My Thoughts Exactly

My day at work on Tuesday made me feel more like a second grader, and less like a young professional than usual.

I was greeted in the morning by big red signs on easels that read “FIRE DRILL TODAY”. I thought fire drills were supposed to be unexpected, but apparently when you work in a building housing 40 floors of employees in the middle of Manhattan, you give people some notice.

Then I clicked open an e-mail in my Outlook regarding a mandatory employee-review demonstration. So after lunch I sat with about 50 other people, watching a presentation in a dimly-lit auditorium. Instead of reprimanding children for smacking gum, the woman leading the presentation was giving the stink-eye to everyone who spent the hour clicking around on their Blackberry.

The fire drill on our floor was announced by a bunch of men in suits with earpieces. Apparently they are responsible for the security in our building or something. All we did was walk around to the other side of our floor and listen to a man with the same last name as a pizza place on my block talk about safety procedures. The only things I could focus on were how much my feet hurt from standing in my heels for more than ten minutes and the fire drill man’s ridiculously Long Island accent.

The other night AV and I settled in and watched the Texas A&M/UT basketball game. It was so strange to look at all of the baby-faced freshmen in the stands- whooping and sawing off horns and what not, and to think we were sitting where they were this time last year. So unreal. Then I read an article about A&M on ESPN.com today, which explained the lack of understanding the outside world has of our school. It was clever and light-hearted and I thought it captured my view of A&M so fully.

What I wouldn’t give to be the Erin Roberts of the NCAA Men’s Basketball circuit. She’s got the best gig in town.

We might be a bunch of crazies- but I would bet that not one of those little engineers painted maroon and white, skipping studying physics for the night for sake of good seats and a chance to see school rivalry in action regretted time not spent in front of their TI-82 calculators.

I feel like my fellow assistant-pals and I spent an inordinate amount of time talking about college this week- trying to figure out some way to swing a spring break next month to no avail.

Half of me would give anything to be back in the stands in my white t-shirt, yelling my heart out with 13,000 other students, and the other half you couldn’t pay to be anywhere but here- in the 30-degree cold listening to my recently purchased tunes on my iPod in the mornings on my walk to work and glancing down Central Park South to steal a glance at the sun pouring over the trees in the park lining the street as far as the eye can see.

"Zeroes are important. A million seconds ago was last week."
- Denis Hayes