(no subject)

This morning was the first of four mornings I'm spending in the next two weeks at a career development course. So far it's actually useful; today was about skills vs interests and how you get hired for what you're good at, whether you like doing it or not. Eventually we'll get to "and if not, what do you do about it?" The pre-course work included the Strong Interests Test (invented by a guy named Strong, and testing what you're interested in), which I didn't like at all when I was taking it, but which decided that my interests would match up well with being a translator (although its first choice was putting me in the forest service). That's the first time I've ever had one of those tests actually come up with something that actually sounds like me, and I was shocked because most of the questions seemed to be about jobs I wouldn't consider unless I was starving. Under normal conditions I would run screaming from anyone who wanted to make me a tax accountant.

So then I got to come to work this afternoon and exploded with a whole lot of ideas about the job I've actually got and various committees I'm ex officio on. At least I still have a brain in there somewhere; I was beginning to wonder about that.

Now I have to go back to Cambridge again for chorus rehearsal. I'm not sure how long I'm going to be happy staying with this director, because he's got the whole English "if it's excellent, it's good; if it's good, it's awful" thing going on and I get tired of paying dues in order to go and get yelled at for two and a half hours once a week (four and a half hours twice a week for dress rehearsals). But I'll go for this semester, anyway, and maybe going to Australia will be the battery-recharge I'm hoping for and I'll come back all enthused about all sorts of things I've stopped being quite so enthused about. I hope.