
Fascinating Women
Here is where fascinating women get comfortable. Chatting with Mark they reveal their journey, both the highs and lows, the events that have shaped them. These women share their values, their insights, their dreams, and accomplishments.
Fascinating Women
Jane Duncan -Dancer - Transitions -Educator -Independance
Jane Duncan, a 67-year-old dancer and educator, shares insights on her life and careers. She always knew she was a dancer, starting when she was 11. For her, dance was a healing and power source. While she cherished it, always seeing herself as a dancer, she changed careers, got degrees and flourished. She shares her mentors and how they changed her life. She now volunteers with an organization that accredits fire organizations. All her life lessons she lays out.
Jane Duncan: Dancer, Educator, Contributor
As is the case for most dancers, we have a knowing from an early age that we are dancers. The blessing with that knowing, is that we always know who we are no matter who old, fat, or infirm we may become. I stopped trying to make my living as a dancer in my mid to late twenties but since then, I have danced on the edges of my life. In addition to dance as a primary definer, so is education. I have been an educator of adults since I was barely an adult myself beginning as a dance educator at Mount Royal College. At that time one of my students said to me, “Jane, what you are is an educator.” I was mortally offended! I thought, “I am a dancer!!” The student was right, though. I am also an educator. This understanding culminated in earning a doctorate in adult education and higher education leadership and lead me from teaching in post-secondary to administering education in emergency services to fulfill the need for a new challenge. This experience resulted in an invitation to be appointed as a volunteer for an emergency services accreditation body. I have been contributing to that cause beginning in 2008. I have been given many gifts and giving back is what I am called to do.
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Music you're listening to fascinating women with Mark Laurie. And now, Mark Laurie,
Mark Laurie:Hello everyone, and welcome back to fascinating women today. I've got Jane Duncan, and she has got an interesting life that she's led. So we're gonna have some pretty good time with stuff from Jane. So welcome Jane,
Jane Duncan:thank you, Mark.
Mark Laurie:So it's been a while that you've been kicking around this whole world.
Jane Duncan:Yeah, I turned 67 last Sunday. Yeah, yeah, wow. So all that time, what would be a highlight of what you've done? You look back on the flow of things you've done, and what thing leaps out is the one that you most cherished? Well, you know, that's an interesting question. My life has been charmed in so many ways. It's like I get an idea in my head and it happens. And so the first idea I had in my head was, it's gonna sound flaky, right where I was born. Okay? I knew I was a dancer before I was born, right? And so my parents first host was far from here, I don't think, really, yeah, okay. And then we moved up to Fort St John when I was six months old. But I always knew. I just knew. And of course, I had never seen ballet. I had never seen dance. I had no idea what a dance class was like, but I always knew, and so I begged my my mother, for Can I have classes? Can I have classes I was until I was 11, which is late, right for a dancer, yeah, but it's like, you know, when a baby's ready to walk, he just walks, yep. And so it was so that has been a through line in my life. I stopped trying to make my way in the world solely as professional method in my probably mid to late 20s. You're just always poor, yeah, and but it it never leaves once your answer, that identity always remains with you, no matter how old, how infirm, or how fat, all of those things are factors of being answered right, and how it manifested after I stopped performing was was kind of interesting. So I performed on the edges of my life from the time I was 28 and there was a woman that I had danced with in the young Canadians, which we danced at stampede, right? And she was doing her Masters in dance, I think it was at a University of Arizona, and she was looking for, she had some students at the university, but she wanted some real dancers to come and help. And it was improvisational performance. And I go, Betty, I don't like to improvise. And she goes, Jane, do you drive? I go, yes, badly. She says, Well, if you can drive, you can do this. And she's, I really like to have some real dancers. So I did, and it was fabulous. And something I never knew about improvisation, which I'm sure must be true musicians as well, you improvise within a structure, yeah, but one of the structures, and this changed the course of my life, was lady came up with this idea about reading people's faces. So we beat people's faces with our hands. So the first time we did this, we're in the studio, but already been rehearsing for several hours, so you could smell rehearsal on we I mean, we've been sweating, yeah. And so first she said, Dana, I want you to read Jane's face. So we sat on the ground, cross legged, and she read my face. And they just okay. She called times, I want you to dance it. So what promote Mark was so ugly, so awful, off was like she had connected with all the broken bits. I didn't even know that. I really wasn't willing to admit just by reading the face, yeah. Well, you can, yeah, you can go right inside. And then, then he called time and said, Jane, I want you to read Dana's face. And I go, I