The brutality of the learning curve… October 14, 2007

Okay, business school is hard. Great. This is well-covered territory. It’s a lot of completely new information, really fast, in Spanish. I have mentioned this all a lot, and though it’s painful, it was a pain I anticipated. (Anticipation doesn’t make it less painful, I might add, but at least I saw it coming.) What I did NOT anticipate was a relentless attack on my self-concept. Things I held to be true about myself that I have had seriously challenged in the last week:

1. I am a great team player.

2. I am a nice person.

3. I am a decent beginning salsa dancer.

Working backwards: WHY has no one ever mentioned to me just how silly I look while salsa dancing? (Aimee? Diana?) Man, whew, I’ve got a lot to learn there. I went with friends last night, and managed to actually STEP on the feet of FIVE different male friends. And no, I had not been over-served, so to speak, so that’s not why. I mean, I joke all the time about my dangerous lack of coordination, but wow, I had no idea that it was so, well, outwardly obvious. However, I’m going to take the opportunity to turn this into a positive, and say that, if, as a side effect of getting my MBA, I also sharpen my salsa skills (and actually arrive at being a decent beginning salsa dancer, instead of just thinking so), then great. All part of the experience, right?

In less funny self concept rattling, I had a rough week with my group, and am left feeling like maybe, just maybe, I’m not always as good as I think I am–bringing us to points 1 and 2. I mean, mostly I take it for granted that I’m pretty nice, laid back, easy to work with, etc. But after the (very unfortunate) events of this week, well, I feel like a freaking teenager. I thought I had already learned the “never ever ever say anything ugly about another person when there’s a chance it might get back to them” lesson, like, 10 years ago. (I’m sure we can all remember grand scale ugly warfare with Aimee, Amanda, Alli, Erin, Julie, etc through the years, even though those are memories best forgotten.) I mean, my mom would say that the lesson should be “never ever ever say anything ugly about another person ever at all ever,” but sometimes, in close company, while working through frustrating times, that’s hard to avoid. So basically, I shot myself in the foot this week. Big time. I said something unkind about a woman in my group (which I SO should not have said–she’s very smart, and brings a lot to the group, and I was just frustrated) to someone else from our group. He was upset with me (because I was upset with him, and said so) and turned around and told her what I had said–even though I had also said that I intended to go to her to work things out myself. I’m sorry, this is GRAD school. He TOLD her? But, as Ben likes to tell me, I did this to myself. It’s an invaluable lesson in trust–I tend to assume that, because I like someone as a person (even if they’re a self-acknowledged misogynistic fascist) and they seem to like me too, that means we’re friends, and there’s a degree of trust there. Silly, silly girl. Again, I should have learned 10 years ago never to say anything ugly about people who I actually like, but I never would have imagined it would be repeated. So now my entire class of 55 people seems to be talking about this scandal, and I’m in a sling-shot rocketing back to 1997–and I’m a bruja, which is NOT a brand I can get excited about. Clearly this is a massive attack my self concept–I’m not a bruja, am I??? Maybe I’m NOT that nice, after all. Dennis used to tell me all the time that I’m super judgmental, but honestly, I never believed him. I thought he was just expecting me to be far too perfect all the time, and I was constantly disappointing him when I couldn’t be that perfect. But maybe I AM super judgmental. Maybe I need to take a step back and do a little self-assessment here. Because clearly this is upsetting information. Obviously, I don’t want to be TOO hard on myself, because everyone says dumb things sometimes, I just seem to have a knack for saying dumb things a LOT of times, when I’d be better off just keeping my freaking mouth shut. Needless to say, I am NOT looking forward to school tomorrow. It’s been a tremendous three day weekend, and now I just want to crawl under a rock and stay there until it’s time to jump on my flight to Portland for Christmas (which is, incidentally, when our groups change). Alas, this is not an option, and I can only hope that I can fix things enough with the woman in my group to be able to work together for the next two months. And then I have to seriously pay attention to the words coming out of my mouth, because I’d hate to have anything like this ever happen again. Man, I would make the worst politician EVER.

So okay, personal crisis aside, there were some really great things this week. Dinner with Jordi was incredible (ohmygod he’s exactly the same, except he’s got a 2 year old son now, who I can’t wait to meet, and he told me some absolutely hilarious stories about people that we know, and he complimented me relentlessly on how good my Spanish is, which I totally appreciated), and it’s been a fabulous three day weekend. Also, I had dinner with friends Friday and Saturday nights, and Ben has been doing a heroic job of rescuing my sanity throughout the weekend (I’d be pretty lost without him here, I think). And despite my profound lack of coordination, I still had a great time dancing last night. At least I have nothing to complain about socially! Whew!

This week? I’m going to focus on school, and any external chatting with people will revolve around such benign topics as where we’re going to do our Thanksgiving feast, what to do for Halloween, and where I can go to watch Red Sox playoff games in the middle of the night. I will say only kind things about other people and I will work on not turning into a frustrated bruja when things aren’t going well in my group. And if the occasion should arise where I feel like I have something I absolutely must say but shouldn’t? Yeah dude, I’m calling my mom–which is what I should have done in the first place. Ugh.