Back in February, I gave a TEDx Talk on Dracula and Multilingualism. The video was supposed to be uploaded to the internet in April, but the technical crew got behind. It happens to the best of us. I will not hold it against them.

Yours truly on the TEDx stage at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Five months later, in the middle of September, the videos finally got edited and uploaded. All the talks are interesting to me, even though I may not agree with everything being said. It’s about ideas worth spreading. Exploring new thoughts and concepts keeps you sharp.

Looking back on the experience, I can see I learned a lot while putting together my own talk, refining it, and learning it by heart. It was stressful at the time, but worth it.

The most important thing I learned was that I could not do it with my husband and children present. It was like the part of my brain that deals with them took over the part that handled the presentation and I could not recall anything.

It was during the rehearsals that everything was going fine until my husband and children stepped into the auditorium. I could not remember anything anymore, though I tried. I finally told them they would have to wait in the green room. And we knew that on the day of the actual presentation they would have to be out of sight.

Before I had children, I thought women without a career outside the home were simply not motivated enough or ambitious enough or, maybe, they just lacked professional skills. Now that I am a mother, I know that those of us who choose to stay home and focus on the children (1) have that choice and (2) want that choice.

It was fun to present a TEDx Talk, but it was even more fun to learn about myself and to have a memory to share with my children and husband after the fact. They drove me in and then they picked me up, after they had fun in Knoxville on their own. And now there’s a video they can watch of what they missed. It’s all good.

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