Towards the end of September (again, I’m LATE), I went to a workshop in France. It was a final team meeting with most collaborators in the project that I’m part of. The project lead works in Montpellier, so that’s where we all went, people flying in from all over, Ghana, Burkina Faso, California, Minnesota, UK. Three days of discussing agricultural innovations and ecosystem services management in the Volta basin.
I had met several of the participants before, in the field, but I was still nervous. I would be the most junior participant in the meeting. In every sense of the word, age, experience, title. I mentioned this to my friend James a couple of days before going to Montpellier, about feeling inadequate and boring in the company of professors who’ve done everything and lived everywhere and published tons. Instead of reassuring me, however, James told me that it was probably true. Age and experience will, most of the time, mean having more interesting things to say. But this is also something that the old and experienced know. They’re not expecting me to be on their level. It is OK to be a bit boring, because my youth means I still have time to get more experience – and maybe I can contribute with a slightly different perspective. But not even that is necessary.
Embracing the fact that I’m still young and that I, in certain contexts, will be boring in relation to the other, more experienced people that I’m interacting with. That it’s perfectly fine to be boring. I have plenty of time to become interesting. I think that might have been the best advice I’ve gotten for a long time, and it definitely made me feel less awkward at the three day Montpellier workshop.
Katja Malmborg 