Networking Meeting

Yesterday I was meeting with someone from Harvard about my career. She was telling me about this job in grants management that she thought would be perfect for me. It paid seventy-four thousand dollars a year, which for me is a lot of money. My eyes were turning into big dollar symbols just at the thought. "I don't know," I said. "This would be a big step for you," she said. "You'd have a lot of challenge and responsibility, and you'd be making a lot more money. How much money were you making at your last job?" "Like less than 50k," I said. "The money's not the issue. The problem is that I have a lot of trouble getting up in the morning. I have a hard time getting to work on time, and my job starts at 9:00. This job you're talking about starts at 8:00 in the morning. And no amount of money is going to make it easier for me to get there on time." I was feeling pretty embarrassed about sharing this with her. It's something peculiar about the way I'm made up that I didn't feel comfortable sharing. "Come here, let me show you something," she said. She turned to her computer, and I came over so that I could look over her shoulder. That's when I noticed that I wasn't wearing my designer jeans anymore. I remember feeling uncomfortable wearing them at such an important meeting, but I didn't remember taking them off. It was a good thing this woman couldn't see me, because otherwise I'd be in big trouble. Now, wait just a minute here. "I think I might be dreaming," I told her. She was surprised, and turned towards me, laughing a little. "What makes you think that?" she asked. Oh, shit! I wasn't dreaming, and I had just blown my cover completely, and here I was caught with my pants down! I looked over to where my jeans were lying on the floor, and so did she. "Oh," she said, very professionally. "I think you'd better get those back on." I'd like to say that at that moment I woke up, but I didn't. There were still a couple more dreams left to go, and I had to carry the shame of my blunder through all of them. But finally I did wake up, and my first breath of the morning was one of deep relief.