What an absolutely barmy week, and for those of you not familiar with weird British slang that means it’s been insane, crazy, mental, non-stop etc. I’ve not had a single moment to post, eat, pee, read, write, watch TV… nothing. And this isn’t one of those times where I think I’ve been busy but I really haven’t – I have, and you know why? Three words. End of semester. And for words. End of second year. You know what this means? Assignments, group work, eating when I can, nightmares, arguments, and endless amounts of stress. But guess what? It’s over. I have 2 more assignments to complete but I don’t care; the worst is out of the way. Would you like to know what my huge project was? I had to design an educational board game. Because I’m, like, totally twelve years old.
It was part of my entrepreneurship module (I don’t know how you do a full degree of it) and the basic aim was to design a board game that would encourage people to become an entrepreneur in the entertainment industry. Simple as pie, yes? No. Being the idiot that I am, early on in the module I said I’d take on the design of the game from the box to the actual board itself. Little did I know how much work that would entail. Last weekend I was running around craft shops looking for glue, glitter, wrapping paper, card… you name it, I needed it. I spent hours on that stupid thing and I got to class on Thursday to see everyone else’s designs and they’d gone to professional printers to get theirs done. Why did I not think of that? Mine looked like something a 5 year old would make – but at least it showed effort, right? 
I’ve mentioned what an idiot I am up there, and to prove this you want to know what else I agreed to? I volunteered to compile and type up the 25 page, fully Harvard referenced (damn you!) presentation. Why did I do this? Honestly, I don’t think the other people in my group would’ve done it or known where to start. I’m very academic – my biggest marks come from written assignments, so there’s an expectation that I should take on that side of things. So I did. And when I got home after working with my group all day on this presentation I realised I’d left my laptop cable at university… the night before the actual presentation. I think my poor mum went a bit deaf with all of the swear words coming out of my mouth on Wednesday evening.
On Thursday morning we ran through it and it was to time – we had 20 minutes exactly to present a business pitch and a game pitch, and ours was around 16 – 18 minutes. We were to present towards the end so we had about two hours to sit through some amazing pitches, which made us feel slightly intimidated. We got up there and I was totally ready, maybe a little excited, and as I was talking about marketing I was totally in my element. Unfortunately the other two members of the group weren’t quite as up for it – they sped through their words and shook through most of it. I stood there watching them feeling a little bit embarrassed but thought it’d be fine once we got to the game pitch because all they had to do was show it off while I explained everything.
When it was over I couldn’t help but thinking it went by really quickly – we were up there for 12 minutes. Twelve minutes. Damn. Our tutor e-mailed the whole class afterwards saying he would be lenient because it was the first time this module had been introduced and he was new to it too. But he did say he would mark us down on timing because nobody stuck to 20 minutes. We’ll just have to wait until next week to see how we did – fingers crossed and all that. And now this post is far too long, but I just had so much to say! And to force me into blogging more, I changed the layout again just to refresh it a little bit because it was getting a bit tired.
So, when was the last time you were so busy you couldn’t blog?
On Wednesday I made my way to placement quite optimistic and with a list of things I had to complete in my head – 1. press cuttings, 2. staff meet/greet/ass kiss, and 3. anything else. From 10am until 3pm I was sorting out the press cuttings folder and sorting it into year order from 2000. Bearing in mind there were two huge folders to sort, and nothing was in any kind of order. Why I have no idea. Why were the most recent entries in the middle, and not on the top? And why did nobody label them stating when and where they were from? In between this I bought some lunch and sat in my car for an hour. I just wanted to get out of there, partly because I was bored of the same 4 walls, and partly because I needed a cigarette. Yeah, still not kicked that habit yet.
After lunch my boss told me there would be a staff training session at 3pm that I must attend, it was absolutely crucial that I attend, the world would implode if I didn’t attend. Right? And what was this staff training about I hear you ask. Editing websites. And I’m not talking CSS or HTML editing, I’m talking adding pictures and writing paragraphs. Now, without trying to sound completely up myself, I know how to do this. I have done for a while. Mainly because I design websites and write a blog. But yes, on with the training.
A lovely guy, who I can only describe as a stereotypical computer geek, showed us how to open up a tab in Internet Explorer and carried on. But wait. My boss didn’t understand what he was saying, “What is a tab?”. Cue a simple, if not a little shocked, explanation. Next, how to login. You have a username and password and then you click OK. Just in case you were wondering. Step three involves editing a page; making things bold, adding headings, adding links (what on earth are links?), and the like. After 1 whole hour he’d managed to explain how to do this. I was due to leave at 4, it was now half past and he hadn’t even reached the image upload stage of the session.
As it reached almost 5 my boss looked over to me, smiled sweetly, and said, “Sorry Lizzie, are you taking this in because it’s quite confusing?” Yeah, I’m taking it in. It’s been “in” for a few years now. I quietly pointed out that I design websites and am quite familiar with the basics, and her face dropped. She looked uncomfortable to say the least, like she’d kidnapped me against my will and then realised what a terrible mistake she had made. Finally I was allowed to leave but not before she asked me to type up instructions for the rest of the staff who were still struggling with the concept of tabbed browsing and logging in. Leave it with me, I said. And quickly ran out of the door into the safety of my car.
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