Day 4

Note: Because I was sick last Wednesday what is supposed to be my fifth week at PSI is actually my fourth.

I was up early enough this morning to grab a copy of the NYT to read on the train. And, once I got downtown I stopped at Starbucks to get a Grande Caramel Apple Spice. I am a stereotype (albeit one that doesn't drink coffee). As my assignments were being doled out this morning at least 2 or 3 people asked me if I was feeling better - this is like .016% of the office staff, but it's nice to know they've noticed my presence, even if the security guard still doesn't recognize me.

When I walked into "my" office there was a Word document up on the screen titled "Writing Test" and then had some questions about how you would write a letter to the president, and so on. My first thought was "Jeeze, I'm only an unpaid intern. This seems like a little much." Turns out HR was using the office for what I imagine was a job-interview thing. "You can sit here, at Thidar's desk," my supervisor told me. "Oh, is Thidar not in today?" I asked. "Poor Thidar. She's stuck in Myanmar." Oh... It's not uncommon for things like that to fly around the office. Being stuck in Myanmar is kind of extreme, but at least once a day I overhear something like "No, we can't schedule it for that day. _____ is going to be in Namibia."

This morning I had to prep a bunch of files for an annual budget meeting. I was doing all of this for Luke, who heads up the Zambia and Zimbabwe departments. I can only assume this meeting was very important - there were several utterances of "I *expletive* hate these *expletive* things" and "My boss is so anal about this!" (He's still walking around, so I think it went okay). Luke put me on a timetable - "I need all of this in half an hour," - and instead of feeling flustered, pressured, or just scared of screwing something up I felt capable. I can finally make it to the media room without walking multiple laps around the 6th floor. It seems I've even begun to understand a little bit of what the hell all of the documents I'm working with are about because I've started to notice (and correct) mistakes in some of them. Basically, my confusion about PSI has lessened, and is shifting from the general (Wtf do they do here?) to the specific (What's the best thing that I can do here?).