I arrived at work this morning, and did something I shouldn’t but I always do: I checked my personal email.

Sitting in my mailbox was an email with the subject, ‘Results of your interview for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship‘. Very calmly, I clicked it and started reading.

On behalf of the Trustees of the Gates Cambridge Trust, Dr Gordon Johnson and I would like to thank you very much for being available for interview for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship.

A whole sentence and I still hadn’t gotten to the part that mattered. Then:

The Trust is delighted to offer you a Gates Cambridge Scholarship from October 2006, subject to the normal condition of your being offered admission to Cambridge. Please accept our warmest congratulations.

I considered it and tried a small smile. This was good news. Great news, right? Yes, of course. Great news.

A little box popped in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. “It’s Joan! Hi Joan!” So Vera became the first to know.

After signing off my illegal chat, I began an email to my lecturers and work mentor to tell them my results and thank them for the references they wrote for me. Jamie came in as I was about to send it.

“Hi Joan,” he greeted me.

“Hi Jamie. I just won the Gates scholarship. I’m going to Cambridge.”

He stopped, then broke into a huge smile. “That’s great! Wow. Congratulations. Wow. God, Joan. That’s so great! You must be excited.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, a little concerned by my equanimity.

“Have you called your parents? Have you called Damo?”

“Oh no. I’ll talk to them later. I’ll just send them an email.”

“I think you should call them! Wow. That’s so great. But damn, we’re going to miss you.”

I was more pleased by this comment than anything so far.

“It’s still ages away, Jamie,” I said. “The course starts in October. There’s still four months, a third of a year.”

“Now I’ve forgotten why I’ve come in,” Jamie said ruefully. We soon figured it out and began talking work.

After he left, I hit ‘send’ on my email to my referees. I thought about what Jamie had said. I picked up the phone to call dad.

“Hi dad,” I said when he picked up. “I won the scholarship.”

“Oh! That’s good.” I could hear the sudden smile in his voice more than in his words. “So you’re leaving us.”

“In October,” I said. “So you and mum can start planning your trip.” Mum and dad will incorporate London into a round-the-world trip next year.

I called mum next.

“Hi mum.”

“Hi Joan. What’s wrong?” I don’t often call mum at work.

“Nothing. I just wanted to tell you I got the scholarship.”

“Scholarship! That’s good. Ooh. You’re leaving! Well. I guess it can’t be helped.” I hear the mixture of pride and sadness.

“Only for a year,” I assured her. “You’ll have to think of all the computer questions you want to ask me before October.” I am mum’s IT support.

She brightened. “I can start buying you winter clothes!”

I finally got back to work. It was surprisingly easy to concentrate. I had already decided not to tell my managers at work yet, not until I had time to absorb the news, overcome that high that was surely coming, and work out the best way to let them know that I was depriving them of their carefully trained engineer for one year. I had been anxious that work would resent me taking off just as I was becoming a useful, autonomous professional. Somehow, I had to convey the gratefulness I felt for all the training and support they had given me, that they hadn’t wasted their time because I would be coming back.

My email inbox refreshed itself and suddenly there was a flood of emails. What was this? The email subjects were lined with ‘Re: [Fwd] RE: Fwd:’ There were emails from my lecturers throughout my degree, the engineering marketing people, and the Dean of Engineering. The news had spread like wildfire. The Dean had even copied in the Chairman of my company. They knew each other?

Cherida, head of engineering marketing, wrote, “We are all so pleased for you – the office is buzzing and your ears should be burning (all nice things)!”

That was so lovely. When I was studying, I made the effort to get to know the admin and marketing staff. It was a pleasure to be remembered.

Hours later in the mid-afternoon, the phone rang.

“Hi Joan, it’s Cara here, along with Paul and David.” Cara was head of recruitment at my company. “I know you’re in Shepparton and couldn’t it make it to this meeting but we thought we’d call you up so we can discuss the final selection of graduates to join the Environmental Management group.”

As you might remember, I helped interview the graduates two weeks ago.

We had four candidates and three positions to fill. One position had already been allocated to one of our vacation students. The position in the Air group we soon filled with a female candidate. So there was one position left and three to applicants to choose from.

