It feels like high school again. Me the nerdy kid with big gold glasses, a sweater vest and a faint whiff of a moustache. Freshman year at a Texas high school was not fun. My affinity for math club and talent on the violin did not sit well in a school that worshipped Friday night football, where mums were status symbols and random gang violence occurred (ironically) regularly at pep rallies.
But that’s what it feels like at BigCorp. Right down to the bus rides, the cafeteria and the social interactions. It’s all about cliques, and as the new kid, the n00b, the grunt, I’m transported back to reactions and emotions that I thought had long been extinct. There are the cool kids, obviously. Quincy is definitely one. And the cool kids ignore the not-so-cool kids. I haven’t classified myself into the freak / geek paradigm yet… I was definitely a geek in high school. Here, I may be a freak, considering that my social values are way off radar from Jorge, the Marina -loving Republican who loves to give me stock tips.
There are the leaders. The ones that matter. I was class president and orchestra president and so on in high school, but that’s because I was the only one who wanted to run for these offices. I was the uninvited to the smoke sessions after classes, so I had the time to draw Batman and Ninja Turtles on my campaign posters. (Those were way cool.) I was the one with free time cause I wasn’t football captain or tennis champ or even the good one with the wrench in mechanic classes – the really important stuff – so that left me and a bunch of nerds duking it out for best college application filler.
But I did wear the literary club T-shirt proudly. And us nerds in Student Council really planned awesome Homecomings and Proms for the rest of the cool kids to enjoy.
Familiar problems crop up at BigCorp. Will Quincy sit next to me on the bus, or will we do the stare-through (you look past the other person but also at them) and pretend that we don’t see each other? Will Sean let me tag along for lunch or should I invite some other people to come along? Should I ask questions, or will that make me look stupid? Should I chime in when they talk about baseball, even though I don’t know anything about the sport? When they share skiing tips, when I still can’t snowboard without knocking little kids over? Do I just ignore rendezvous plans when they all have cars and I only have a bike?
In my meetings so far, I know that old-timers are doing me a favor by talking to me. Appointments have been rescheduled and shortened. But I’m keeping at it, because thanks to high school I’ve learned that if I don’t speak up and act out, I’ll continue to feel ostracized. And this time, there’s no going off to college to bail me out of outsider status.
And some things do change. Here, instead of navigating through the social minefield that is the cafeteria, I just bring lunch back to my desk and check my stock quotes.
I have a problem judging pauses in conversation. This means that during meetings or group conversations, I can't tell when is a good time for me to start speaking or interject. This translates to false starts - you know, when you start to say something but then are cut off and then everyone knows you wanted to say something but didn't. It's sort of embarassing.
Posted by: susie ink | December 06, 2007 at 04:47 PM