don't want to. I don't want to Well, anybody who's been in a dance studio knows is not a democratic place. So I read Dana's face, and the strangest thing happened. So this time, we're standing up, right? And so Dana's here, right? And I'm here. And I when she was reading my face, I could smell the sweat on her hands, right? Because it wasn't a bad smell. Was just a person smell, so I'm reading her face, and I kept thinking to myself, I can't smell her hands, I can't smell her hands. So it was like I got inside her Oh, wow. And I was thinking I should be able to smell but I was, I'm not dating, right, right? Yeah. And then, so then I danced to her face, and it was equally ugly. But this became a structure that we just had information. We'd ask the volunteers and would read their faces, and we'd perform them. And was structured so we were three dancers, right, and we were all the students had left, just the dancers left. Company. And so our structure was, there was a mark, two marks on the stage, right? And so you just chose a mark. You didn't know what music was going to play. You didn't know how long you were going to dance for. It's just a light would come up on you. When the light came up, you're cute to dance. And so in this so in this case, let's say it was Dana and me dancing right, and so light comes up on me. I danced the face. And I mean, the dark always called when you did this, so you had to try and look for the light right. Didn't want to do what we did, people out. And so I would dance my face. The light would go down. That's my cue to stop, so I stop, and then I'm just watching Dana, so I can't remember who I said, But Dana or Kim. And so Dana would dance her face, and the light would go down, and Kim, in the meantime, is in the wings, so she's watching all of this, right? And then when the light went down on Dana, that was Kim's cue to come in, and she would dance an amalgamation of both faces, really, and then when we were ready, and we weren't necessarily synchronized, but when we would join. And what was so cool mark is you got three women, and we were dancing in complete Unison steps we had never danced before. Often in improvisation, there are licks that are prepared in advance. We had none of that, and so it was. So it was like we were all connected. And so that was really a very cool experience. But what was very uncool is that the dance was ephemeral. I mean, was videotapes. There are some records of it, all this stuff, a number of times, but the faces remained. I can still see one of the faces I danced, and that was in my 40s. So that's what, 27 years ago. So they, it's like they don't go away. But how that morphed later? So I was doing this gig, and the strangest thing happened, I didn't want to do it the for the first time in my life, I thought, you know, I don't want to do this, right? And so I told the director of the company, it's going to be my last show for you when she was so late, she never forgave me. It's like that version of the dancer fell away and then a different version was reborn. So I'm sitting on my living room floor, cross legged, meditating. And it's like I felt like I was like a cat toy who was being battered around. I was being physically moved. And I thought, well, this is odd. So I was teaching faculty development at the time that we used to these old VHS cameras because we used to train faculty when they were doing micro teaching practice, right so they could see feedback on how they're teaching. So I borrowed one. I said, can I borrow one? They go, Sure. So I have a tripod old VHS camera set up in my living room, and it's over a period of several months. So what, I observed is that is like I was trying to get up off the ground, and I couldn't, and then one day I could, and I had like little dear faune lakes, right, like this, right? And then eventually what happened, which is another flaky bit, is I began to feel like I was dancing. I'm not a religious person, right, but like with real, like God energy, before we attached all the crap that we attached to that, right? And then somehow I got in my head thinking about faces, how you can enter somebody really easily. Exiting is impossible. And I got it in my mind that, you know, I think I can move some of the nastiness, sickness right in people. So I began to experiment, which I'm sure is against all sorts of because I was doing this without permission, right, right, but um, and so I was traveling a lot, and my daughter would call me, so my daughter would be in university, so both of us had been plagued at the same age as she with UTIs infections, which are awful if you've ever heard one. And she would call me, I've been on the road. Come on. Can you dance with me? I've got a bladder infection coming on. I said, Okay, let me get to the hotel room. So I kick off my three inch shields, because that's how I traveled, and I was stupid. 40. And so I can just close my eyes, and I can just plop inside her, like I can plop inside anybody. Just wow. Well, I know I'll talk about him, basically. And then I would just dance, and it would fix her bladder infections. Wow. I said, you have to be sure you go to the doctor, because I don't know. I mean, yeah, oh, I'm doing but she would, but she called me many times. And then there was one time I was doing this leadership retreat, and one week every season in the redwoods. I'm not an outdoorsy person, but it sounds like nice. So there was one retreat where this, one of the we were called tribe mates, said, and she was really upset that her good friend had been accused, wrongly accused, of break.
