Crashing

I sit in a room with 299 other 'best and brightest' - the state's top business managers from 299 different districts. And me. I feel horribly out of place.

I take frantic notes on everything said - feeling I'm only really 'getting' a small portion of it. Thinking I will never understand all the formulas and economic impacts that drive state education funding. Convinced, as I have been many times in the past 11 months, that I have made a dire, irreversible mistake by being in this job. "I will never get this", I think. "It will never make sense".

I look to my right at a women who barely gives me the time of day - she made brief introductions and went back to her Blackberry and her coworker - and I notice that she isn't taking notes. She'd DOODLING. Lots of doodles. Boxes and curls she's colored in black ink. She's not even listening, apparently.

And to my left, another 'senior' CBO is dozing. Literally.

And I think 'well, I may not be getting all of it - but I am paying attention, I am writing notes and I am trying. And that's more than those two are doing. So I think I'll be OK'.