(no subject)
Last weekend Friday, I stayed out till 4:00 dancing, and Sunday I stayed up till 3:30 doing homework. It felt like the college I never had! Then last night, I stayed an hour and a half late at work, took the bus home, and then E and I went to the gym, went grocery shopping for necessities, cooked dinner, watched TV, and browsed through a .pdf of a book on differential equations written in 1907. So gosh-darn grown up!
On my way home from work, I change buses at an underpass. This is near major streets and there are usually people around, but it can be a little creepy at night. One night last week, a slightly "off" older guy walked up and started asking people about a bus: "Has the 265 come yet? The 265?" None of us knew, and then he asked a girl, "Where are you from?"
"Redmond," she answered.
"No! When I say 'Where are you from,' I mean are you from Vietnam? Are you from China?"
"No, I'm not," she said.
"Then where are you from?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Look at you! You're dodging the question!" he started to say loudly, edging in close to her. "I asked a simple question, and you won't answer it! You're avoiding the question! I said..." and he kept going on. After a minute or two of monologue, it was clear he wasn't going to drop it, so I walked over.
"I think you're making her uncomfortable," I said.
"Why are you butting in? I'm trying to do a simple analysis over here, and you're butting in. Go sit down! If it were two men talking, would you butt in? Or two women? Are you too stupid to understand? I'm doing an analysis!" He waved his arms around as if to block me off from her.
Another guy came over to help: "Is he bothering you? Leave these women alone!" This got the older man even more agitated. "All of you, just go sit down!" he yelled.
"Yes," I said, "let's all sit down." I sat, the girl sat, the guy sat, and the older man sat, at a respectable distance from each other. The older man got on a bus and left, and that was the end of it.
I am not very confrontational, and think really slowly on my feet. But I am really proud that I did something that worked, that helped defuse an incredibly awkward, frightening, and potentially dangerous situation.
In other, less heroic news, work has been incredibly stressful. I just haven't been doing everything right--and this makes people angry and upset. Luckily these people are thousands of miles away (most of them), and their main weapon is email, and I am pretty good at the email parry. But it eats away at me, because more than anything I love being right--and hate being wrong. It's even worse when things aren't going well and there is no good clear solution. Not like there is a good solution that will take lots of work--because I could do that--but there is just no really good fix. Thursday morning I was in tears, just dreading the day at work.
It's gotten a little better, though. My manager reassured me that if I were doing anything wrong, she would tell me about it, so I am NOT actually doing anything wrong. I still feel like a big ball of failure, though, because THINGS are going wrong that are a direct result of my work--so how can I not be doing things wrong? Ergh. I've got vendors and students and clients complaining from all directions about things I have done! Bah.
But today, at least, I met with a new vendor (yes, on Saturday) and she said, and I quote, "You are very good at your job! You go that second mile, and it will make a difference. The next person they have there will not be as good as you." She had two difficult questions, which I'd totally flubbed with the previous people who'd asked them--but this time was prepared and she was happy with the information I gave her. So hooray! God it's horrible, though, how I depend on external feedback to feel like I'm doing well.
The thing that really saved my day Thursday, though, was my science quiz. It was the first quiz of the quarter, and I am pretty sure I rocked it. The question and answer session all made sense, and no one has called me out yet about being 7 years older than anyone in the class. It was such a breath of fresh air, to leave work and go sit and talk about buffer solutions.
Maybe when I finally, maybe, graduate college (again), I will just freelance as a part-time lab tech and part-time elementary language teacher (I found my lesson plans and became incredibly nostalgic), and then will always feel both competent and loved. Lesson planning and the fear of failure really killed my teaching, and I think I would miss children a lot if I worked in a stuffy lab somewhere.
We will see. I am having so much fun, though, going to class, I kind of never want to stop. Except remind me, next time, if I decide to work a crap office job to support myself while I'm taking classes: find a low-stress job that doesn't keep me more than 40 hours a week. And if you're going to sell out, sell out high!
There has been wedding angst, too. We thought we'd have to change the date because Parents' Weekend has been changed at the giant university in our hometown (where the wedding is being held). And the photographer has been a royal pain. But I think we're going to keep the date because we already have vendors lined up for it, and we have a new photographer who is NOT a royal pain and is in fact very nice and reasonable (knock on wood), so that has helped.
How do people ever have children and maintain sanity? Or sanitation? I don't have time in my day to care for and nurture a human being. And I'm starting to think about my timeline, how I've got maybe 6 years to play with and then it'll be Family Time. But family ends up being better than a career or interesting hobbies, right? But that is the really annoying part, that someone will come along who makes me WANT to give up those things. Bah!
