One week with a lot of enthusiastic meetings and talky-talky happy times!
One week with a lot of meetings with various people from various constellations being all enthusiastic.
One week of me trying to have a smiley face and being all enthusiastic while hiding the devil's horns in the forehead and the stick in my hand.
Today it didn't really work. The horns were out. Or at least the smile was off the face, the girly "I'm sad and don't know why you hurt me" face came on (for certain people I work with I have found that this is the best way of getting the point across. So sure me.). I ended up in a meeting where afterwards I got corned by one of the faculty, who hasn't done what they promised and should do to keep external people happy. They asked about the long face, why I wasn't on the enthusiastic bandwagon (my word, not theirs) and that "my opinion and thoughts are important and they need me to be emotionally involved".
I smiled and said that it has been a little stressful and disappointing since I've been on a dozen or so emails where people are asking why X hasn't been done and why I haven't helped with it. I have. It's just that I can't fix it - they can though. They proceeded to look at me and ask "why do you care about those emails?" I just smiled and kept quiet since it would've opened a can of worms if I did mention the fact that: if you talk big talk in the beginning of a project, you make people enthusiastic about it, they get happy and start working on things and the project start taking off.... - then the enthusiasm is moving on to "new-shiny-project" and "former-new-project" is not as interesting anymore and then the project is not getting priority and therefore only finished if you threaten or.
Yes. That is my issue. I like to follow through and finish. Especially projects. And I know how to deal with all of this on a regular basis but when I get caught on emails that are circulated with people and I feel cornered - I'm not great with playing ball.
So, tonight it's wine and a movie to get over this. Then, next year I will be better at this and not "care about the feelings of faculty" and therefore act on the "active button" earlier on from the external people and then get stuff moved on.
Oh the joy I can see coming :) Leaving with another one of these wonderful posters with pointers. Happy Times!
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