| M.P. |
Posted
on 18-Jan-03 04:25 PM
Disclaimer: The following post is meant entirely for the amusement of Sajha residents. No part of this posting shall be reproduced without permission from the writer. The author understands that this might be ‘a little too much’ for those out of the academic world—those who have ‘been there, done that’.
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A Day in the Real World:
As soon as I enter a twenty-, or more, storied building of one of the largest German bank, my job sponsor tells me a joke about a student who had joined the bank immediately after graduating from college. This young man, she says, was asked to find the price of a commonly used medicine, to two decimal places. He was hinted that the price lied somewhere between 30 and 40 dollars. This fresh graduate sits in front of a computer and starts searching the price of the medicine in google. First he searches for 30.01, then for 30.02, and so on. He had not finished searching all the numbers up to 39.99 until the end of the day. He was fired the same day. I laugh at the joke not bothering to ask if that was a real incident. “College education is not very practical”, she continues. “I hope you will see the difference between classroom education and real world work as you work with me this week.” Who am I to make judgment on the US education system? I remain quite and simply nod my head.
My work, just like that of the person I had just laughed about, begins with google search. I am told to find the number of deer and elk harvested in 2000, 2001 and 2002 in all fifty states of America and tabulate them in a spreadsheet. “Once you are done with that, you can go ahead and do a little research on Mad Cow Disease. Find how many people have died in Europe because of nCJD—human form of Mad Cow Disease—in the last decade. Get the date and number of occurrence for each country in Europe,” my job sponsor tells me. I feel overwhelmed. “You might want to include a short paragraph describing the trend of occurrence in each country, too. Then we can go for lunch”, she continues as if she expected to me finish all that work in the next three hours.
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| M.P. |
Posted
on 18-Jan-03 04:26 PM
I begin. With the department of natural resources of each state. Long distance call is free there. Emailing would be slow and inefficient. Besides, I need the data the same day. How many people respond to their emails the same day they receive them anyway? So I decide to ‘exploit’ the opportunity and call each state that does not have its statistics for hunting published on its web site. “Hi, I am [my name] from [name of my college] college. I am calling to inquire about the number of deer and elk harvested in your state in recent years”—this is how each call begins. Some respond quickly. Some take ages to search for the data until the phone line gets disconnected. Sometimes, the number I dial is wrong. “Wrong number sir. So early in the morning!” I feel sorry for these people. And often times wonder how lazy they must be to sleeping until 10am and to hang up the phone in just one sentence. Later I realize I had eaten up what I had learnt my high school geography. When it is 10am in Maryland, it is probably 7:30am in California. And 7:30am is early. Sometimes, my call gets transferred to a different department, and often times the process of transferring goes on and on.
“Hi, I am [my name] from…………”
“Just a minute sir, I will transfer your call to the department of wildlife.”
Someone, hopefully from the department of wildlife, picks up the receiver. I repeat my introduction. “Hi, I am [my name] from…”
“Give me a second sir. Our biologist must be able to help you. I will transfer your call to her.”
I wait. The biologist passes the phone to someone else again—most likely the publication office. To my dismay, an unfortunate thing happens. I hear “Hi, you have reached [name]. I am out of office until Thursday. Please leave me a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible. If it is urgent, call me at my cell number ……” Am I going to call one at his/her cell phone to get the number of elk harvested in the state of Illinois? Nah. I repeat the process for another state.
Sometimes, I make a fool of myself.
“Hi, I am [my name] from [my college] college, doing a research on elk harvest in USA. Could you provide me the number for your state?”
“New Hampshire does not have a elk hunting season, sir.”
I put down the receiver before I hear the person talking to me on the other side of the phone making fun of my ignorance with her colleagues.
During lunch, my job sponsor tells me, “You must have realized the rigor that our employees have to go through. That is why I came here. I never liked working at the golden cages.” By golden cages, it was obvious she was referring to the great ‘masters of illusion’—the World Bank and the IMF, where, they say, the employees do not work as rigorously as in the private banks, and have a hard time finding another job. I had been at the World Bank for a week last year. One week perhaps is not enough to compare the level of rigor of the work. I nod my head in agreement to what my job sponsor had said.
I return back with a PhD in google search and excel. At my college, a friend of mine introduces his girlfriend to me. “Hi, I am [my name]”, I say as I shake my hand with hers. I almost repeated “I am calling to enquire about deer and elk harvest in your state.” Never to a bank again, I say to myself.
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