Monday, September 11, 2006
Where’s the Protest?
I just got out of a meeting with my boss to tell him that I was leaving LAF. He understood my decision and wished me luck in my future endeavors. What a jerk! Why couldn’t he beg me to stay? Or list the positive aspects of LAF? Or tell me that I’d be sorry? Or call me a jerk for only working at LAF for four months?
Break-ups (be it of the lovey-dovey type or the work type) are the worst thing ever. But when the breakee doesn’t mount any sort of protest, it really makes the breaker feel like shit. You want them to cry, break lamps, try to kill you, anything. But when they sit there and say, “You make a good case. Enjoy your life,” you want to kill them.
It’s such a funny psychological thing that everyone wants to feel like the world couldn’t possibly go on without you. But the truth is that it can. At least, I hope it can. Otherwise, the rest of us are in deep doo-doo. So when you leave a relationship, you want the other person to be totally crushed. But they always get over it. In fact, some people welcome the change. I have a bad feeling that LAF welcomed the change. “God, that guy was a dork. He kept telling me this joke about two actuaries hunting. That was NOT funny.”
And so my short career as a business valuation person is over. (I don’t know what to call one who does business valuations. A “business evaluator”? Eh, who cares? I don’t ever have to call myself that anymore.) I’ve come full circle now. Almost four years ago, I left the actuarial career. I spent a lot of time not working. Then I became a quality engineer. Then I went to b-school to get my MBA. I had an internship as a business evaluator and then a full-time job doing the same thing. And now after a lot of lost income (and a useless degree), I’m back doing the same thing four years ago. This is all going to be really funny in three years when I’m unemployed again, going to school for my doctorate.
Break-ups (be it of the lovey-dovey type or the work type) are the worst thing ever. But when the breakee doesn’t mount any sort of protest, it really makes the breaker feel like shit. You want them to cry, break lamps, try to kill you, anything. But when they sit there and say, “You make a good case. Enjoy your life,” you want to kill them.
It’s such a funny psychological thing that everyone wants to feel like the world couldn’t possibly go on without you. But the truth is that it can. At least, I hope it can. Otherwise, the rest of us are in deep doo-doo. So when you leave a relationship, you want the other person to be totally crushed. But they always get over it. In fact, some people welcome the change. I have a bad feeling that LAF welcomed the change. “God, that guy was a dork. He kept telling me this joke about two actuaries hunting. That was NOT funny.”
And so my short career as a business valuation person is over. (I don’t know what to call one who does business valuations. A “business evaluator”? Eh, who cares? I don’t ever have to call myself that anymore.) I’ve come full circle now. Almost four years ago, I left the actuarial career. I spent a lot of time not working. Then I became a quality engineer. Then I went to b-school to get my MBA. I had an internship as a business evaluator and then a full-time job doing the same thing. And now after a lot of lost income (and a useless degree), I’m back doing the same thing four years ago. This is all going to be really funny in three years when I’m unemployed again, going to school for my doctorate.