It really came down to a choice between two boys, including my favoured candidate, John. They had both scored very highly in all the tests: the interviews, team exercise, personality assessment… It was a dead heat.

Fifteen minutes of discussion, and still, we hadn’t decided. Such a shame, I thought, to let either of these boys go. Can’t we have them both?

Then I realised I could break deadlock.

“I have something I want to say.” The talking ceased. “I didn’t want to tell you like this so it’s going to be a bit awkward.” I suppose they were wondering what I was going to say. “I was offered a scholarship to Cambridge this morning so I’ll be leaving the company for a year.”

There was a pause. “Congratulations, Joan!” exclaimed Cara. A flurry of congratulations followed.

“I was offered a place in the Masters of Engineering for Sustainable Development a month or so ago but I didn’t mention it earlier because I was still applying for a scholarship. I had the scholarship interview two weeks ago,” I explained. “I wouldn’t have gone without a scholarship.”

“No, that’s great!” Paul said. “I was going to ask if there was any way I could stop you from going!” He was joking, of course.

“Okay, so now you can hire both the graduates.” This was what I was trying to get to. If I wasn’t there next year, they would need someone to fill my place.

“That’s right!” said David. “Well, that solves everything. Good on you, Joan.”

This gave me an even greater buzz than the big email this morning. What great timing! I’ve made a difference in someone’s life and except for fifty minutes durins an interview, I barely know him.

“So we’re hiring an extra graduate,” Paul said.

I spotted his difficulty immediately. “I’ll send you all an official email to let you know about the scholarship. Then you can tell others.”

“Yes, we’ll have to explain to Tasos why we’ve getting four grads instead of three.” Tasos is the manager of the entire Environment Group.

So I sent the email, which in the end, was easy to write. The positive reaction from all my workmates so far made me think that there wouldn’t be the resentfulness I had worried about in the past months when I had thought about my application.

Tasos replied. “This sounds like a fantastic opportunity, Joan. We will welcome you back with open arms at the tail end of 2007.”

I got an email from Tia, a friend from work, “WAY TO GO, JOAN!”

“How did you hear the news?” I asked, puzzled. I hadn’t emailed anyone but my immediate managers.

“Paul has been talking about it. He’s very, very proud of you.”

It feels wonderful, to work for people who are very proud of you.

My salary review is coming up and I’ve just completed a postgraduate law workshop in negotiation. Guess what that means?

Nah, it’s hopeless. Dilbert’s Salary Law tells me so. Here, I’ll reproduce it for you.

Engineers and scientists will never make as much money as business executives.
Now we have mathmatical proof that explains why this is true:

Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power.
Postulate 2: Time is Money.

As every engineer knows,

Work
————–	= Power
Time
Since Knowledge = Power, and Time = Money, we have:
Work
————–	= Knowledge
Money
Solving for Money we get:
Work
————–	= Money
Knowledge

Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity regardless of the Work done.

Conclusion: The less you Know, the More you Make.

Damn. I’d better start saving now.

I’ve poked fun at corporate-speak before. I saw Wank Word Bingo in the office. It’s funny and clever. I reckon it would keep me awake in meetings.

The scary thing is that if you’re submerged in the corporate culture and everyone else is using wank words and you don’t know any better, you too will think that this is the way to speak if you want to be taken seriously. Lucky for me, I spoke a couple of times in the Plain English Speaking Award. That taught me a bit.

Tip of the week: Don’t use ‘utilise’ when ‘use’ will do.

I sub-loaned my company laptop to my boss. He went to Shepparton this week, while I stayed in Melbourne.

During this morning’s break, I noticed I had a few missed calls from Jamie. I called him back and he told me that during the week, someone had broken into Paul’s car and taken the laptop.

“I wanted to call and let you know. Did you have anything important on it?”

“Hmm… It had all my personal emails on it, which is a bit of a worry. But there’s nothing that can’t be replaced.”

Although the laptop is password protected, someone keen could probably extract my emails from the hard disk.

On the train home, I noticed all the people with white earphones — iPod owners or iPod owner-tryhards, as I’ve discussed before on this blog. Then I remembered: I had left my own white earphones in the front pocket of the laptop bag. Damn. Forty dollars, gone.

I think the company’s insurance would cover it. Surely, so.

At least it wasn’t my car window that got smashed.