Unknown:And so I said, Do you want me to dance for him? And she said, Yes. So I got home, and I did, what I saw was horrible. It was so you have to, you're not connected to these people. You just know, okay, I didn't even know this guy, right? Okay. But she told Tony's name, and I just there you go, okay? And what I saw was rape, wow. And I thought, shit, I can't tell her that himself, not a credible source. So that's been a really interesting evolution, and I don't do it anymore. And one of the reasons I don't do it anymore is because, well, one, I need to protect myself, because I was like hangovers from the face I still whoever asked for and it would remain right. So I went to a friend who's even more flaky than I am. She said, Well, you need, it's like protection, right? Protection. So I would invoke this protection. It's kind of like having sex with a condom. You know? It's awful. But also, it's just, I'm dancing in places I don't know if I should be dancing, right, right? I was talking to a friend. She was a coach, actually. I said, this feels like I'm dancing with the devil. She goes, Well, sounds like you probably are. So I stopped. I could still do it, but I don't. So now I'm substantially less interesting. We had a client, and she had gone through a near death experience, and kind of come back. And she said, from that experience, you can see people's auras, and they could tell what kind of mood you're in, you know where you're at, how good you are, and so on. And on the surface, it sounds great, you can do this thing. And she goes, Yeah, but there's a lot of dark people. And so she wound up in a line for a bank deposit thing, and the person in front of you, it was this black, you couldn't see through it, this dark thing. And it was a murder cloud, like they're, you know, taking lives in a way that was just, you could just radiate this thing. And she said, like, having a meltdown, because no one else, it's kind of like nice waving at people, and just a really good character, and she can see the blackness, and she's just, like, terrifying. So, you know, gotta be careful what gifts you get. Everybody has a story, and we almost never know what that story is, right? Yeah?
Mark Laurie:So at 11, you decide to become a dancer. But, like, what kind of brought you together? From that was there's together to that, yeah? Like, when you're so you're when you're eight or 10, did you discover that's like, that's my vision of my future, how that evolved? Just knew it was gonna be a thing, yeah.
Jane Duncan:And so we moved to Calgary when I was six, because I don't think we were in Fort St John. I don't know much of that, and it was really small town in those days. I have no idea if there was dance classes. Probably if there were, you wouldn't want to go to them, because, like, Debbie school the dance Yeah. So it's I just always knew when I just kept begging her and begging her, begging her. And so finally she reneged, and she looked in the phone book, we had phone books, and she found the Russian school of ballet. Madam chairman took she was a character. Oh, is she a character? So she was teach, sitting in a chair in full second position, like this, right? With a yard stick here, which he was taking gentle feedback, right? Bright red mouth a cigarette. Always had the notion she could smoke and Dennis and a bottle of Vermouth down here. I loved her, and she was the first person who said, I think you should go to Bab Center, which School of Finance, ability to study, so you go for six weeks in the summer. And she said, You can't stay in residence, because it will be a two What does she say? She implied it would be. Healthy experience. So we camped six weeks tunnel mountain, the coldest summer on record. The bears are down because it's too Yeah, and that's the last time I count, but that's what I learned, to drink the rules she always had by her ankle. We got there, there were a few of us students, and there were cases and cases and cases and cases of Vermouth right underneath her bed. And Dimitri, her son, was there, and his 17 year old girlfriend, they're both dancers, and she was from Finland, Elena. She's stunning. So Elena liked to drink brown cows. So that's what I drink, too. It's, it's interesting, like we've, we've cleaned up that are lacked with smoking, where you can smoke and drinking all these different kinds of things. I think in some ways, we've lost interesting characters.
