I learned yesterday that I was changing teams at work and going to work for a new manager and, in fact, a completely newly constructed team.
As usual the new manager walked the office taking each of us into a private office for a quick "chat". This is standard and is used to break the ice while also feeling out if you have problems with your other team mates, personal needs that need consideration or outside commitments that your manager should be made aware of.
We got talking. I had very little to say; so i thought. And it is here that I digress a little to fill in some background detail. I talk about my degree to my friends at work because they ask. And only because they ask. My partner constantly checks how things are going or how I feel they are going....BUT amongst my outside work friends it is not a topic that interests them; or at least the majority of them that is. There is one who asks every time I see him.
So, I am sat in this, rather dull, interview room talking to my new manager. He's a bit of a jack the lad type; fun, light and laid back in manner. He was wearing jeans and a football shirt (West Ham I think...but I'm not sure). I mentioned that I would need a few study days here and there this year and probably more next year - my final degree course - and I would try and give him as much warning as I possibly could so the team wouldn't have problems.
He didn't know I was studying. He said it would not be a problem. I explained I was NOT studying with the OU, but with the Open College of Art. He was intrigued but seemed reluctant to probe further. I explained that I would try and keep my studies out of the work round as much as I could.
He then asked whether my degree was creative; I said yeah, Creative Writing.
His eyebrows shot up, he tilted his head and said "Really! Wow!"
I am not used to this kind of reaction and unless asked I rarely make it know that I am "on the path" as I like to call it. So I thought this would be all indifferent business - how it affected the team, the time I would need etc.
Interest, genuine interest was something new.
"So are you hoping, at the end, to take it further?"
I didn't know what that meant at first. I nodded and said yeah but I must have sounded unconvincing...he carried on.
"What I mean is, in a few years, will I be able to download something you've written onto my Kindle."
I was taken aback - he would have been the last person I would have expected to have been a reader.
"Yeah, hopefully," I said.
"That is SO cool", he said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "I read loads, crime, conspiracy, mystery...anything really. But I would love to read something written by someone I actually know."
I had a fan and I hadn't even lifted a pen in a subject he liked.
Sat back at my desk - soon to be someone else's as I shall physically move out - and I replayed the conversation in my head. He was interested. There was light in his eyes - a light I like. Enthusiasm, genuine interest and a sort of hunger.
I felt good - not because he was interested. After all, I might not write anything he would want to read. No - it was the admission that AFTER the degree I would go further. I knew I would. I have always known that doing the degree was a way of learning, achieving a qualification and then moving on to write. But to be asked so openly, enthusiastically and with interest and not retreat into evasion was liberating....it felt good because I admitted what I wanted to do.
Confidence? Not sure about that - but an undertaking to work hard ( and harder) in pursuit of what I want.
