They Tricked Me.

So basically, if you work in an office, it's just like school. There are differences in the details, but basically, it's just like school.

I was in the Real World this whole time and I didn't even know it. It's the same thing -- you have to get up at a certain time in the morning, and go and be polite, and be extra polite to the people who might write you a recommendation letter. You bring your lunch in a little bag and when lunchtime comes you go to the little refrigerator and warm it up. There are cliques and feuds. There are even field trips (like the cookout the office is supposed to be having).

You have someone who tells you what homework to do, and then you do it. In a job, less of that homework is done at home, but they make up for that with the eight-hour work day.

My lady friend was saying that in the place you don't ask about and I don't tell about, they have direct orders, where people tell you to do stuff, and then implied orders. Like, if you're supposed to be somewhere at eight o'clock, it's implied that you'll have to wake up sometime before eight to get there.

There are a lot of implied orders in the work world that I don't think I would pick up on if I didn't come from a segment of the ubiquitous "middle class" that is used to going to school and working in offices. For instance, if you have a math class, it goes without saying that you skim the chapter they're lecturing on the day before so you can take better notes. If you have an all-staff meeting, it goes without saying that you check up on what everybody's working on at the moment so you can sound informed if they call on you to talk. I might not have known that if I hadn't listened to my parents talk about their days. I might have thought they were going to tell ME what was going on.

Anyway, it's interesting to think I'm entering a new game only to find out that it's the same one.