Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Where o where has my little brain gone…

I’m losin’ it. I don’t know what has happened to my brain. It’s here one minute and completely checks out the next. Let me give you a recent example.

In my line of work, I organize meetings for grant applicants within my council of governments’ region to give presentations of their grant projects to a committee. This committee scores the grant projects based on certain criteria. I turn in the final rankings from those scores to the Governor’s Office. The Governor’s Office then decides what projects get funded based on the rankings from each region. So, it’s pretty important to get stuff right when organizing/facilitating these meetings.

This morning was our last scoring meeting of the year. I double-checked all the to-do’s, got my information together, and checked with our administrative assistant to see if we were missing anything. She said everything was ready, but I still felt like I was missing something. I went into the meeting room to make sure everything was set up properly and sat down to go over the presentation I was giving. This was at about 9:15 a.m. The meeting was scheduled for 10 a.m.

At about 9:40 a.m. I realized that I had not contacted the other presenter!! They had no clue they were supposed to be here in 20 minutes to give a presentation on their grant project. I had committee members driving in from 50 miles away to attend this meeting and I hadn’t notified the presenter!!

I rushed to my desk, frantically looked up the grant applicant’s phone number and prayed they would be able to make it with such short notice.

Luckily for me, the applicant was able to make it by 10:30 a.m. – which wasn’t a problem because we were able to move the agenda around and the committee took care of some other matters before getting to the presentation. However, I still feel like a giant a**.

Here’s my apology letter to the applicant.

Dear (applicant),

I feel like a giant a**. This is not normally how I do business, so I’ll blame this incident on the baby who is apparently sucking brain power from me in order to continue developing his or her brain. Apparently this stuff happens during pregnancy, so please excuse my mind’s absenteeism during the next six months.
Sincerely,

Jill

Ok, that’s not what I wrote, but I really wanted to. Isn’t it easier to blame it on someone else, even if they aren’t “technically” present to defend themselves? This is what I really wrote.

Dear (applicant),

Thank you for making such an effort to be here this morning. I sincerely apologize for not notifying you of the presentation time and date for your grant project in a timely manner. Generally the applicant is notified at least a week in advance...

And it continues on in a professional fashion. Hopefully they don’t completely hate me. Everything ended well, and it was the last scoring meeting for the year, so I’m home-free until next year!

3 comments:

KarenD said...

Ah, yes, the absentmindedness of pregnancy. Darn frustrating... just wait until the zombie phase of the first few newborn weeks. You'll wonder if your brain will ever function normally again.

Jill Anderson said...

Awesome. They should add that to the "things they don't tell you about pregnancy and shortly thereafter" list. :)

KarenD said...

Oh yes, they call the first three months of the baby's life "The Fourth Trimester," and it makes sense! I'd say it's harder than the third trimester, BUT the best part is you have a baby you can SEE and HOLD which is AWESOME!

Kinda like in marriage... if it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be SO worth it!