Jananas

People have given me a lot of flack for being a planner. Let’s use Christmas shopping as an example. I hate the big, crazy crowds and the panic that comes from trying to get everything done last minute. Instead, I plan ahead and get the majority of my shopping done in advance. I’m enough of a natural planner that I can think far enough ahead to see this dilemma (crowds and time pressure induce my anxiety) to think of an alternative, however I see this planning as a coping mechanism.

It allows me to not deal with the stress and craziness, because I puttered away at it at my own slow pace months before. And yes, there will always be some last minute shenanigans but for me this copying mechanism helps minimize them so that they are less stress inducing when they do happen.

To take an extreme example, this past Christmas I had 98% of my shopping finished by the end of September. My train of thought was that I would be traveling from the beginning of October until mid-December. When I got home it would take me a little time to get things put away, deal with house stuff, get adjusted, run errands, etc. Which doesn’t leave much time for shopping (or for shipping of stuff ordered online!). So I just dealt with it ahead of time.

Planning is my coping mechanism so that I feel less stressed out by all the little details when the time comes.

What coping mechanisms do you use and for what situations?

I had an indifferent interview today. Not as terrible as they come, but certainly not good by any stretch of the imagination. It was one of those awkward situations where we just didn’t ‘fit’. We talked past each other, didn’t automatically understand what the other was getting at, didn’t ask questions. And its certainly a strange feeling to spend the entire interview feeling like the person interviewing you is trying to dissuade you from wanting the job.

But bad interviews happen. Its part of life. And even though I felt a little ‘off’ afterward that isn’t a bad thing. In fact, its probably better to happen now, early on in the process, so that I have experienced it. As I’ve been able to process it over the last few hours, I’ve realized where I didn’t understand things as well as I should have or how I could have asked different questions or phrased things differently to smooth things out. I feel like I have strategies now so that the next time it happens I’ll be better prepared.

The real reason for this post though is that I HATE STUPID QUESTIONS. Yup, dislike it so much that I felt the need to use all caps to express it.

I was interviewing for a financial analyst role (in this case, defined as doing mostly forecasting/planning/budgeting, with some added analysis, business casing, and ad-hoc deep dive stuff – all stuff that I’ve done before and am well versed in). It was for a Canadian company with a credit card offering. We talk, not very productively, about my past experiences.

And then this one gets dropped: “If you were in a financial analyst role at the TTC what’s one suggestion that you’d make?”

My first thought was, oh my aren’t we trying hard to be edgy and up to date. I can just imagine this person reading/experiencing all the typical TTC stuff being talked about in the news lately and then thinking ‘I could make an awesome and timely and relevant interview questions out of this’. It came off as lame and trying too hard.

More so, the question itself isn’t very good mostly because of how its framed. The question is asking me for a suggestion that might come out of a financial analyst role. Except that my resume (and work experience and even the job that I’m interviewing for) all highlight the fact that I have no transportation industry experience or government experience or anything that would be remotely relevant. Which means that I have no knowledge base from which to extract ‘financial analyst’ based suggestions.

My assumptions is that my interviewer was trying to get at how I would approach a typical problem – in which case a better question might have been “In a financial analyst role at the TTC, how would you approach finding a solution to a problem?”.  What this question sis asking for is the typical thought process I would go through when looking into problem. My answer would tell you a lot about how I think, how I approach an issue, what my problem solving capabilities are – all things that are relevant to the role.

And this question I could have answered – detailing what sort of expenses I’d look at (gas costs, maintenance, construction of new lines, salaries, union dues, etc.) vs. revenues streams (tickets, taxes, government funding), how to increase ridership, public policy issues that might impact decision making criteria, or even greater social good issues around the important of a good public transit system overriding typical answers from a strict cost-benefit perspective.

But I didn’t mention any of that. I was too flustered by how awkward things were and wasn’t able to really process what was going on and what I needed to do. I did try to take a step back and ask for clarification so that I had a better understanding of what the person was looking for (at least its a step towards better communication!), even if the fit was so off in this case that it didn’t really help.

Here’s what gets me though – I don’t even know how relevant the question was to the role I was interviewing for. The interviewer was trying to extrapolate my ability to provide drop of the hat suggestions (and jaw dropping, interviewing stopping, amazing ideas at that) on something that I know nothing about in an industry with significantly different considerations than the one I was interviewing for (i.e. public policy and social good issues) to my ability to perform a role with the same name in a for profit credit card industry. Maybe the question was more about thinking on my feet. But you know, a good starting point for that is asking good questions.

A good interview is as much about the skills of the person asking the questions as it is about the person answering them.

Miss Caitlin Jane passed the buck to me, re: Honest Scrap (aka the 10 things you don’t know about me). I’m not going to nominate anyone else as its a little too chain-letter-ish for my general tastes, but I thought that I’d at least fill my end of the bargain by sharing 10 things most people wouldn’t know about me with the world at large. In no particular order, here we go!