Today was the second day of our negotiation workshop and the teacher introduced us to a class observer, Ann. Ann was visiting to see how the course could fit into a training program for school teachers.

During the morning break, Ann walked over to me. “Joan, I have to ask… Did you go to this Primary School?” She named a little suburban Roman Catholic primary school.

“Yes!” I was taken aback.

“I taught you!” she said excitedly.

“What?! What’s your surname?” She told me and my jaw dropped. “Mrs F? You taught me in Grade 1! Oh my god, that’s so amazing! You remember me?”

“I remembered your name.” Ann pointed to my name badge. Everyone in the workshop wore a name badge. “Oh, I remember how little and clever you were. You used to love writing poems. Do you still write?”

“I do! I have a website, a blog, which people seem to like reading.” I was delighted.

“And how about your brother, Jason? He was so cute,” she laughed, “and so shy. Is he still shy?”

I was so floored that she remembered both of us and our names from seventeen years ago. “Jason’s doing really well for himself. He’s not shy anymore, he’s very outgoing.”

“The stories I could tell!” Ann said. “I remember when we were at camp and at the concert, everyone had to go on stage and dance. Jason was huddled at the back, so scared. I thought he was going to have an asthma attack, he was that anxious!”

“And another time, we were learning about money. When I got the jar of coins back, just 5 and 10 cent coins, half the jar was empty! I looked at little Jason and his pockets were full and hanging so low. He had take all the coins!”

“I remember that!” I nodded. “Don’t know how I heard about it…”

“Well, it happened once and I thought, ‘Hmm, okay.’ But when it happened a second time, I had to talk to your father.” We both laughed.

“Oh my god, I can’t get over it. That’s so amazing. I was so little and you were huge, and now I’m an adult…”

“And I’m still an adult…” Ann added.

“I’m calling you Ann and not Mrs F…” I shook my head. “Unbelievable. And somehow, we’ve both ended up in the Negotiation class in the conflict resolution program. It’s such a small world.”

On Monday, I helped interview seven graduate applicants for positions in the Environment Group. At our company, there are two rounds of interviews. The first is with a senior manager of the group and a YP (Young Professional, that’s me). Those that make it through this round are interviewed by the human resources people, and participate in personality profiling and a group exercise.

Each interview on Monday lasted between 40 and 50 minutes. David and I asked questions from a form that HR had prepared. The questions ranged from, ‘What was your favourite subject at university?’ to ‘Describe a situation where you had to handle multiple tasks. What did you do and how did it turn out?’

Although the questions were pre-determined, David and I often had to ask the applicants additional questions in order to get STAR responses out of them. It wasn’t a test; we were trying to help them show us their experiences as fully as they could.

After I escorted the applicant out of the office, we came back together to determine a mark out of five for each response, then an overall mark.

The first two or three applicants were all right. I wouldn’t have minded putting them through to the second round. But then John walked in and it was all over.

“We want this guy!” I thought.

He interviewed so well. I wish I interviewed like him. He was well dressed, quiet. When we asked him a question, he thought about it and gave a relevant response. He didn’t sound rehearsed or eager to please, like the previous interviewee. He demonstrated his competence through his examples instead of just saying how good he was.

“Well, that’s the end of our questions,” David said. “Do you have any for us?”

“Yes.” John paused, then: “I know I’m being interviewed for the Environment Group. I’m a chemical engineer so I was a bit surprised to be offered this position but I’m happy about it. I’ve taken a few environmental electives and it’s an area I personally feel strongly about. But what can I, as a chemical engineer, offer to the Environment Group? Can you give me some examples of the work I would be doing as a graduate?”

David looked to me.

“There are quite a few chemical engineers and chemists in our group,” I said. “An understanding of chemistry is so useful in environment work. For example, I work in toxicology and human health risk assessment. For that, I need to understand the effect of chemicals on people, dose and response. You could be working with the Air Group on pollution control, which is really an application of process engineering. You could be auditing chemical processing facilities, like refineries.”

John nodded slowly.

“But I want to make one thing clear,” I continued. “You’ll come in as a graduate. I’m an environmental engineer but I look around and I’m doing the same work as scientists, planners, chemical engineers, botanists… You won’t be put into a ‘chemical engineering’ box. We want our graduates to do everything then figure out what they’re interested in.”

