Dealing with educated idiots

There are challenges that smart people have to deal with, and this is the worst. This one concern—dealing with people whose educations are valid, but who you'd never trust to know up from down—trumps all others. It beats the feeling of isolation smart people—especially smart introverts—experience. It cartwheels past suffering through the tenth iteration of an idea in a conference room full of people who just don't get it. It even tops the urge to disembowl stupid people who don't check their blind spot before switching lanes.

Dealing with an educated idiot (henceforth, an EI) is so difficult perhaps because the experience itself is an attack on a smart person's very essence. No matter how clearly you explain something, the EI just isn't going to get it. But it's difficult to gauge how clearly you're communicating. As Terry Goodkind's character Zed put it, "It's a lot like deciding if you can see as far as you could yesterday." So you can come away from an encounter with an EI thinking that you're a failure—that somehow you just can't explain this particular concept well.

That's the trap.

It's not your fault, Smart Person. The EI doesn't get it because, despite his pedigree, he isn't smart. No matter how you adapt your rhetoric to suit another learning style, you're not going to happen upon the one that works for him. Just give up.

Let his lexical ambiguities roll off your back. Let him blow himself out with his hand-waving and inane babble. There's just nothing you can do. Have the serenity to accept it. Eventually, he will go away.

The only thing you can do to mitigate this attack on your soul is to make sure that your encounters with the EI are observed by other smart people. Their furrowed eyebrows will give you validation when you fail to comprehend the meaningless word vomit the EI spews. When they ask the same question you are, attempting to phrase it with perfect clarity (the poor souls), and he pauses, ostensibly thinking, and responds with a reply that makes your brain explode, you will know you're not alone. And you're not really a failure. He's just an idiot.

The only thing that could make me miss Missouri

Buy a Toyota, get a cake!

Apparently when you buy a Toyota, you get a cake delivered to work.

Dry spell is over

I've decided that I need to start blogging again. What lies beneath that decision is the realization that I need to start writing down how I feel, what's going on, random thoughts, and whatnot, or I'm going to become insufferable to the people around me who have to hear about them. Despite my inability to craft a viable story arc, I like to think that I'm a writer at heart, and the mind's overflow can't be stopped--just channeled.

So, here we are. Again.

I'm single again. Sam and I broke things off for good this past Sunday, and it's sad. Not the deep, gut-twisting anguish where you analyze all of the things you might have done wrong, but just a quiet sadness at how things didn't get better. It was a long time coming, though, and we both just got tired of working at something that seemed determined to stay broken.

Helped Mark and Jennifer move to Columbia this past weekend. We haven't hung out physically yet, but it's only been three days, and I'm so used to talking to both of them over the internet that their new, geographic proximity doesn't seem real yet. We've got tentative dinner plans for tomorrow, though, so that'll be fun.

Work is pretty good. I can tell that, eventually, the new will wear off of this job, and I won't like it as much, but I'm along for the ride for now. So far, no two days have been alike, and I'm getting involved in project management and diversifying my contributions to the Division's functions to stave off boredom, but I can feel it building. I'm secretly afraid that I don't earn my salary and someone's going to figure that out one day, leaving me without an excuse. I wonder if that's something everyone deals with--the lingering fear that they're a fraud?

Plans for starting my own company have been put on the back burner for now. I know that that's the only way I'm actually going to keep up with best practices in the industry and make some serious money, or eventually go all the way into the private sector, but working for the University is pretty safe, and definitely not stressful. Plus, it wouldn't hurt to get a couple years of experience under my belt and really feel out how much my job requires of me before taking on additional projects in my spare time.

Getting an hourly job for the weekends, however, doesn't sound like a bad idea. It might be fun to work 10 hours a week at a Barnes and Nobel or a Starbucks. A little extra money for toys couldn't hurt either. I'll have to explore that.

Serious about security

I stopped at a Sonic for a quick bite to eat in Macon, Missouri, and
Sam paid with his debit card. The machine asked him if he knew his
PIN, and when he clicked "No," it smilingly declared the transaction
"Approved"!

Interview!

In other news, I have a job interview next week. For a real job! If all goes well, I will officially be a technical writer!

i win

The faculty admit that they need to get their act together, and I met the deadline.