My work, in progress
I sometimes wonder how much of the world actually has any idea whatsoever as to what they’re doing.
You’d think a day spent almost entirely under confidential lock and key would be sort of thrilling; or, at least I would, and did when I woke up this morning. In keeping with the confidentiality agreement that I still haven’t actually signed yet (I wonder if they’ve forgotten about me, or simply think it unlikely that I will actually learn anything worth telling anyone?) I can only really say that a relatively significant something was being discussed by a relatively significant group of someones, while people like I watched. I can also say that I came out knowing more than I did before, caring less, and wondering why exactly I was there in the first place.
The point of the entire thing, as far as I can tell, was to give me an understanding of How Things Work; people study things, write them up, present their findings to a group of whoever-happens-to-show-up-or-send-staff. That group then asks questions, which are assiduously avoided in favour of restating things that the reports already mention, until at some point everyone decides they’ve had enough, smile, nod, and leave.
Their staff remain, locked away in a pretty room for another two and a half hours, in case one of us got the idea of mentioning this entire processes to someone before It Was Time. Trust me, the idea never crossed my mind.
Many other things did, though, as I sat there for five hours. The first half of it was spent taking notes, or trying to as a question-and-answer session turned into something of a round-table, bouncing back and forth without warning or identification of participants. A was only interested in one particular part of the report, so the rest was free to slide by my indifferent ears, casually summarized by my only slightly more interested pen in handwriting that I could sort of read, sometimes. Brief moments of furiously relevant notetaking aside, the first half of the session passed in a semi-diligent haze.
The second half began with the most impressive lunch I have ever seen offered to people-who-don’t-warrant-placards. They gave us smoked salmon, (fake) crab, roast beef and pastries that didn’t smell like they’d taste like cardboard. I suppose they were worried that one or two of the important people might stick around after the discussion, realise that they were being fed leftover tuna-on-white, and set the place on fire.
Sandwiches aside, though, I was then left with two and a half hours, and absolutely nothing to do. One can only read a chapter of a report so many times before it becomes a bit silly, and I wasn’t allowed a cell phone (dead anyway) or blackberry (don’t have one) in the room. I could have brought a laptop, if I’d been in the habit of lugging mine across the city each day only to leave it under my desk and then lug it back, but I’m not, so I didn’t. I couldn’t bring in other reports, I couldn’t do anything with the one I had here …
I did have a novel, but reading fantasy wasn’t exactly appealing when sitting in a government building surrounded by a dozen or so early-thirties professionals. Which left me my book-of-writing-in, a pen, four highlighters and nothing to take down.
With nothing more pressing coming to mind, I did the only thing a sensible person in my position could do: I started writing down the lyrics to every extraordinarily complicated song I could think of.
It’s amazing how much time passes, once you’ve listed the countries of the world (twice) and firmly established that we didn’t start any sort of fires.
Only at the end of it did I realise that I had become something truly phenomenal; a young professional-looking woman writing furiously and purposefully, in a room of many similar people doing much the same.
Which makes me wonder: how many of them actually had any idea what they were supposed to be writing about? And how many of those people were actually doing it? It’s entirely possible, being less than half way through my second week in a new job, that I was in fact the only person bewildered by my situation … but looking at me you wouldn’t have known that, and looking at everyone else, I certainly couldn’t tell.
Is everyone around me just playing the same game I am? Wandering around with their spines straight, shoulders back, easy smiles and purposeful attitudes, mentally cataloguing Things their Mothers Should See?
It’s sort of a terrifying thought.
Also terrifying is the fact that I’m working off of four hours of sleep (plus bus-dozing which really doesn’t count), and felt more alert at work than I had in days. Two hours sticking around the office after work had less to do with not wanting to walk home and more to do with vowing to figure out how the damned phone works (I can call Toronto without problems, can apparently phone Alaska or Florida or Dubai, but I have yet to figure out how to make the wretched thing dial local) before finally giving up before the security guards start wondering what I was up to.
Back at A’s, the day is starting to catch up with me … as is the fact that while this still doesn’t feel like home, I’m starting to feel a certain fondness for the horrible couch. Soup for dinner is probably not the most impressive thing I could have, but it does have the advantage of not having to be thought through, and saves me time for my last challenge of the day: baking a cake.
I can begin to conceive of how someone can survive without a cake pan. How the same person can live without a measuring cup, a baking-issue teaspoon, or a proper spatula starts to be beyond my grasp. Add to that only skim milk (admittedly my fault) and no cooking spray, and we have what has to be the strangest cake I’ve ever made since I was twelve and baking freestyle with Bridget on a Saturday afternoon. Two cake pans have become one hopefully-ovenproof takeout container, cups and 1/3 cups and teaspoons have been measured by sight, and a cake that was supposed to be baked in twenty minutes is still looking pretty solidly liquid after over half an hour.
