Wednesday 1 June 2011

This is an official apology to my brain... Sorry brain, I didn't know it would be like that.

I've just come out of a meeting. This meeting was about something... I want to say finance of some sort, any further details on this meeting however were lost on me.

I named this meeting. I called it "2 1/2 hours of feeling stupid."

I would go as far to say that it's entirely likely my brain decided to go for a walk for the duration I was in the room. 

I have never been involved in a discussion where I have been that clueless of the content included. There were words said and I'm 99% sure they were formed in coherent sentences because everyone else around the table appeared to be nodding emphatically. But this was my only clue. 

I realised about 2 minutes in, that this meeting would be lost on me. It was at this point I discovered I had 3 choices:

A: Constantly interrupt each sentence and ask for it to be repeated again and again until I started to understand it. 

B: Wait until they were distracted with a PowerPoint slide and stomach crawl out the door, ideally unnoticed. 

C: Nod a lot and pretend that what they were talking about made sense. 

After reluctantly accepting the impracticalities of option B due to high heels, coat and bag obstacles, I chose the latter. 

Drawing on my extensive drama education, I dug deep into my soul and pulled out my most interested looking face. It looked a bit like this:







After 20 minutes however, I noticed another member of staff throwing me a sympathetic look and realised my look had transformed to this:






This continued to happen at 20 minute intervals, forming a closer 10 minute pattern as we approached the last hour. 

There was one point where things changed (about an hour and 20 minutes in). Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I understood. Instead I recognised a process mentioned that I had recently been asked to follow but didn't know how to. 

Clasping my opportunity to input somehow into this meeting with both hands, I spoke out for the first time since I had entered the room. 

I had intended to remark on how I had been entrusted with this very important task, only I wanted to ensure I knew the hospital's official procedure before I began to perform to the best of my ability. What actually came out was closer to "I've been freaking out about this for ages, please help me."

This, people, is as far as I got to understanding the meeting. Alas, his response to my broken plea was about as clear to me as the rest of the meeting had been.

Needless to say, now that I am out and not straining my brain to understand something, forcing it to send a dull ache to the rest of my head, I am definitely happier.

Now all I have to do is report back my findings to the rest of the team tomorrow... I get a feeling that may be brief.

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