, elegant and very judgmental. My fellow mentoreeeeeeee is a guy named Les who is going to have a hellava time getting certified.  Right now the process involves shadowing experienced guides in order to see their techniques, reading the manual, and the book published about the garden's poetry.


I, of course, did all of these my first month as a greeter in addition to:
two books on Chinese history including the Imperial Dynasties,
two on Chinese Architecture,
two on art motifs and symbols,
a rare book I forked out $60 for on the actual construction of Chinese Scholar Gardens,
books on Ming furniture as a metaphor for Mind life.
Today on Amazon I ordered a Max Weber anthropological treatment of Confucianism and Taoism in Ming China and a revisionist visit to the practice foot binding.

I have also at any opportunity grabbed people I know to give them tours of the garden and volunteered as a floating docent (no I was not high) at specific locations during free events. I think the volunteer coordinator knows I am working hard. I even gave a whole tour when a guide failed to show up for a private tour.

Meanwhile Les says he "hasn't actually had time to wrap his mind around the tour thing yet".  Les has missed two sessions and told me yesterday that he wants the theme of his tour not to be fact based but a multi sensory experience.  I was told that my challenge for assembling a tour would be staying within the 45 minute time frame and Les needed to get a tour together. I prefer the challenge I have been given.

Next week we get another horticultural tour - I carry Bailey's manual of cultivated plants with me in case the gardeners get something wrong which they did with a relative of citrus. And then a pronunciation session with a mandarin scholar. After that we have private sessions with our mentor doing our entire tour and present it to the other docents  for certification :  pass or fail. If this sounds like the chinese civil service system developed in Tang China it would be a fair analogy as there are so many  elements to the garden: cultural historical practical horticultural symbolic factual and metaphorical that  it takes much research and passion to do it justice and any tour will only be skimming the surface. Luckily for me I love the process of learning something inside and out, meeting people within a framework of expectations and sharing that passion. And in college I worked my ass off too and was good at setting goals for myself and meeting them.


I assume I will be certified and giving independent tours by early November.... just in time for the Camellias and Wintersweet to be blooming. My other challenge (personally) will be to avoid "the know it all thing" with my mentor as she has already made three not very important errors of fact and I do not intend to point that out to her.  Her penchant for correcting every little thing I say tickles that tendency in me and I have to continually resist it within. When I was an undergrad and graduate student too ..duh... I didn't hesitate to correct the teacher but now i see no value in it as they are small points anyway. Relationships are more important that correctness. And humility kinder to oneself and others than being right and letting all know. But geez. I AM writing this blog. ok I am not perfect. oy. Happy Sukkot Havarim.