John smiled. “That’s good to hear!” he exclaimed. “I don’t want to be working on heat exchangers all my life. I’m interested in a place where I’ll be doing a variety of work.”

Normally, a job with our company is high on any engineering graduate’s wishlist. I just hope that John doesn’t get a better offer.

What happened

“Hello, Enoch speaking.”
“Hello, this is Joan. Is Elaine home?”
“Yes.”
[Long silence]
“Um…Could you get her so I can speak to her, please?”
“Okay, then.”

What I should have said

“Hello, Enoch speaking.”
“Hello, this is Joan. Is Elaine home?”
“Yes.”
[Pause]
“Okay, just checking. Bye.”
Beep, beep, beep…

I woke up before my radio did. I must have an internal clock; it was exactly eight hours after I went to bed.

The morning was for loose ends: spoonfuls of muesli, unpacking luggage, laundry, a bit of karaoke, then organising to meet Kate for brunch tomorrow morning.

I changed out of my sleep clothes into public clothes. I finally have a pair of jeans I like. I matched it with a red and white stripy polo top with three-quarter length sleeves. To combat the grey outside, I pulled on a black polar fleece.

It was bright enough outside to justify sunglasses — they’re prescription lenses, hanging off mauve frames. The lenses are grey because I don’t like the colour bias from looking through brown or green lenses.

Briskly down the hill I went. I haven’t walked for a long time, at least a week. I used to walk to and from the train station. Walking suddenly felt too slow. I remembered jogging around the lake at Shepparton last week. So I jogged, despite not wearing running shoes and my carry bag bouncing against my side. It did feel faster.

I saw the fluffy whiteness about ten metres ahead and slowed down as I approached. There was a cat lying on the grass under a tree. It was lying on its side; I’ve never seen a cat do that without rolling over within a few seconds. Perhaps…it was dead.

I stepped off the footpath onto the greeness. The cat had long white hair with grey patches. It didn’t move as a I hovered over it. Around its neck was a pink collar. I imagined the cat owner searching our neighbourhood and finally coming across the body. Perhaps someone had run into it early in the morning and felt enough regret to get out of the car, pick the cat up and lay it under this tree. I’m sorry, there was nothing I could do.

I wished I had brought my camera. I would have used a shallow depth of field and maybe underexposed it by a stop or two.

At the start of the week, Jamie and I drive north for two and a bit hours. We do mildly confusing work for another company, then drive about twenty minutes to our apartment.

We’re in a new apartment every week. They seem to get better and better. The one we were in this week was really a house with a full kitchen, king sized beds, thick fluffy towels and complimentary chocolates.

Even better, there was enough space for me to teach Jamie how to cha cha and samba. We spend a third of the evening cooking, the second third dancing, and the hours before sleep time playing the guitar and singing.

It’s a wonderful life.

	We start the evening by cooking in the kitchen. Jamie and I discovered that yogurt, cucumber and rice is a delicious combination.
	The mark of a good housemate: courtesy in regards to the use of the bathroom.
	Despite having a queen bed, I only ever sleep on one side.
	We didn’t turn on the TV all week. The DVD player got a workout, playing dance music. Jamie also kindly consented to being my karaoke machine.

Every year at work, we have a Professional Review and Development (PRD) process. In the PRD, each person writes about how they performed in the previous year, what skills they want to develop next year, and sets goals for themselves. Your team leader then reviews your PRD form and you have a formal discussion about it. At the discussion, your team leader will evaluate your performance for the year.

At my PRD review, I had two interviewers: my previous team leader, who looked after me for most of the year, and my new team leader, who will manage my training needs and evaluate me for next year.

Some time between the morning and my PRD review in the afternoon, I developed a severe cold. While Paul and Diane were talking to me, I was constantly snuffling into tissues.

“I’m sorry I’m so teary,” I apologised. “I seem to have a cold.”

“That’s all right,” Diane said, and continued saying things, quite nice things, about my work this year.

I nodded and tried to smile through my tears.

There was a knock on the meeting room door and my big boss, another Paul, stuck his head in.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Diane, could I –” He saw me. “Wow!” He looked taken aback. “Is it really going that badly?”