Something in the office smells like bologna (or ‘baloney,’ if you’re one of the people who spells it as it sounds), probably my favourite lunch meat ever, which is affecting my gut. I’m so hungry! Ack. I could take lunch now, but that wouldn’t make an even split in the workday. Must … hold … off … just … a … little … longer …

The lady who works nearest to me - I’ll call her ‘Alice’ because she reminds me of that character from The L Word - let me know today that all was not as simple as it looks. That is to say, I mentioned that I was going to sign up for the 8-day insurance course that is occuring the week of the 24th of July, and her jaw dropped. “That’s not enough time for you to prepare for it!” she exclaimed. Personally, I’m appalled. Sixty-four hours straight of studying seems like overkill for any test, really. But the way she put it, it’s “extremely intense, and the test is really tricky. They’ll try to get you on a lot of the questions, and the material is not going to be stuff you’ve seen before.”

The question is, how am I meant to get this done - pre-studying and all - before my four months are up? The answer: it ain’t gonna happen. Let’s hope Big Boss Man doesn’t notice this. I’m getting it all done as quickly as I can, but you don’t realize how much stuff there is to do and how much information there is to take in (interesting though it may be) until you’ve been here awhile.

I read in a Yahoo! Health blog today that the human brain loses its attention span six to eight times every minute. Crazy, innit? But it makes sense for me. I’ve been getting more bored/distracted/otherwise occupied so frequently lately, it’s not even funny.

Props to Alice, though. If she hadn’t told me about the insurance program, I assume I would have gone to the late-July course grossly unprepared. For a training program, those in charge aren’t doing much ‘training’ at all. Maybe it’s a ploy to get us all used to working independently, but let’s be honest, the Firm and its business is a complex thing, and a little guidance would be helpful! As is, it comes as no shock to me that no one is left out of the last fifty-two trainees, as stated by a friendly neighbourhood informant. Little is being done to keep up the morale of the trainees, I’ll tell you that. And it frustrates me to death.