Sunday, April 30, 2006

Ah, the irony

I just completed my first work back in the job circuit. I also had my first training of three so far.

Newsroom folks will know the cruel joke of our profession and our reason for choosing it -- and that is we are lousy at math, and excellent at sentence construction.

As my new job will have it, I'll be interpreting lots of columns and rows of numbers and percentages, and making correlations out of them. Sure brings me back to my college sociology major where I had to take 3 credit hours in statistics. That turned out to be the only college course I opted for the pass/fail option.

To my Singaporean friends, that option means I won't be receiving any grades, hence my overall grade point average (GPA) will not be affected.

It's been interesting so far, especially to have the privilege of a few to possess these figures of the marketplace and consumers' habits.

But it has also been frustrating cuz there's so much to figure out and so much unknown of the job to brace myself for.

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Amy: What are you doing??!!! Journalists can't do math!! you crazy girrrrlll!

Bob: the more you are scared of something...the MORE it comes to haunt you! Anyway, you need help with the spreadsheets, you know where to find me! I'll gladly help.

Melissa: Ohhh my! Just the mere mention of a college statistics class is enough to illicit sheer panic in me! LOL!!! I had to take a Psych Statistics course at USC (many, many moons ago!), and it would take 3 hours - and I can't remember how many pieces of paper - just to do one statistics problem! But I know you can do this new job! In no time, calculating those rows of numbers and percentages will be old hat for you! And then I'll be calling you for help with all my math questions! :-P I'm so glad the job has been interesting!!! Yay!

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