It's been a crazy week. More about that later, but part of that was visiting Mass Art on Tuesday to see the end of year exhibit for the Industrial Design program and speak to the head of the department about the certificate program. He was a rather unpleasant man with terrible halitosis--which is not a reason not to go to a school, I realize. He was just rather abrupt as well. Essentially he told me that the certificate program is like getting a BFA without having to do the core curriculum year, and I made small talk and said, "Oh, I didn't even have to do that at Amherst--Amherst doesn't have a core curriculum." And he said, "Well, that's not my problem," and moved on. In other words, stay focused on the case at hand.
It felt rude of him, of course, but it made me think of all the times in my childhood when my mother would babble some meaningless or irrelevant comment to people who either couldn't care less, or were trying to stay focused on something else. Many times it's a nervous filler and it would make me cringe to hear her, and yet here I was doing the same. Now in random conversation it could lead to something else--"Amherst didn't have a core? How strange? How did that work?" etc. but there are people who have no patience for that sort of thing, and more, in this instance we were there to talk about something very specific in a limited amount of time. We all know people who seem to throw non-sequiters out there in a hope that you will find them interesting and it's usually cringe worthy. I think that's part of why I can't watch The Office or Michael Guest films--too many needy people doing just that.
My boss, the one like my mother, is always throwing extra information like the fact she broke her arm last year, into conversations, sometimes with old clients who would care, but also with the customer service person at Fidelity who really doesn't want to know and should be focused. It horrified me to think that I was being perceived in the same way.
This is mobile blogging--it lets me get around my company's firewall. In theory I can whip something off fast and send it in. In practice--everything leads to everything.
It felt rude of him, of course, but it made me think of all the times in my childhood when my mother would babble some meaningless or irrelevant comment to people who either couldn't care less, or were trying to stay focused on something else. Many times it's a nervous filler and it would make me cringe to hear her, and yet here I was doing the same. Now in random conversation it could lead to something else--"Amherst didn't have a core? How strange? How did that work?" etc. but there are people who have no patience for that sort of thing, and more, in this instance we were there to talk about something very specific in a limited amount of time. We all know people who seem to throw non-sequiters out there in a hope that you will find them interesting and it's usually cringe worthy. I think that's part of why I can't watch The Office or Michael Guest films--too many needy people doing just that.
My boss, the one like my mother, is always throwing extra information like the fact she broke her arm last year, into conversations, sometimes with old clients who would care, but also with the customer service person at Fidelity who really doesn't want to know and should be focused. It horrified me to think that I was being perceived in the same way.
This is mobile blogging--it lets me get around my company's firewall. In theory I can whip something off fast and send it in. In practice--everything leads to everything.
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