A Community of Practice for Interpreting: the missing link

- " Is anyone going to the CIOL membership day tomorrow?" -  "Me!" This was a conversation I picked up on my phone as I was on my way to Borough market this morning. Students on the MA Conference Interpreting at London Met were chatting on their Facebook group and trying to figure out who intended to attend the event, who they could meet there.  I am sure this has happened to you too. You feel like attending a networking event for interpreters but you worry: who will be there? What if I don't know anyone there? How do I engage in conversations with professionals when I am only an interpreting student? However, find someone that comes with you and all fear then disappears. You can't wait to go, you know it will be fun and fruitful. You suddenly believe in yourself and are open to a new adventure. How do we transfer the safety of a 'friend' accompanying us to an event, to any opportunity that allows us to connect and engage in a landsca...

T ime has come to let go of secrets. Mine is simple: every year, at the same period, I feel stressed out and lost. Make no mistake, it always coincides with teaching a new cohort of interpreting students... More than 40 postgraduate interpreting students have entrusted me to bring them through a personal and professional journey  of learning and discovery. They have paid money and made sacrifices with the hope that their interpreting career can take off and allow them to earn a living, gain satisfaction and make progression. Every year, the same symptoms creep in about one week before the teaching starts; I feel I do not know anything. A spiral of thoughts and doubts bombard my confidence and I am reduced to a nervous wreck. I anticipate the joys, think about the students I interviewed, the work we will do together and the development of professional lives including mine. What is normally positive becomes paralysing. However hard I try, I cannot convince myself that it will...