The Past Week

It's been such a long time! I hate it that a lot of my recent posts have started off that way. Well, so there are some valid reasons.

My company organised a careers retreat for senior secondary school students last week. For 1 week, I slept in dorms like I was in school again. Okay, I was never actually a boarder when I was in secondary school and this was a pretty nice school by most standards. The boys and girls' common rooms had air-conditioners and a TV with DVD players for the students. The dormitories and dining rooms also had ACs, so we were living quite well.

I don't often get to spend time with young people of the SS1 - 3 age, so it was an interesting refresher of how things were back in the day. At night, I'd be kept up late by the never-ending chattering of the girls. They talked about school, school-work, clothes, parents and boys (well, perhaps that is somewhat similar to what a lot of grown women I know talk about).

In the morning, it was quite hard work to herd the girls to morning exercises. While the girls would struggle to get up at 7 am and eventually schlep out of the school grounds for a run/walk, the boys would have been up apparently since 6 playing football.

The students represented some of the smartest science students in the state and it was very awe-inspiring to be around them. They were outspoken and ferociously intelligent and asked extremely incisive questions of the speakers who came to talk to them about careers. Although I am, in some cases, (ahem) almost twice their age I felt in some ways quite humbled by them. I wish I hard worked harder at school and had more confidence in my abilities. I loved how they viewed life as an open book, with so many pages yet to be written on - in short, filled with unlimited possibilities and a lifetime of adventures. I frequently have to remind myself to look at my life in the same way.

A Tale of (In)Appropriate Email Use

One thing that used to really get my goat when I worked in the US was the frequent and (in my mind) overly-enthusiastic use of email. I must add that I had two different experiences working in two different jobs. In one job, email discussion was an extension of face-to-face and phone conversations. In the other, it was pretty much email all the way. And this was where the problems (for me) arose.

Much to the horror of some of my colleagues, I was in the habit of switching off my email client so that I could actually get some work done. I'd check periodically for urgent emails that required an immediate response and then log off again. I hate being interrupted in the middle of Very Important Work and besides, isn't this one of the top recommendations of time-management experts? I guess not everyone agreed with that particular piece of wisdom, because my phone would ring and a voice bristling with indignation would ask why I had not responded to x,y or z. After checking my email, I would see that they had sent it only ten minutes earlier (GRRRRR!!!!) and it was something that really could have waited (DOUBLE GRRRR!!!!). Why does everyone think that their issues come first with you?

Anyway, my situation these days is much the opposite. It's mostly face-to-face and phone discussions interspersed with emails, thanks to a string of unreliable ISPs and a still growing email culture in Nigeria's workforce. Just when I want to complain, I think back to the times when my colleague in the cubicle next to mine would send me an email asking if I wanted to go to lunch and then I am grateful that Nigerians are somewhat less into the personal space thing than Americans. However, where's that happy medium when you really need it?