Mark Laurie:Maybe along the way there's, there's some guys that you have characters of what they kind of were in the past, and there's a whole thing happening, and everyone's all clean and marginalized. Yeah, I remember when they did that. We used to have the royal American show for the stampede, and they do the midway. I remember, okay, and so these are all sketchy guys, tattoos, beards. Yeah, they look at them. And I used to be a carny for summertime in time, and so you wouldn't have fit in. I don't think, well back then, I was probably but, but then they shifted. They decided to get the this, this clean cut, and was all like high school, high school, university, first year, kind of kids? Yeah, the Conklin shows, yeah, yep. And they came into it, and the show was much cleaner and much safer, or felt safer. I probably wasn't even safer than was before to it, but it just lost character. The carnies, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, the like from the movies, yeah, characters. A friend of mine is connect with them. And so one summer, I was with a traveling, small circus thing. We're setting things up. And it was an interesting I was probably like 16 at the time, and 1516 so it was a whole different thing. It was, it was interesting. Do you have any quotes that you're the guide you that that sort of you've treasured?
Jane Duncan:Oh, um, well, I just finished a book yesterday, and it's called the capital of dreams, okay, as written by Heather O'Neill. I really like Heather O'Neil. She's a Canadian writer out of Montreal. Most of her books are like, kind of gritty, kind of quirky, right? And the last line of this book is something like this, war can make women free. And so what I find interesting about that, so he had been, it was actually a fairy tale Rose was, and it was this sort of fake European
Mark Laurie:Those are wild. What? How have your dreams country. And but the way that I interpreted this was, it breaks the shackles of patriarchy, right? So there's chaos, yeah, chaos. And so in chaos, there can be freedom, because the conventions are gone. Yeah, the shackles are gone. So that was the best part of the book line. changed from your 20s, 40s?
Jane Duncan:Oh, so as I mentioned that, so after I stopped dancing full time, I danced around the edges of my life and so, well, this is a little bit of a known sequitur. So we were little, my mother, who is my hero, left my father in 64 Okay, 1964 two kids, six and gymnast two. We come back to Calgary, where her family was, and she had a childcare because she had to go get a job. And we was Uncle Bert and Auntie Cathy. And they're two girls, and Auntie Cathy must have been a proponent of like house and gardens magazine, was in her kitchen there were these two lines of black electricians tape, right? So it was and its ceiling was painted Bucha black, so if you looked up, you could see your reflection. And so we were sitting at the dinner table with Uncle Bert, whom I did not have a good relationship with. And I actually don't think he wanted this there, really. And I don't blame him, really. He said to me, Jeannie, if you don't want to type, you will never get a job. And I looked up and saw myself in the glassy, black ceiling, and I said to myself, Mm, hmm. Wise move. It was actually uncle Burt. I will never be anybody secretary, and that's as very elitist here, up here and now, because they're really important people, lots of jobs I've subsequently had, but I absolutely don't have a skill set. Well, I wasn't going to get get it, but it's a skill set that I valued, that was my thought, and so that was always an overarching theme, is I need to be successful. I was lucky in lots of ways. I mean, I was born with a body that could dance, and you've got to be reasonably pretty to dance, right? So that was, I think, one for me too, but I was also smart, and so I'm in high school, so my community is in the studio, so I don't fit into any of the cliques in high school. I'm kind of dirty and I'm smart. Those things aren't popular, so I think, Okay, I got to get out of here. So I just finished, finished in two years. That's my mother's proudest accomplishment. I've done so many other things in my world, but that's the thing my mother is most proud of, because she only finished grade 10. So what she can really relate to? Yeah, and then when I stopped dancing, I went to design school, became a designer for a theater and the alternative clothing market, and then when my daughter was born, I stayed home for a couple of years and then went back to school to get my master's. I just always knew I wanted more education. I was an intellectual slut. I used to love learning stuff, and none of my degrees are in the same field, but I got a master's in communication and was hired almost immediately to teach at Sage, right? I had done a cold call, and