1. I bought my house less than a month after I turned 20. I’ve now lived here for 8 1/2 years. I’m a very permanent person and it wouldn’t be a stretch to call me a homebody.
2. I still don’t have my driver’s license. I grew up in Toronto and had easy access to the TTC so there wasn’t really an incentive to learn. Now its just sort of scary. In the past year I’ve taken my boating license and my SmartServe license. Maybe I’ll get around to it this year.
3. The first furniture I ever bought for myself was a set of three bookshelves (from PotteryBarn – I’m a quality sort of person) because I have a lot of books. I have all my textbooks from both degrees and even some from high school. I have books of my grandfather’s, books that we read in elementary school, business books, kids books, young adult fiction, fantasy, you name it. I’m running out of room and my solution is to buy more bookshelves.
4. I didn’t think I was a tattooed person until recently. Sometime last year I realized that I have something like 75+ hours of work. I think that part of the mental shift was getting visible work done. Being tattooed is strange. In the summer its visible and in your face. In the winter when I’m bundled up I’m just like anyone else at first glance.
5. I did so well on my GMAT that my score qualified for MENSA. I am a card carrying member of MENSA. I think that this is hilarious. Represent.
6. When I was in Grade One, my teacher thought that I might have learning disabilities. I just don’t suffer fools gladly and since I already knew how to add and subtract, I refused to do the classwork. Hence the worry. I still don’t suffer fools gladly, but I’m working on being more patient.
7. Falls is actually my middle name. There’s a family tradition to use old family surnames as middle names. Its why my dad’s middle name is Gray and my brother’s is Fraser.
8. I’m officially a United Empire Loyalist. I’m the third full general to be born in Canada and we have roots going back much farther than that (including united empire loyalists coming up out of the States in support of the monarchy and relatives who helped found Belleville, ON). My parents are both into genealogy. My dad’s had his family researched so much that we have everything from when relatives landed in North America. In fact, he’s even had a book written about it. My mom’s currently in the middle of doing the same thing for her side of the family. As part of my dad’s research he was able to prove that we are united empire loyalists, so he got us our official designations. Again, I think that this is pretty funny.
9. I don’t dye my hair. This is mostly because I don’t care enough to make the time (or spend the money) on the upkeep. And I think that bad dye jobs are terrible. And since I’m not willing to keep it up, I just don’t bother. I laugh when people (typically men) ask me if I do dye my hair. Given that I don’t have roots this always strikes me as a silly question… Good powers of observation there boys! Really, I just naturally have dark honey blonde hair and black, black eyebrows.
10. My second and third toes are partially webbed. On both feet. As are my brother’s and both my parents. I think that it makes me a better swimmer. I had all of my badges (up to lifesaving III) by the time I was 10. I eventually got my Bronze Cross and Medallion, but never got my Lifeguard certification. I didn’t want to have to be responsible for saving someone’s life. That’s scary and heavy stuff!

There, 10 things that you may or may not have known about me. Questions? Concerns?

Nothing says Caturday quite like just hangin’ around and being lazy.

When I first moved into my house (and my bedroom onto the third floor), I picked up some cheap Ikea curtains. I was a student, they got the job done, it was a good match. An added benefit was that their red colour made for some awesome light to nap in during the afternoons. However, after eight years they were starting to fall apart – the metal rods came out, the string/ties had all broken, and the fabric was really faded (especially on the side facing the sunlight).

Over the last few years I’ve begun the shift away from university student and the Ikea lifestyle towards quality. (As an aside, I’d rather pay more money for good quality and have something for life than pay money for crappy quality and the ‘cheap’ disposable lifestyle). I only have a few pieces of Ikea furniture left and am slowly replacing things as they wear out/break (there’s no point in spending the money before you have to). These curtains were getting close to that point.

I had some extra fabric lying around the house. It was leftover from when we sewed the backing onto Jason’s ginormous Fibonacci afghan. Its a basic medium gray cotton jersey, so we thought that it would make a good neutral curtain. I like the room to be dark (as in pitch black) when I sleep, so we wanted to find something to line the back. I had an old navy fitted sheet lying around so we cut the elastic out and used the cotton sheet to line the back. The end result was some basic, very dark curtains for about $10 total. Thankfully my roommate has some seamstress skills, so she was able to whip these up for us in about half an hour.

Jason had fun getting to hang the new curtain rods ($10 in hardware). Our bedroom is on the third floor of the house, so we have lovely sloped ceilings that make it difficult to place furniture.

This is a photo of one of the two curtains all finished and in place. There’s a small hook on the right hand side to tuck the curtain to the side when we want light in the room. The first night we had these up we were amazed at just how dark the room was as a result. I’m happy that we were able to make something better than what we would have been able to buy and at a lower cost ($20 total for both). I’m also happy that I got exactly what I wanted (a dark, dark room) while we simultaneously used up fabric that otherwise would have been donated to Goodwill.

The chair in the picture is one from my Nana’s house. It and its non-matching partner (a gold brocade chair) sat on either side of the fireplace in her living room the entire time I have memories of her house. She moved into a retirement community at the same time I moved into my house. I was able to save a lot of her furniture from being sold and get to keep the memories and our history in the family. I like that continuity and hope to some day be able to share stories with the next generation about their great grandmothers.