Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Curtains - Cutting

I have placed curtains on tonight - an exam was covered tonight.  The other shoe is finally dropping in my education - things are coming due this week. It is my responsibility to sew curtains for them in lace, velvet, denim, and glass.  The last refers to my right hand's little finger getting cut by broken glass.
This slitting is making my actions have an aura of daintiness to them. It is quite painfully amusing for me.

My mother has purchased new drapes for my room. Their canvas look is making me reconsider the way the rest of the room looks and appears.  New information changes the light in which I perceive the rest of what I have.  As a finance major in training, I am learning how to perceive the world by the information I am given.  Another course focuses on the frames through which we see and act in different environments.

I know that I have many - each of my classes requires a different lens through which to view the material. It can be downright confusing when my first instinct to view an item as "common sense" is proven true.  I suspect the teachers of asking trick questions when the answer seems too easy. I am here to be taught, what chance do I have to know what you are thinking?

But that is a student role which I assume. Soon I will be so no more.  I am advised in a careers class to use that air of naivete while I have the opportunity - to interview people in their fields in order to better understand the work they do and the institutional culture on whose behalf they perform it.  Careers are curious things.  A financial advisor grinned when he told me, "I am not in the business of giving jobs - I am in recruiting those who would be promising in my field."

Neil Gaiman's advice was "Pretend to be good at something." Eventually you'll get the hang of the something.  Jake the Dog in Adventure Time said, "Sucking at something is the first step of becoming sorta good at something."  So, I will get used to the notion that indeed have marketable skills, to being able to verbalize them in actionable phrases, and have examples of my experience in those areas.

It still feels like the old joke, "Don't call me Mr. [...], that is my father's name!"  Don't tell me that I'll "be fine" or "Survive" - I've been managing both without any particular effort for years now. No, I shall be glorious, perhaps delusional, but never deluded.  I need to try to become something other than what I've been in order to manage any meaningful or useful change.

I'll take your silence as confirmation of my assessment. * Curtains *