she says, I'll put your resume on file, but I've got nothing. And then she calls, Friday afternoon, at five o'clock, Oprah Winfrey is on television. I'm having my first class of bond. My daughter is playing in the corner, right? And she says, Can you start on Monday? And I go, Sure. What do you need me to teach? She says, job search for, I can't remember what group and technical writing for journalists. I go, Sure. So I didn't know what technical writing was, why journalists would need to be able to do it, right? So I called up some friends. Oh, I've got a nephew. So okay, so I spent all Sunday with him, and I was like, one step hit, but the thread there is teaching and learning, and I'll never forget I was teaching about royal when I was still a dancer, and this woman comes up to me. Her name was Pauline. She was a prof at the university. She taught French, and she said to me, Jane, I don't know if you know this, but what you are is a teacher. Well, I was mortified. Inside voice, two very clever with your inside voices, good time. It doesn't work as well older, but yeah. But she was right. So it's like there was those two themes, so dance and movement and teaching learning. And so I eventually went back and got a doctorate in adult education and higher education leadership, specifically focusing on faculty development, which is helping teachers teach better, right? And I was good at it, and then I got bored with it because I was doing it for so long, right? And so I was trying to move ahead at sake, but the VP academic at the time really liked me, and he really liked me in my niche, because I was good at it. I mean, yeah. So then that took me on a different journey that took me into, well, I was looking for new challenges, right? It sounds kind of what's the word cliche I was and so there was a brand new position at the fire department, Dean of training. So I applied, and there were, like, three or four interviews, and was out to a training ground, as it looks for salon, and I got the job, and for the first six months, it was fabulous, and then the remaining time, so I was there, total of four years and three weeks was harder, but it got me into emergency services, and that's a whole different culture, and got me involved with the Pro board and the Committee on Accreditation. So that's what causes me to travel so much. And so it's looking at, can fire organizations reliably and validly test to the National Fire Protection Association standards? Because in the mid 70s, I mean, in. The states they were noticing, I mean, the line of duty deaths for firefighters was way too high, right? And there was insufficient training, and there were no standards to which to train. And so a standards organization was created. And so this work with the COA media and accreditation is important, the more organizations, entities, agencies, that can become accredited so that they can certify to the standards that are well, the safer emergency services people are and their communities. And so I did that for five years, and then when I moved to stars after I left fire, so went from fire to the stars, I it was too much. And so when I retired from stars in july 2020, they called me again and said, Listen, would you come back? Because most of the people in on the committee are fire people, right? And because I've got emergency services experience, although not an emergency responder, but I've got the education piece, and the work of the committee is integrally educational in nature. It's about testing. And testing, excuse me, is really the most ethically fraught bit of education in general. Is what I try to say. People would come up and they'd argue over one mark, one mark, that wouldn't make a hill of difference in their overall grade, right? But it was the principle, and I respected that, because I would have been one of those die on every hill. Yes, die on every hill.
Mark Laurie:Yep, that's wild. Yeah, now you're volunteering there. Now, aren't you?
Jane Duncan:Yeah, it's a volunteer gigs, everybody on their volunteers, right? Although some, well, some people are still employed, like I was when I was with with fire. And so you need to get permission from your organization, because you need time. What is a lot of work? Yeah? And you have to travel. And so the people who are working their company, organization, pace their time right, as long as it's not a weekend, yeah? But for people like me, and there are a few of me who are just pure volunteer, it is pure volunteer. So perhaps said the last meeting, which was just two weeks ago, we can have, he says, I know you're essentially working for airfare and food. Just true, my partner Andy says to me, Jane, the least I could do was cover your wine. But they don't.
Mark Laurie:That's well. So who inspires you? You're kind of an inspiring person, but who inspires you?
