homework

I’m officially ‘working from home’, which really means working at home. In effect I am at home, trying to work, but being distracted by stuff.

I’m working from home because I have no office to go to, no desk to sit at, no phone to call people with, and no PC to work on. In theory this state of affairs is the result of lawyers wrangling over leases, but could just be bad management by my employer. I’ve not been around long enough to know.

I have no laptop and no mobile phone I can be contacted on should I leave the office I don’t work at. The absence of these essentials is bad management; my employer has known for months that it was about to employ someone yet the IT remains on order.

The ‘work’ I’m doing at home is reading. I’m also considering a strategic plan sent to me by the colleague who has been in the job for six years. The plan is dated 2010. I’m charged with writing a bit of a biography and informing my national colleagues of my existence.

I have a calendar for the next two months which includes travel to Sydney, Darwin, Brisbane and Canberra as part of my training. I will both observe my more experienced peers presenting professional development workshops to groups of teachers, and present some of the training as I feel on top of the material.

I receive an email today from the project manager who will fly in next week to induct me and the other new Victorian project officer. She asks if I’ve made arrangements for my trip to Sydney. I reply cheekily that I don’t know the travel process and hope it’s part of the induction.

This is my fourth week in the job, the dream job. Sometimes it feels like a dream, as if it isn’t really happening, because not much is happening. I spend my first four days in intense learning in Adelaide and Newcastle, then four days doing bugger all mostly at home.

No expense is being spared to train me, but I don’t have a chair to sit on.  

       

Rock on.