I. Am. Losing. My. Mind.
I had about 10 days (or less) to get together a group of volunteers to staff the four-day film festival. Which starts with some big hoo-ha reception tomorrow night.
It's been like trying to herd cats. Everybody wants the peachy assignments at the Academy, when we have several other locations on the College campus...and nobody seems to want to work at any of those.
I would have liked to have an extra week to do this--to re-contact folks and/or call them, or beat the bushes just a bit more. No. such. luck.
I am also discovering "multitasking" is pretty much a joke. Sure, when the tasks don't require a boatload of concentration, or the assimilation of difficult-to-grasp information, multitasking is easy. But if the tasks are ones that require not just learning new information but also new skills, and that the information and skills aren't monkey level, "multitasking" ends up undermining any complex understanding of the information or quality work that can be done from the adequate assmiliation of the information.
If things were better organized there would be less stress--period.
So, I'm peeved by this whole experience--but I'm not showing it nor am I taking it out on others. Personally, I don't like when things aren't planned out properly, have to be run on a shoestring, and require alot of begging and pleading of *anyone*.
It's not "fun." It's not "a challege." Disorganization is no excuse for making something that's merely human resources work into rocket science.
It'll end up being one more accomplishment on a resume that's just bursting with accomplishments. But what am I really accomplishing in all this other than stress and a possible ulcer attack?
Oh, yeah...then I get a half day's recovery and then have to head out to a huge shindig at Harvard--that I really can't wait to attend, but still fills me with a great tummyload of trepidation. What if I say the wrong thing and Transgress The Unwritten Social Laws? Will I end up nailing myself to the floor, shooting myself in the foot, or simply ruining my chances of a new career that won't require typing 70 wpm?
Criminey! What do I wear?? How do I talk to people? What do I say to not sound like a boor from bumfuck?
I don't like this world where your future could rest in a handshake. Who invented this kind of hyper-charm oriented career-building social dance?
I'm annoyed. to say the least.
I had about 10 days (or less) to get together a group of volunteers to staff the four-day film festival. Which starts with some big hoo-ha reception tomorrow night.
It's been like trying to herd cats. Everybody wants the peachy assignments at the Academy, when we have several other locations on the College campus...and nobody seems to want to work at any of those.
I would have liked to have an extra week to do this--to re-contact folks and/or call them, or beat the bushes just a bit more. No. such. luck.
I am also discovering "multitasking" is pretty much a joke. Sure, when the tasks don't require a boatload of concentration, or the assimilation of difficult-to-grasp information, multitasking is easy. But if the tasks are ones that require not just learning new information but also new skills, and that the information and skills aren't monkey level, "multitasking" ends up undermining any complex understanding of the information or quality work that can be done from the adequate assmiliation of the information.
If things were better organized there would be less stress--period.
So, I'm peeved by this whole experience--but I'm not showing it nor am I taking it out on others. Personally, I don't like when things aren't planned out properly, have to be run on a shoestring, and require alot of begging and pleading of *anyone*.
It's not "fun." It's not "a challege." Disorganization is no excuse for making something that's merely human resources work into rocket science.
It'll end up being one more accomplishment on a resume that's just bursting with accomplishments. But what am I really accomplishing in all this other than stress and a possible ulcer attack?
Oh, yeah...then I get a half day's recovery and then have to head out to a huge shindig at Harvard--that I really can't wait to attend, but still fills me with a great tummyload of trepidation. What if I say the wrong thing and Transgress The Unwritten Social Laws? Will I end up nailing myself to the floor, shooting myself in the foot, or simply ruining my chances of a new career that won't require typing 70 wpm?
Criminey! What do I wear?? How do I talk to people? What do I say to not sound like a boor from bumfuck?
I don't like this world where your future could rest in a handshake. Who invented this kind of hyper-charm oriented career-building social dance?
I'm annoyed. to say the least.
posted by Tish Grier at 1:17 PM
2 Comments:
yeah. I can't remember the last time I had that fingernails-on-a-blackboard feeling so intense like this.
I wonder, though, if I'm beginning to lose that edge, or that thing that used to make me look like I knew what I was doing when I didn't. Or, perhaps I'm getting high up enough where my slip will finally show if I really don't know what I'm doing. I'm not sure it's going to be so easy to fake it with the air-is-rare academic crowd.
Of course......as the populist Jim Hightower said at a book-signing in Manchester Center, Vermont: "Herding cats is not all that difficult....if you have an electric can opener".
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