That is totally a stress for another day. I've got enough on my plate for now, thank you very much.
p.s. My office thinks I am a hardcore hax0r because I make spreadsheets with formulas like:
=IF(C2<>"",(C2-B2)*24, 0)
And it makes me laugh because anyone who can actually code is completely unimpressed, and can probably think of a better way to do it! But among the people I work with, I am a Computer Queen. And you just have to laugh.
On my way home from work, I change buses at an underpass. This is near major streets and there are usually people around, but it can be a little creepy at night. One night last week, a slightly "off" older guy walked up and started asking people about a bus: "Has the 265 come yet? The 265?" None of us knew, and then he asked a girl, "Where are you from?"
"Redmond," she answered.
"No! When I say 'Where are you from,' I mean are you from Vietnam? Are you from China?"
"No, I'm not," she said.
"Then where are you from?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Look at you! You're dodging the question!" he started to say loudly, edging in close to her. "I asked a simple question, and you won't answer it! You're avoiding the question! I said..." and he kept going on. After a minute or two of monologue, it was clear he wasn't going to drop it, so I walked over.
"I think you're making her uncomfortable," I said.
"Why are you butting in? I'm trying to do a simple analysis over here, and you're butting in. Go sit down! If it were two men talking, would you butt in? Or two women? Are you too stupid to understand? I'm doing an analysis!" He waved his arms around as if to block me off from her.
Another guy came over to help: "Is he bothering you? Leave these women alone!" This got the older man even more agitated. "All of you, just go sit down!" he yelled.
"Yes," I said, "let's all sit down." I sat, the girl sat, the guy sat, and the older man sat, at a respectable distance from each other. The older man got on a bus and left, and that was the end of it.
I am not very confrontational, and think really slowly on my feet. But I am really proud that I did something that worked, that helped defuse an incredibly awkward, frightening, and potentially dangerous situation.
In other, less heroic news, work has been incredibly stressful. I just haven't been doing everything right--and this makes people angry and upset. Luckily these people are thousands of miles away (most of them), and their main weapon is email, and I am pretty good at the email parry. But it eats away at me, because more than anything I love being right--and hate being wrong. It's even worse when things aren't going well and there is no good clear solution. Not like there is a good solution that will take lots of work--because I could do that--but there is just no really good fix. Thursday morning I was in tears, just dreading the day at work.
It's gotten a little better, though. My manager reassured me that if I were doing anything wrong, she would tell me about it, so I am NOT actually doing anything wrong. I still feel like a big ball of failure, though, because THINGS are going wrong that are a direct result of my work--so how can I not be doing things wrong? Ergh. I've got vendors and students and clients complaining from all directions about things I have done! Bah.
But today, at least, I met with a new vendor (yes, on Saturday) and she said, and I quote, "You are very good at your job! You go that second mile, and it will make a difference. The next person they have there will not be as good as you." She had two difficult questions, which I'd totally flubbed with the previous people who'd asked them--but this time was prepared and she was happy with the information I gave her. So hooray! God it's horrible, though, how I depend on external feedback to feel like I'm doing well.
The thing that really saved my day Thursday, though, was my science quiz. It was the first quiz of the quarter, and I am pretty sure I rocked it. The question and answer session all made sense, and no one has called me out yet about being 7 years older than anyone in the class. It was such a breath of fresh air, to leave work and go sit and talk about buffer solutions.
Maybe when I finally, maybe, graduate college (again), I will just freelance as a part-time lab tech and part-time elementary language teacher (I found my lesson plans and became incredibly nostalgic), and then will always feel both competent and loved. Lesson planning and the fear of failure really killed my teaching, and I think I would miss children a lot if I worked in a stuffy lab somewhere.
We will see. I am having so much fun, though, going to class, I kind of never want to stop. Except remind me, next time, if I decide to work a crap office job to support myself while I'm taking classes: find a low-stress job that doesn't keep me more than 40 hours a week. And if you're going to sell out, sell out high!
There has been wedding angst, too. We thought we'd have to change the date because Parents' Weekend has been changed at the giant university in our hometown (where the wedding is being held). And the photographer has been a royal pain. But I think we're going to keep the date because we already have vendors lined up for it, and we have a new photographer who is NOT a royal pain and is in fact very nice and reasonable (knock on wood), so that has helped.
How do people ever have children and maintain sanity? Or sanitation? I don't have time in my day to care for and nurture a human being. And I'm starting to think about my timeline, how I've got maybe 6 years to play with and then it'll be Family Time. But family ends up being better than a career or interesting hobbies, right? But that is the really annoying part, that someone will come along who makes me WANT to give up those things. Bah!
That is totally a stress for another day. I've got enough on my plate for now, thank you very much.
p.s. My office thinks I am a hardcore hax0r because I make spreadsheets with formulas like:
=IF(C2<>"",(C2-B2)*24, 0)
And it makes me laugh because anyone who can actually code is completely unimpressed, and can probably think of a better way to do it! But among the people I work with, I am a Computer Queen. And you just have to laugh.