Jane Duncan:You kind of asked me this question we did the shoot two weeks. I've been pondering upon it since then. So at the time, I said, Martha Graham. And so for those of you who don't know, Martha Graham is an icon, really, and one of the pioneers of early modern dance, and that's I absolutely became, became a Graham dancer, not with the Graham Company, but a company in here. And so, yeah, I was, wasn't untrue what I said, but I think more than just the fact that she was this iconic pioneer, and in my opinion, her work stands up much better than other pioneers around that same period of time. And I can't think of the name right now, but my daughter and I, just when we were in New York in 2019 they saw the old modern piece and an old Balanchine. So Balanchine was considered the father of American Ballet. So it was one that was classical ballet and one that was modern. But what was really interesting was the classical ballet stood up way better than the modern the modern piece, to my eyes, looked derivative, even though it wasn't derivative, it wasn't the original stuff, right? But it was just not interesting. And Graham, Graham's form, to me, stands the test of time better. But as I thought about this question, more and more, I think what it was is it's about strong, independent women. And earlier on in our conversation, I mentioned that my mother was was my hero, and so my mother is presently 94 Wow, and she is as charming as she walks around the house and she's singing. She's got a great voice, and she remembers nothing, but she's lovely. But so she married this she was a good looking woman. She still is. She married a good looking man, and so they're in a small town, right? I interviewed my mom the first time summer of COVID over computer, right? And I was very surprised at how Frank she was with sharing some of her stories with me. But dad was a scamp and a scoundrel and so and a good looking guy, well, actually, they weren't affluent blue collar, for sure, but he was smart and he. Had money, and so he pretty much had his pick up the town, and he was rarely home. And my mother, who is an insecure woman, feels terrible about the fact that she's only got a grade 10 education, she didn't have a driver's license, didn't have a job, and she's got two kids, and she up and leaves. She just leaves, and subsequent divorces him. And I said, Mom, so 1964 we don't do this, right? Yeah, especially when you're insecure and don't you feel badly about you feel bad about your vacation. And she said to me, and this is almost a quote, Jane, it was better to have no husband than a bad husband. And so that was the most courageous thing I've seen a woman do,
Mark Laurie:especially in i64 I guess I think a lot of people can't really TV doesn't do it justice the type of especially in Alberta, in those days, like it's a it was not an enlightened time for those kind of things.
Jane Duncan:And yeah, so strong women, and my first role model, that was indeed my mother, although she that was the most courageous thing she'd ever did and she didn't do a lot. Use all up. Use all her courage up. Well, that was how it seemed. My daughter was sitting on my living room maybe 18 months ago, and she says to me, Mother, have you always been formidable? Grandma says you have. So she's talking about my mother, right, right? And I laughed, because I never thought of myself as formidable. I said, You think I'm formidable? Oh yes, Grandma says, You've always been so I think I intimidated my mother when I was I was school smart school was easy for me, right? And it was really hard for her, so I think that made her feel more inferior than she already felt, and I probably enjoyed it. There's a movement or a thought process these days that you don't need advanced education coming up is that you've educated a lot? Is that a valid thing that people can kind of still make make a financial good way by not hitting the operational lens of knowledge? So I think that our world needs all sorts of skill sets. And there's many of those skill sets you don't learn at the university. So I think there has always been a place, although our society has always valued a University of Education over more, over a technical education or a college education, which is unfair. I remember I was working at site, which, of course, is a technical college, and one of my colleagues, she said to me, I don't know how conversation started, but she said, the reason why I love to work here is because we change people's lives. And you do we did, yeah, because, you know, we, they produce, you know, mill rates and automotive technicians and and other people do them. I think they can grant degrees as well now, but I think there's place in the world for all of that. And you can probably make more money as a trades person than you can as a university professor. I don't know, but I can't imagine it.
Mark Laurie:Yeah, it's, it's a funny, misplaced world in some, some ways. I, I was photographing one of the stars from Mash years ago, yeah, and his. It was Leonard. I think he was the one that played the straight arrow, a nuisance. Okay, so anyways, he was one of the one of the is coming to me a bit. And his daughter, at the time, had just dumped a friend because her dad she discovered was a plumber and not someone's celebrity, right? And he just went full nine on her, like, no, no, she grounded her and all sorts of stuff. He says, No. He says, actually, in the role of society, you want a plumber beside you before you want an actor? That's very true. His viewpoint is, yeah, we, you know, there's a mechanism that makes us seem important. We're not. We can't save and it was kind of an intriguing thing. And that's you can, you can go a long way with with some some base, able to pile of money. We need doctors and we need plumbers. Yeah, we need, we need it all. Yeah, the full round kind of thing for it makes, it makes quite a bit of a difference for it. Do people understand you? Do you feel understood? Like, do you feel that you're, you're kind of the way, your way you move through life? People go, I get her, like, What the hell is she doing? No, I don't think I give a shit. Yeah. Always like not give a shite or is it an age thing,
Jane Duncan:Ok because that's my attitude in the photo shoot.
