To be, or not to be

Preparation, noun:
The action or process of preparing or being prepared for use or consideration.

To be prepared, or not to be prepared, that is the question. Well, it wasn’t Hamlet’s question… but if it was, my answer would probably have been “yeah, well… sort of, no not really”.

I’ve never been very prepared. I often leave things to the last minute and just bumble my way through. It’s not necessarily a bad trait but it’s quite an annoying one. When I try to prepare I just end up overthinking and making a mountain out of something which is probably quite straightforward.

Like an interview for example. But hey, what can you do? If you want a job, you have to have an interview. Although I didn’t interview for my last job, so that is a bit of a lie, but if you frequent somewhere enough, they’ll end up asking if you want to make yourself useful and do some work whilst you’re there and pop you on the payroll.

But when you know you’ve got to go in there, full SWOT analysis at the ready, prepared to sell your soul, nothing says ‘I’m perfect for the job’ more than staying up until 3am to club something together and hoping it isn’t obvious. I mean, it’s probably apparent from the dark circles below the eyes but other than that… nailed it.

I also took this approach during school. I fluked my GCSEs, got 12 A*-Cs whilst putting in virtually no effort. I’m quite smart (toot toot) and have the capability to take in a lot of information, but my god did Year 11 bore the crap out of me. Plus my teachers were truly some of the worst people I’d met and those I did like didn’t teach my set, which was inconvenient.

The first teacher I ever genuinely respected was Mr Mount for A Level English Language, and I think I speak on behalf of everyone he taught by saying they would agree entirely. Although really, I was still incredibly under prepared for that one too.

Not just English Lang, I was also unprepared to the point of not knowing which day my Philosophy exam was and turned up 45 minutes late. Luckily the head of year let me take it in another room, but I did have to do a dramatic cry to win that battle.

I’ve managed to be a flukey bugger and make my way through things that I should have crashed in. So from my experience, it’s probably better to go in to things prepared. Not to the point that you’ve removed all potential elements of fun and surprise, but preparation breeds confidence and hey, who doesn’t like to feel confident?!

And if it all goes wrong, there’s always bar work and recruitment.

M x