Every year April delivers the familiar bitter-sweet-stale flavors. Summer is well & truly over. I've grown another year older. The air is highly volatile and pregnant with emotional pollens that fill you with excitement and devastation simultaneously; the two significant events responsible: the annual performance review and promotion rounds & the annual engineering society conference that looks too much like a school reunion. The combination increases the potency. I've been to almost all of these conferences in the past 10 years, authoring or contributing to papers and I am yet to fashion a way to not give a shit about the reviews of my performance, specially since people's opinions directly impact my salary and the illusion of professional worth.
Here's the annual drill: for the performance thingie, over a period of 2 weeks we are randomly and discretely summoned to a small meeting room for a little chat. There, the manager of the time expresses their utmost delight in how I've overcome the year's challenges. They continue by reading anonymous quotes concerning me and my work from a mysterious file on their laptop. I maintain a professional mixture of gratitude, expected delight and honest curiosity while in the back of my mind I'm running regression analyses on who's said what. Of course you are encouraged to seek direct feedback throughout the year but what comes out of the magic box every April never fails to surprise. I am then told how much more I'm going to be paid next year, I struggle to do the math quickly enough, so I thank them gracefully, the meeting ends, I leave feeling elated and enlightened because my managers have fantastic people skills. Only after I go to my desk and carefully bring up my last year's pay rise letter and do the simple math will I be able to conclude with either "yeah, not bad, ha?" or "what the actual fuck?!". It does not matter anyway. All I have to do is keep my cool for 2 weeks and avoid any misleading expressions of outrage or euphoria which could be misinterpreted into either "I suck" or "I rock". I must have been a really penniless but proud aristocrat in my previous life because it's beneath me to ever discuss salary at work. It's vulgar, proves I'm a servant to the system and actually need money.
I'm demented, I know.
Then just as you are finally finding your old feet and getting back to your normal routine, telling yourself there's more to life than titles and work, the conference hits you like a punch out of nowhere. Everything about it both ruins my nerves and feels irresistible like an itch; the standing around and talking, watching the nervous presentations, meeting the same people year after year, noticing the elongating titles, the progression of balding heads and bulging beer bellies and wrinkling bodies, the hugs that last a moment longer every year and of course, the never-ending casual success stories... it's an arena for the boastful. & I can't help seeing myself in their eyes, when they ask how I am, how WORK is, if I've been promoted... Why do I go? Because what's worse than feeling inferior and stale? Feeling forgotten and invisible. I also enjoy the gossip, & the gossip is ALIVE! Especially after a few drinks at the dinner party, where everyone finally loosens the fuck up a little.
My memorable moments this year: the slurring engineer who insisted they were shaking at their presentation. I remembered his talk & thought he seemed like an angry batman! Second favorite was a young postgrad whose presentation left me in a constant state of baffled anticipation as he sounded like he was about to cry but then would recover with a wise joke. My least favorite scene is probably the crowd of eager enthusiasts that remind you of your young self; the newly graduated overqualified newbies, uncomfortably lingering around the conversation between two prominent figures or wanting to strike up a conversation with a potential employer, smiling too eagerly, undoubtedly slightly ignored. I know those smiles, I recognize the pain of it too well to be able to stand nearby, to contribute.
Sure, this annual reunion leaves more scars than fond memories. So why do we keep hitting ourselves with a hammer? Because it feels so good when you stop. -From GA.
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