Mark Laurie:It comes across quite well.
Jane Duncan:I think that that that freedom is. Uh, amplifies for me as amplified over time and over age, um, where what people think of me matters less. But that doesn't mean when I go out, for example, on a Site Visit Committee, that I don't get really nervous because I I want to be I want to provide excellent service, right? Not just good, not just good enough, but excellent. And so I'm always nervous, and what if I'm doing a conference presentation? I'm always nervous, because I I need to be really good, yeah, and if I'm not really good, I'm very disappointed, very disappointed in myself. And so in some regards, it's what people think of me still remains. But in general,
Mark Laurie:I think what you explain is different. There's a thing where, where people are controlled by how other people think of you, the society face, if you will. Okay, that's different than not caring, like I don't give a shit, means I don't give a shit what you think of me. I'm gonna walk my own walk when I'm doing my thing. Though it's very important, I care about what I do, which is what you do. So there's a difference between not caring what your opinion is, but caring deeply with what you chose, choose to do, which is how to give a presentation. I've also found when I talked to having successful people, the ones who are still nervous about doing what presenting, do whatever they're chosen to do, they're the ones that still the most successful, because the being scared means and nervous means that you really want to do a good job, and you start checking all the boxes like you don't let anything slide. You don't go that's good enough. It's like, no, it's got to be better than than what it was last time. That makes sense.
Jane Duncan:Yeah, it does. It does. And what you described there is actually more accurate portrayal of what I was trying to describe. Yeah. So yeah, and I think you're absolutely right. When people stop, remember, I can't remember who it was, but somebody said, Yeah, I don't get nervous before I teach anymore. And I thought, Oh, that's a shame, yeah, because that means they are as prepared. They don't deliver as good a product, and they've lost their mojo.
Mark Laurie:Yeah, they don't really care. Like, this is, you know, I'll get the stuff done. It's old hat, and you can seem just go through the motions and they don't give there's no updating. I said my photography industry, where people go, and I've got this master income, you know, I've been doing this for 45 years now, and I'm still struggling to stay on top of the heap. But there's, you know, it changes a pretty regular basis. And that's, I think, true with all any aspect of life.
Jane Duncan:I think so too. With one exception, I was talking to my friend. He's a philosopher, right? And so if you look at, you know, disciplines like even history, you wouldn't think history would change, because they're telling the stories, the old stories, right? But it's how we see the old stories, right? Changes, yeah. And I said, so I really see this, you know, evolution and all these disciplines. Do you see that in philosophy? He goes, No, no, it hasn't changed. Oh, that can't be good.
Mark Laurie:I did some time in philosophy, and there's one of my favorite things, prison. Yes, I kind of loved it. But one of the parts that really got me amused the most was there's a I can't remember the term of it is, but what it is is, oh, we've discovered unsolvable problem. We're great for even thinking of this unsolvable problem. We don't have to solve it. We have to aware that we pointed out an unsolvable that had such a scapegoat like you just really scerted around the issue. Spend some time and learn it. I do think you're a result of nurture or nature. Like did you the stuff that you do, the values you hold, the steel in your spine, so to speak, is that, is that from what you came out of the womb with and found yourself? Or is that something that something that your environment created for you or helped create?
Jane Duncan:I think it's a little bit of both. Mark. When I was doing faculty development, the exercise that I would often do is I have the new teachers stand up and say, Okay, we're gonna form a human continuum, which it's a lie. So those of you who think that teachers are made, you stand over here. And those of you who think that teachers are born, you stand over here. And so we'd have a bunch of people in different places, and I go, Well, for those of you over there and in the Born category, that means I don't need a job. So that's not entirely true, but I do think that people are born with certain proclivities, aptitudes and hogmities, and then there is education and and influence. And so, as I mentioned earlier, I mean, God gave me a really successful package, right? Good brain, good body, good face and. Good opportunities, right? So that's also super important, but I I learned a lot, and so I'm thinking about nurture. Go back to Uncle Bert. I think that one of the reasons that I wanted to be a strong, independent woman was because I didn't want to be like the women he was describing.
