An interesting position

I went to a lecture on leadership yesterday and I left feeling ill.

The first question the lecturer asked us was if the lecture was being recorded. We told her no.

She asked us what we were studying and we told her we were arts students. She implied that artists were notoriously bad at planning for the future. She spoke about money and the necessity of investing in shares and a managed fund so that if life problems arose, one could comfortably walk away.

"No problem is too big that you can't walk away from it," she said.

She said that many of us would get divorced if we got married, and that she could tell just by looking at us. She said that when that happened, it was a good idea to have money in the bank so we could just "walk away". She said that if we got divorced, to make sure it was worth our while financially; that it was one way of getting rich; and that signing a prenuptial agreement was a must.

She implied that because women were relational and "listen to people", they made better managers than men, but fortunately, some men were seeing the light and were learning how to "listen to people" and manage like women.

She spoke about how she had been divorced multiple times, about her numerous trips to financial advisers, the fact that her son had been diagnosed with a terminal illness but was now in long-term remission and was successful working as a labourer, the fact that every man she married had been an introvert. I could hear all the bitter undercurrents.

She did talk about leadership. However, she spoke about everything else for so much of it. I felt so distressed by having to sit through all of that. I felt as though she'd forcibly grabbed me by the shoulders and vomited on me, spewing her bitterness and angst. As a lecturer, she had everyone's attention and I felt she had really abused her power.