"Where do you see yourself in 5 years time"?
Always nailed onto the end of the painful process of performance reviews. I can deal with all the other stuff like talking about targets and reasons for my under performance, all deftly deflected in an unconscious and practised ramble that gives them what they want to hear but the 5 year question and it's ilk, they're different.
I can't imagine that anyone would overly enjoy the process but for me, by nature I am predisposed to seeing what happens if I attempt things without the instructions, the prospect of being asked what I've actually done and where I plan to be in a given amount of time it's very unpleasant to say the least. It's the target thing , being pinned to specifics,grown up office talk and having to tick the boxes of" moving forward with this..." , I feel the same way about this as butterflies feel about pins.It brings out the old suspicion as well, the one I have about me getting away with something for a long time and hiding my incompetence. It's a feeling and doesn't have to make sense.
I didn't go to University, I got this job through going to college and doing voluntary work. I worked in a completely different world before and had no frame of reference. Before I knew where I was, I was in a room with 12 teenagers and a new job title "Life Skills Tutor", it all stemmed from there. I wanted to do this to actually help people do something with their lives, see there's the flicker under the cynicism, and now and again I think I still do. Sometimes though, I think a van will arrive to take me back to the real job I should be doing, the one where I'm chained to a moving belt and working in a factory because that's where I should be. They'll drag me screaming through the doors and bundle me into the back. They'll tell me I got away with it for a long time but it's time to stop now and go back to being,well, me. I suppose it's the difference between doing a job because you have something of the academic about you and wanting to do something more to make a difference and having to take qualifications to do it.
So, until I'm finally rumbled, the reviews will continue and I will be asked the same question each time "where do you see yourself in 5 years time"? and I will continue to give the same indirect , non-committal answers instead of the one that's the most probable,
" Sitting in this seat being asked this question but by some else".
Always nailed onto the end of the painful process of performance reviews. I can deal with all the other stuff like talking about targets and reasons for my under performance, all deftly deflected in an unconscious and practised ramble that gives them what they want to hear but the 5 year question and it's ilk, they're different.
I can't imagine that anyone would overly enjoy the process but for me, by nature I am predisposed to seeing what happens if I attempt things without the instructions, the prospect of being asked what I've actually done and where I plan to be in a given amount of time it's very unpleasant to say the least. It's the target thing , being pinned to specifics,grown up office talk and having to tick the boxes of" moving forward with this..." , I feel the same way about this as butterflies feel about pins.It brings out the old suspicion as well, the one I have about me getting away with something for a long time and hiding my incompetence. It's a feeling and doesn't have to make sense.
I didn't go to University, I got this job through going to college and doing voluntary work. I worked in a completely different world before and had no frame of reference. Before I knew where I was, I was in a room with 12 teenagers and a new job title "Life Skills Tutor", it all stemmed from there. I wanted to do this to actually help people do something with their lives, see there's the flicker under the cynicism, and now and again I think I still do. Sometimes though, I think a van will arrive to take me back to the real job I should be doing, the one where I'm chained to a moving belt and working in a factory because that's where I should be. They'll drag me screaming through the doors and bundle me into the back. They'll tell me I got away with it for a long time but it's time to stop now and go back to being,well, me. I suppose it's the difference between doing a job because you have something of the academic about you and wanting to do something more to make a difference and having to take qualifications to do it.
So, until I'm finally rumbled, the reviews will continue and I will be asked the same question each time "where do you see yourself in 5 years time"? and I will continue to give the same indirect , non-committal answers instead of the one that's the most probable,
" Sitting in this seat being asked this question but by some else".
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