Mark Laurie:It's interesting how a random phrase, a random encounter like that, resonates and changes your life, like he makes. I had that with my photography at different points, and you look at this is like a it's like a low rent comment, like it's a throwaway. He said it. He had no value to it. He probably didn't even that's a piece of knowledge I passed on to it. Like none of that kind of happened. But for you, it was this click into place, like suddenly there's a whole thing of this is going to change my course of my life
Jane Duncan:now, because even in those days, girls, teachers or admin secretaries was the big thing nursing too. Yeah, yeah, which are traditionally female roles, but, and then it turned out to be a teacher.
Mark Laurie:Teaching is fun. There's that old phrase. I don't know who came up with it, like, if those who can't do teach, and I found that is, that's wrong, because I found people who who can do often cannot teach like they're they're just not there. But usually people who teach, who are good teachers, usually know their stuff, because they can do it like they can
Jane Duncan:well and you don't learn anything as well as when you have to teach it, yeah, you've got to teach it. You've got to really dive in yeah,
Mark Laurie:I know I teach my lighting off. Somebody will ask me, that goes here. Light goes here. Why is that? Because that's where it goes. Why would it use like, why is that? And, and so, yeah, you have to really understand your stuff and to learn where craft the best. If you teach it, you really have to. You'd really know it like when you and that shows, I think, that you know when you can kind of impart it.
Jane Duncan:I agree and and it is a different, different skill set. Yeah, one of the things that I observe in industries over time, especially when I went to my first medical education conference, when I was nine stars early on, and it's a bunch of docs who really know how to doctor. But what surprised me is there's this whole mass of literature on how to teach adults that exists completely separate from medical education, it would seem. But they reinvented it, right? And it's like the best doctor then becomes the educator, the best firefighter then becomes the trainer, the best medic then becomes a clinical educator. But they need to be meta professionals, so they bring medicine with them, but they need to be trained as teachers to study how to teach, because there's information out there that can make so standing up at the front of a room and reading, right? Is the terrible,
Mark Laurie:oh, yeah, let me show you a film. Yeah? No, it, it is. And there's a dynamics and approach I do when I do presentations, I put so much into it taking a day to build a day to build a six minute presentation, because I want to get stuff across and how to make a point and tension spans.
Jane Duncan:And I rehearse too, yeah, if I'm going to do it, rehearse, yeah,
Mark Laurie:I've Yeah, I must admit I do too. You have to go through at least a couple times to get the rhythm, and it's important. That's how you the thing I think people get is you, if you read you're just reading it, but if you've gone through it, you've decided where you place emphasis. This is important. Yeah, and there's a you move those emphasis around. It's a whole different it is a phrase.
Jane Duncan:Well, when it's rare that people write to be read out loud. When they wrote the news, right? They create it so that it be read out loud. But most of the stuff that's written is written to be read silently. It's not written to be spoken. But, yeah, so funny. So how I'd make my teaching notes is I'd have some scant PowerPoint so it's hardly any, but just enough to provide a scaffold, right? And then I'd make all of my notes in person, and I've got terrible handwriting, and I would do them in code, so I think I'll always remember what the Red Shoe story is. Then I go back and says, do the Red Shoe story? I have no idea what the Red Shoe story that caught me off guard more than once. I turn my hand raise, equally bad, and
Mark Laurie:I get lost and I turn to Fran, because she's the one most usually has to decipher my handwriting for her to move sometimes forward in her stuff. But. More than me. I just try to write it and go, I'm done with it, but it's like, I'll remember that. And you think,
Jane Duncan:Oh no, I have no idea what I'm saying. I know, I know. I know it's a lot of scars.
Mark Laurie:Well, thank you so much for sharing so much of your life.
Jane Duncan:Well, thank you really. I'm honored that you asked. I went home to my partner and he says, Mark thinks I'm interesting. He rolled his eyes.
Mark Laurie:Yeah, people who know as well don't think we're nearly as interesting as we think we are. Too funny, sweet. Well, thank you again. And for everyone, this has been Jane and Mark chatting about Jane's life. Thanks everybody. Bye. Now,
introduction:this has been fascinating women with Mark Laurie join us on our website and subscribe@fascinatingwomen.ca subscribe@fascinatingwomen.ca fascinating women has been sponsored by inner spirit photography of Calgary, Alberta, and is produced in Calgary by Lee Ellis and my office media.