Break out rooms

Imagine you have turned up to your regular tower practice.  There are lots of people and not so many ropes.  In real life, you put up with this inconvenience and are thankful that your insignificant 6 bell tower can attract such enthusiasm, but in the virtual world you have the freedom to throw open the doors of another tower, another two should they be required.  Such luxury.  A rope for everyone, and if someone says “well I would like to ring on 10 tonight,” there is nothing to hold you back, other than the band’s competence. Ring on 6 or 8 or 10 or 12 if that is what you fancy.  Things that are not possible in the real world, are possible in the ringing room.  Come on up – grab a rope and if you end up on the tenor, don’t worry – it is no heavier than anything else and no box  will be required.

But how do you decide who goes to which tower? Who assigns the break-out rooms?  Often we are relative strangers – touching lives in this strange new virtual world.  We may be on any continent and in any time zone – sometimes you can only judge the time of day by the beverage being consumed – coffee? tea? wine? gin? What time  is it with you?  We do not know how good we are relative to the other ringers, so how should we split into balanced rooms?  Should it be by random assignment?  Alphabetical order?  Hair colour? Age? Who already knows who? (leaving a room of assorted Nobby No Mates).  How to decide?

Last week we were 18 one evening.  Other rooms were available but no-one quite knew how to split. I was being mischievous and suggested by gender (we were roughly balanced).  I detected a sharp intake of breath – ladies on their own?  Conducting for themselves?  How would that work? 

Someone suggested by ability, which I was straight on to.  Some of us may be less experienced, but that does not necessarily mean that we are less able.  Could we please change the term? It was agreed to split by “experience”, but it would have to be a self-declared experience, because no-one could rank the assorted ringers.  One room would be for those that wanted to ring advanced stuff and the other suitable for things up to Plain Bob Minor. We made our choice and jumped into the room that we felt best reflected our experience.  Of course I chose the baby room.  I would have loved to have had a crack at Cambridge Surprise major and Stedman triples and learnt from the more experienced ringers, but appreciated that if I declared myself “experienced” everyone would snigger and then, when I lost the plot, shake their heads sadly that I should be so presumptuous.

Guess who I found in the “less experienced” room.  Most of the ladies.  A young experienced man had generously volunteered to help out in the kindergarten and one other man had chosen the gentler option. But I do not think that the volunteer leader was needed because, like many things in life, the ladies had mostly modestly underestimated their ability. Probably a few of the men had over-estimated their ability. What should have been the room for plain bob and grandsire doubles with perhaps some PB Minor if we were feeling adventurous quickly became the room for Cambridge and Oxford and other exciting university cities. We rang mostly on 8 so that everyone had more rope time and if things went spectacularly wrong we stopped and tried something else, admitting that perhaps we had bitten off slightly more than we could chew and that was OK. There was another genuine “ learner” and myself sometimes fighting it out for the tenor/treble if things got too advanced, but we all mucked in together and had a fine time.

The interesting question is, why did so many of us move modestly to the “easy room”, when most of us (excluding the 2 novices) could manage very well on anything? Was it a desire to help out and support the less experienced?  Was it a reluctance to put ourselves forward as experienced in case we made a mistake and then were exposed as show-offs?  Was it a fear that the experienced might be Very Experienced Indeed and jump straight into something that required a detailed explanation because we had never heard of it?  Was it girlish modesty?  Was it that we feared if we declared ourselves “experienced”  it would be assumed that we called the bobs and sorted out the confused?

This confidence gap in men and women is a well-observed phenomenon. Women often feel that they don’t deserve their position and that they are not “good enough”. They worry more about being disliked, grabbing too much attention, outshining others. Men are not exempt from self doubt, but they tend not to let their doubts hold them back. A Hewlett Packard internal report found that men apply for a job/promotion when they meet 60% of the qualifications, whereas women only apply when they meet 100%. It is not ability that holds females back, but a lack of belief in their abilities. Whatever the reason the ladies hung back, it was a fortuitous joint decision and we had a very enjoyable time.

A few days later assorted folk met up again and self-declared their experience.  Cheekily, I asked to be allowed to see what it was like in the grown-ups room and generously they opened the door to me. We rang on  8 or 10 , rather than 6 or 8, but  in essence they were ringing the same sort of things as in the kindergarten.  The only difference was that I could greedily grab the treble for anything that required hunting or treble bobbing, so I was one happy novice.

I will stick to my less exalted position in future, but would urge all the ladies who want to, to declare themselves “more able” or “more experienced” and ring along with the big children. I would argue that women and girls need to take every opportunity that is available, even when we are unsure of whether we are competent enough. Confidence increases with experience, so even if we fall flat on our faces ( and sometimes we probably will), we must pick ourselves up and try again. At least in the ringing room we can blame technology, the cat, the doorbell or a trapped bird if things go pear-shaped. No-one will be any the wiser.