Bewildered

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Congratulations on your first job!  You are fresh in the workplace with many many many assumptions about what goes on.  You’ve been chosen from a list of candidates and impressed the bosses.  You’ve jumped through this hoops and finally got initiated into this wonderful place. Do you think it’s going to get better?  Well, it can’t possibly get worse, right?

Wrong.

Because now the real work starts, and I’m not talking about the tasks on your job description (if you’ve been given one), I’m talking about the merging of yourself with your social surroundings: your colleagues.

Similar to your first day in school, there are people who will accept you and people who wish you never set foot in the company.  There are people who will help you and people who will try to make your life a living hell.  Well, welcome to the real world, it’s a thousand times worse than school, you can’t take a sick day just to run away from a test, and above all that you’ve got your career at stake.

You will feel bewildered, lost, clueless, and will wonder what you are doing there.  You will question yourself, your knowledge and skills, your upbringing, and you will definitely have a little bit of inferiority complex to top it off.  In the end, you can use the “smile and nod” technique, play the “strong and silent” role, or chew gum.
Smile, this too shall pass.