"David" in shorthand. It almost feels like I paid a PR firm lots of money to rebrand me or something. UPDATE: Aaaand I'm wrong. The dashes should probably be on the OTHER side. I think I might just take the "it's a personal language" defence...

I am now on my way to becoming a profeshnul riter and I have just finished my first day on my NCTJ (which is a series of letters I never seem to be able to get in the right order the first time) course.  I have already learnt some valuable lessons which are as follows:

1)  Despite being a swot and trying to learn a bit of Shorthand before the course, I know nothing and what I do know I now know I know wrong.

2)  In shorthand, my name looks a bit like the logo for some variation on Starfleet.

3)  When you interview someone, you need to ask for a contact number.  I already knew that you also had to ask for their age, but asking someone over the age of about 40 for their age is an exercise in diplomacy that I wasn’t quite ready for today.

4)  Work experience in a call centre is good because it trains you for people telling you to “go away” in much less polite terms than that.

5)  I have a lot of work ahead of me.

In reference to lesson number 5, I am actually remarkably excited about this.  I’ve often said that I like having lots of work, but this isn’t entirely accurate:  I like having lots of work that I’m going to enjoy.

This work in particular is looking highly enjoyable and to be perfectly honest, this might well have been the first day in about four years that I haven’t found myself constantly checking the clock on the run up to 1pm and 5pm, traditionally being feeding time and home time respectively.