2000-08-16

Math

As if I'm not already in a foul mood due to the weather, I am now flailing about in the full-tilt, number-ridden hellishness that is our annual audit at work. It's been going on for the better part of a week now, and I've mastered the art of perching nimbly on my chair, ready to drop the task at hand and sproink downstairs to the Controller's office at any given moment, to explain why such and such got booked into this cost center and all that other glorious crap.

Remind me that I work for one of the best regional theatre companies in the country, and that 10 years ago, I would've been elated at the prospect of even getting to work in a theater every day.

It's not that I'm ungrateful. It's just that when confronted with the bare-bones gist of what my job title really and truly entails, I am bewildered: how the fuck did I end up behind this desk?

Here's the deal: my father is an accountant. I inherited not one iota of the man's mathematical prowess. At least that's what the teachers and guidance counselors told me. I repeated Algebra twice in high school, barely passed Geometry, and spent my senior year in a class that my more mathematically-inclined friends called "Fun With Numbers." I spent much of my time in these classes finding increasingly flashy ways to etch "R.E.M.," "INXS," and "U2" onto my notebooks and brown-paper-bag bookcovers. I actually once had the cojones to spend an entire "Fun With Numbers" period working on my theatrical resum�, which I then presented to the teacher, who "really enjoyed (my) work in West Side Story last fall," for his thoughts and/or comments.

I'm dead serious.

I honest-to-God was on the Math Team in high school, despite all that I've just told you. Many of my friends were on the team, and so I figured: "why not?" I greatly enjoyed going to the "meets," where invariably there would be donuts, and we always went in my friend Scott's big blue "get-the-fuck-outta-my-way" Chrysler, blasting Rush all the way like the gigantic dorks that we were. The group picture in my yearbook is hilarious; you look at it and want to sing: "One of these things is not like the others....one of these things doesn't belong..."

There was talk of making me a t-shirt that read: "Math Team Mascot: I'm In It For The Donuts."

Several years later, while strolling through the "infinite corridor" at M.I.T., I ran into Scott. We made idle chit-chat for a few minutes, and then I finally let him ask me: "So....what are you doing here?"

I've been in my current position for almost 4 years now, and I haven't brought the institution to financial ruin, and the auditors actually talk to me like I know what they're saying, so apparently I seem to have a knack for this math stuff, or at least I'm real good at faking it.

Here's something funny: last week a headhunter actually called me at work to try and get me to jump ship for a similar position over at another nonprofit. She explained to me that they were about to embark on a $10 million Capital Campaign, and they were looking for someone with my expertise. After throwing all of this at me (I was in the middle of plugging formulas into a spreadsheet, so I humored her along by punctuating her spiel with "mmhmm"s and "I see"s), she cut to the chase and asked: "So, Lisa, what would it take to entice you away from your current position there at the theater?"

"No math," I immediately replied.

lisamcc at 17:25:37

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