Although I would not want to discourage you from trying the glass working, I would offer an alternate suggestion. If you are truely not interested in doing, I think you would get more out of watching a chatty GOOD lampworker make beads while talking about what she is doing. I have taken naive people through making a begining furnace work piece and I have taken interested observers step-by-step through my making a piece, the difference being that in the first case, I told them what they would be doing, they did it, and I corrected mistakes, so the next step would work, and in the latter we focused on the process, without the mistakes. I know roughly how to make beads and I think back to my stained glass classes where I was learning and remember how making the cutter work and the foil work, etc., I didn't get very far in appreciating what made a good stained glass window. I don't think I would get much out of a couple of lessons in beadmaking as far as appreciating what going into making them. (I appreciate them now because I work much larger.) I think, if you take a class with the big torches, you will find there is so much technical detail that you will either have to absorb or ignore, you will not gain a lot. If you take the class, take it on the Hot Heads. Buy a pair of ear protectors, the kind that go inside the ear for courtesy's sake, if you can stand them. With my ears, I have used them and when not available, rolled up cones of paper napkin and stuffed them in my ears.
-- Mike Firth Hot Glass Bits Furnace Working Website