It’s Betty Crocker, though, so there's only so horribly-wrong this can go.
You’d think a day spent almost entirely under confidential lock and key would be sort of thrilling; or, at least I would, and did when I woke up this morning. In keeping with the confidentiality agreement that I still haven’t actually signed yet (I wonder if they’ve forgotten about me, or simply think it unlikely that I will actually learn anything worth telling anyone?) I can only really say that a relatively significant something was being discussed by a relatively significant group of someones, while people like I watched. I can also say that I came out knowing more than I did before, caring less, and wondering why exactly I was there in the first place.
The point of the entire thing, as far as I can tell, was to give me an understanding of How Things Work; people study things, write them up, present their findings to a group of whoever-happens-to-show-up-or-send-staff. That group then asks questions, which are assiduously avoided in favour of restating things that the reports already mention, until at some point everyone decides they’ve had enough, smile, nod, and leave.
Their staff remain, locked away in a pretty room for another two and a half hours, in case one of us got the idea of mentioning this entire processes to someone before It Was Time. Trust me, the idea never crossed my mind.
Many other things did, though, as I sat there for five hours. The first half of it was spent taking notes, or trying to as a question-and-answer session turned into something of a round-table, bouncing back and forth without warning or identification of participants. A was only interested in one particular part of the report, so the rest was free to slide by my indifferent ears, casually summarized by my only slightly more interested pen in handwriting that I could sort of read, sometimes. Brief moments of furiously relevant notetaking aside, the first half of the session passed in a semi-diligent haze.
The second half began with the most impressive lunch I have ever seen offered to people-who-don’t-warrant-placards. They gave us smoked salmon, (fake) crab, roast beef and pastries that didn’t smell like they’d taste like cardboard. I suppose they were worried that one or two of the important people might stick around after the discussion, realise that they were being fed leftover tuna-on-white, and set the place on fire.
Sandwiches aside, though, I was then left with two and a half hours, and absolutely nothing to do. One can only read a chapter of a report so many times before it becomes a bit silly, and I wasn’t allowed a cell phone (dead anyway) or blackberry (don’t have one) in the room. I could have brought a laptop, if I’d been in the habit of lugging mine across the city each day only to leave it under my desk and then lug it back, but I’m not, so I didn’t. I couldn’t bring in other reports, I couldn’t do anything with the one I had here …
I did have a novel, but reading fantasy wasn’t exactly appealing when sitting in a government building surrounded by a dozen or so early-thirties professionals. Which left me my book-of-writing-in, a pen, four highlighters and nothing to take down.
With nothing more pressing coming to mind, I did the only thing a sensible person in my position could do: I started writing down the lyrics to every extraordinarily complicated song I could think of.
It’s amazing how much time passes, once you’ve listed the countries of the world (twice) and firmly established that we didn’t start any sort of fires.
Only at the end of it did I realise that I had become something truly phenomenal; a young professional-looking woman writing furiously and purposefully, in a room of many similar people doing much the same.
Which makes me wonder: how many of them actually had any idea what they were supposed to be writing about? And how many of those people were actually doing it? It’s entirely possible, being less than half way through my second week in a new job, that I was in fact the only person bewildered by my situation … but looking at me you wouldn’t have known that, and looking at everyone else, I certainly couldn’t tell.
Is everyone around me just playing the same game I am? Wandering around with their spines straight, shoulders back, easy smiles and purposeful attitudes, mentally cataloguing Things their Mothers Should See?
It’s sort of a terrifying thought.
Also terrifying is the fact that I’m working off of four hours of sleep (plus bus-dozing which really doesn’t count), and felt more alert at work than I had in days. Two hours sticking around the office after work had less to do with not wanting to walk home and more to do with vowing to figure out how the damned phone works (I can call Toronto without problems, can apparently phone Alaska or Florida or Dubai, but I have yet to figure out how to make the wretched thing dial local) before finally giving up before the security guards start wondering what I was up to.
Back at A’s, the day is starting to catch up with me … as is the fact that while this still doesn’t feel like home, I’m starting to feel a certain fondness for the horrible couch. Soup for dinner is probably not the most impressive thing I could have, but it does have the advantage of not having to be thought through, and saves me time for my last challenge of the day: baking a cake.
I can begin to conceive of how someone can survive without a cake pan. How the same person can live without a measuring cup, a baking-issue teaspoon, or a proper spatula starts to be beyond my grasp. Add to that only skim milk (admittedly my fault) and no cooking spray, and we have what has to be the strangest cake I’ve ever made since I was twelve and baking freestyle with Bridget on a Saturday afternoon. Two cake pans have become one hopefully-ovenproof takeout container, cups and 1/3 cups and teaspoons have been measured by sight, and a cake that was supposed to be baked in twenty minutes is still looking pretty solidly liquid after over half an hour.
It’s Betty Crocker, though, so there's only so horribly-wrong this can go.