When Winging it Doesn’t Work
The painful embarrassment of being found out in a professional environment.
If you’ve been here a while, you’ll know that in the main I operate as a grown-up good schoolgirl. I hand my articles in early; I like to overdeliver. But from time to time, there will be an instance where I’ve either overcommitted and underprepared…or else, I’ve been, how can I say this without revealing too much,…um, cocky?
Eight out of ten times in tight spots, I will brazenly wing it, drawing on the confidence of having spent more than two decades convincing people that my ideas are worth listening to. But on occasion, I will find myself cringing in the curling embarrassment as I drop a clanger and utter something which very clearly exposes the fact that I have no fucking idea what I’m talking about. I have demonstrably not read the attached files, definitely not even skimmed the deck. Actually, it’s a mystery I even made it through the door, because I haven’t got a scooby what’s going on.
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