The completely unfiltered diary of a 23-year-old girl (week 17)
The EVP actually replied my email. Damn. And it was a proper, thought-through email too.
And I was just looking at it and thinking, shit, I can’t reply a 5-paragraph email from an EVP with a one liner “thank you”. Granted, they were short paragraphs, but still.
Lol. Sometimes I feel like I spend too much time overthinking. There’s a sense of getting so caught up in thinking about how I should react, that I lose out on the real meat of the conversation/activity etc.
Example. Imagine you’re talking to someone. If you’re spending all your energy thinking about where to put your hands, how to position the muscles on your face, what to say next etc., you won’t be able to put your full attention into the conversation itself, or even more importantly, into the other person.
So basically, just gotta be comfortable and chill. Even if you do something wrong (which in itself can be debatable), honestly, it’ll be fine most of the time.
Oh yeah, and it totally applied to my first ever skype call with my Spanish conversation exchange buddy :’) I was so…well, not exactly nervous, but extremely self-conscious and unsure of myself. Unconfident. That I’m sure if I just chilled out and let myself think, it would’ve been much better.
It was good though! So after that italki class, I’d decided it’d be cool to talk to this guy from conversation exchange (that’s the language learning platform where we’d met). Nice thing about this is that you don’t have to pay, since it isn’t a class like italki. But I think a mix of both would probably be good, since the italki teachers are more used to dealing with completely hopeless students.
I really wanna try this “language acquisition” thing. Basically where you learn a language like a child would. Reference videos here and here. Mostly because I’m too lazy to study a proper textbook. And children’s books are fun. LOL. When was the last time you read The Very Hungry Caterpillar?
I realized it would probably be easier to do language exchanges in person though, because you can gesture more easily and you don’t have to deal with lagging videos etc. Plus you can bring a physical magazine and point at pictures and have your partner explain stuff to you in the target language (more on this in the YouTube videos). I went back on conversation exchange, and turns out there’s a Peruvian girl who wants an English language exchange partner right here in my country, so that’s perfect. Let’s see how this goes!
Anyway. Back to work (because that’s all I seem to talk about in these entries ._.) Our company has this mentorship program thing for new graduate hires, which is cool and all, but feels a bit forced especially when we found out the mentors were appointed, i.e. not volunteers. LOL. Anyway, am meeting my mentor this Friday for coffee (sigh. Corporate culture and coffee. Do people actually like coffee that much?) And I just keep thinking, how do I make this session actually useful and not a waste of time? I don’t have enough problems yet to know what questions to ask. Lol. And I don’t want to just ask generic stuff that’s probably just gonna get generic answers.
So I tried thinking from a mentor’s point of view. What does a mentor get out of mentoring? I’d imagine the best thing a mentor could get is seeing their mentee actually benefit from their advice. As in, actually put their advice into action and then have some kind of visible positive result.
That would probably be the most rewarding for a mentor. Not just lip service or theoretical discussions (though the latter maybe isn’t that bad either). But visible results would probably be the best.
Imagine you put aside time to help someone. You’d probably feel good if they listened to your advice and made their situation better.
And who knows, maybe I have stuff to contribute to him as well. Good to remind myself that I know stuff he doesn’t as well — it’s just maybe about whether or not it’s stuff he’ll find useful. Or even maybe just interesting.
Kinda excited to just meet a new person. Though it does feel a bit weird. Hope he doesn’t find it weird, lol, given that he’s probably twice my age and I really don’t know what it’s gonna look like having a 50+ year old guy talking to a 20+ year old girl in a random coffee place. Ok, whatever, not like I care about this kind of stuff anyway.
It is a thing though, or at least I’d think it would be a thing? Do I need to be conscious of what people might think if I ask to meet random old guys one-on-one?
It’s kind of annoying though. Like, if I really do want to hear what they have to say, it sucks to have to think about this kind of thing. It’s tricky too, because I like having a personal, human connection with people. Screw this “professional” shit. Like of course, don’t overstep boundaries, but I wanna be real, y’know.
Oh well. If you go in with the right intentions, I trust it’ll be fine.
Because…honestly…if you meet someone for the first time and start throwing questions like “What was the biggest challenge you faced and how did you overcome it?” it’s gonna feel like a bloody interview. Or worse, a job interview.
Sometimes I tend to look to Google to tell me how to react to things, or deal with things. And yeah, I totally Googled “How to prepare for a mentoring session”. But maybe that really isn’t the best way to do things. I should just think about how I would react first, i.e. think things through on my own and decide what the best plan of action would be, and then if I really want to look for other perspectives, then maybe consult Google. Because sometimes, Google doesn’t give you the best answers (shocking, I know.) And sometimes, what you think of is a bloody fantastic new solution/way of doing things, that would’ve been completely lost if you’d just looked to Google for the conventional way of dealing with things.
Moving on. I went to the doctor recently and realized damn, I am such a useless adult. The doctor wanted to either send me for a scan or send me to a specialist, and I was like, damn, I thought the doctor would just tell me what to do. LOL. Anyway, long story short, after going home and checking my insurance coverage (having company insurance cover is freaking amazing. Seriously. Thank god for employment.) for hours, because again I’m a failed adult who takes forever to understand these things, I went to another doctor who gave me a referral to a specialist. Basically, from what I understood from the insurance policy was that if I had followed through with the first doctor’s referral, I would’ve had to pay for the scan or specialist visit. But with the second doctor, it was all covered. Freaking amazing. But also, if it was any critical condition, I would’ve died before figuring all this shit out lol.
Also, gonna try to sleep early. Like by 11.30pm. So I can have nine hours of sleep and wake up at 8.30am (thank god for working from home). What a privilege to be able to do that, isn’t it… Right now I’m sleeping at about 1am and waking up at about 8.30am, which usually ends up being 9am because I just can’t drag myself out of bed, and I always feel so tired when I wake up. Ok, people out there are definitely going to be like wtf this bitch is complaining about having a whole 7.5h of sleep?! Yeah… I’m a bloody privileged pig. let’s see how this sleep thing goes. Hopefully I’ll have the discipline to sleep on time rather than stay up watching videos that always seem more interesting at midnight. Recently discovered Ricky Gervais though, so…we’ll see.
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So yesterday, when I wrote the stuff above, I spent a whole 1.5h before 11.30pm listening to stuff. First, an audio course of Spanish, then did probably about 20 minutes of Headspace (something on finding happiness) and it was actually pretty damn relaxing. And then the Rainy Day Antiques sleepcast to try to get myself to sleep.
Even with all that, I probably really only fell asleep at midnight. And then I woke up at 6.55am. LOL. And snoozed till 9am like a true pig.
But ok, gonna keep trying to sleep by 11.30pm. Already failing, since it’s 11.30pm right now. But hopefully it gets better over time.
xo,
Amber
