Thursday, December 3, 2009

moment of panic

Every time I have to do a research assignment for work, there is a moment early on in the process when I am looking at the research question and I just think to myself, "I have no fucking clue what my boss is asking for." I know I need to ask some questions to clarify what it is I'm supposed to be looking for, but in order to ask good questions I need to have some understanding of what I'm doing. In order to have some understanding of what I'm doing, I need to know a little bit more than zero, that is if I want to keep my job. And so I spend a couple of hours spinning my wheels, grasping at search terms and obscure ALRs until I have enough of a shadow of an idea to ask those clarifying questions. Does this happen to anybody other than me?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

At my job before law school, this happened a lot.

BOSS: Create the specs for project Z.
idwsj: what the heck is project z...

It was never clear when I crossed the line between utter madness and tenuous understanding of what was required :)

Anonymous said...

Yes, it does. And it's a sign that your boss sucks.

Butterflyfish said...

Yes -- I used to have that happen all the damn time!!!