Tuesday 29 January 2008

down is the new up....

You know what it's like when you get back to work after some time off, right? You wander in somewhat reluctantly, take off your coat, fire up your PC and then head straight off to get some coffee or something. Anything but actually face up to the fact that you're no longer on holiday. Worse. To focus on the fact that as well as not being on holiday anymore, you're actually now at work. Work!

And it's probably a Monday too.

The weekend seems an awfully long way from here.

I spent most of yesterday having catch-up meetings and trawling my way through the red mass of email that had arrived whilst I was away in sunny Sestrière (still sunny too - I've checked. Curse you webcams!). When I looked finally plucked up the nerve to have a look in my diary to see what the rest of the week had in store for me, initially I was quite pleased to see that Wednesday and Thursday had been set aside for a course.

Ah, excellent. Another couple of days away from my desk and either actively daydreaming with a look of deep concentration and interest on my face (an excellent skill, right up there with sitting at your desk with headphones on, looking engrossed in your work when in fact you are listening intently to your bosses talking about you when they think you can't hear them), or perhaps keeping myself entertained by making myself a thorn in the tutor's side and asking questions about absolutely everything; challenging every assumption... something that's painfully easy to do on most business courses.... This one is actually out of the office too, and so I'm not even going to be obliged to dress up either. That's two shirts less to iron this week, anyway.

It sounded great.

I got given a couple of big folders wrapped in cellophane relating to the course, as well as a big book, but naturally I just left them on my desk on Monday night and came home as early as I possibly could.

Imagine my surprise and delight when I realised at some point this morning, as I perused the joining instructions for the course, that not only was the course actually quite intensive and with an exam at the end.... but that I was also being expected to get my way through about six hours of reading from the big book before I turned up at tomorrow morning at 9am.

I had a quick flick through the book at about 6pm this evening in the lull between getting the last of my day's work done and heading off for a swim. It was actually quite interesting*, but it was a s-l-o-w read.

Damn it.

And I was going to waste my evening blogging and stuff and everything.

Mañana then... assuming the bastards don't give me homework or anything. Haven't they heard of the Alphabeticon? It doesn't write itself........

Does anyone really care about Managing Successful Programmes anyway?

--

*work day interesting that is - not interesting interesting....

1 comment:

  1. In the last month I have completed more courses than you could dream of, my friend, including such gems as Disability Awareness, Equalities, Freedom of Information, Copyright and Manual Handling. And those were the good ones.

    (I had to do assessments at the end of each - perfect!)

    As for any guidance on how to actually do my job? Forget it. Bearing in mind it's a completely new career as well as a new organisation, that's the bit I'm worried about. Especially as I start working proper on Monday, and will be assessed on my performance during something akin to a "mystery shop" at some stage between then and Friday.

    But at least the boxes are ticked. Thank goodness for that, hey?

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