Load off my mind

This story goes back, to the year 1999. I had been working full time in my first HR Manager job. Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings I attended classes to get my HR diploma. It was intense, but very educational on both ends.

After 18 months of working, driving to school, and studying, this scenario was coming to an end. I had my oral exam dates. Federal exams were divided into to parts. The written one hat taken part in the Zurich area in summer, and the oral part was going to happen on two consecutive days somewhen over the course of almost three weeks in the French part of Switzerland.

That makes about 15 days, right? 

What were the odds that I was invited on the one day I could not miss work? 

Being the responsible person for all Human Resources matters, I was supposed to represent the management in the annual salary negotiations as part of our industry's bargaining agreement  I had to be there!

I sent an e-mail to my classmates, asking if anyone would be so kind as to switch their dates with me?

Switching dates was frowned upon, and I could see why. Several hundred people were taking these exams, and the people who coordinated them, were super busy making sure everyone got their turn. One of the hurdles was that the student and the two teachers who were conducting the exams, were not supposed to know each other, and there were only so many schools and teachers. 

One girl immediately called. 

"Did you find anybody? I still have so much studying to do, and the gift of two more weeks would make a huge difference."

At the time I was too busy to take care of the switch date request and asked her to do it.

Her motion was dismissed, and when she sent me the entire paper trail, I could tell why. It was done unprofessionally and sloppy. 

Darn, that's what you get for delegating and trusting other people to do stuff.

I sat myself down to craft a very polite, yet determined, letter explaining my situation, asking them to reconsider, and within a short time it was granted.

Phew, done!

Now on to the next challenge: Accommodation! In the meantime it had gotten late. And remember 1999 was before booking apps. You basically had to cold call hotels. Of course they all told me the same 

"There must be a convention or something, we are fully booked."

Yeah, couple hundred students - and experts - were coming to town for their exams.

Now what?

My first meeting was at 8am. If I didn't find a place to sleep, I would have to get up at 4:30am and hope that traffic wasn't too bad. That really wasn't an option. I had to keep trying. I ended up following a helpful person's recommendation. I called a Chinese Restaurant that supposedly had rooms they usually rented out to their employees. Maybe one was available, you never know?

I had the hardest time communicating with the person who answered the phone. They did confirm, however, that they had a room at my requested date.

Of course this not beeing a real hotel, there was no written confirmation, and I could only hope things were going to work out.

The day before, I arrived in the late afternoon with enough time to spare to purchase a cheap hair dryer because while driving I realized I had left mine at home. I grabbed something to eat in the city and then set out to find the restaurant. 

Again, it was the year 1999. No GPS in the car, no smart phone with Google Maps. Just a description they gave me on the phone. The address was in the Old Town, and on some of these cobble stone roads there was a driving ban. I eventually managed not only to find the place but also a parking space that allowed overnight parking.

The room was a tiny broom closet, it smelled like spring rolls, and to my horror the cell phone reception was super bad. I basically had to open the window and lean out to get more than one bar. 

Why was this bad? It wasn't like I was able to watch some YouTube on my late 1990s Nokia phone. 

I thought a phone needed reception for the alarm clock to work. It wasn't until many years later when I told my now husband about it, that he let me know that I was completely mistaken.

Blonde moment? Would you have known?

I was super stressed out, checking up several times on my phone that I had placed on the window sill. Imagine, I had managed to move up my exam date, and to find a place to stay, only to oversleep in the morning?

Who was I kidding though. I barely slept at all anyway. While I felt fairly well prepared for the exams, I was still nervous. I didn't know what was expecting me, I had only heard the odd horror story of bright students totally failing the oral tests.

I took a shower, washed and blow dried my hair, courtesy of my new travel hair dryer. Then I put on my business suit I had dry cleaned especially for the occasion. It smelled like frying fat. Geez! I should have left it in the car, taken it to the exam location and changed in the bathroom!

Too late. It was pretty cold outside, but I walked to the campus without my coat. I hoped the 15+ minutes' walk was going to help air out my clothes. I don't think it did.

I had a handful of exams, and most of them went well. At least I thought so. Except one. We were talking about labor cost budgets. What were the requirements, what were things to consider, what yearly increase made sense,..?

Numbers are not my favorite subject, but I think I winged it more or less. Just when I thought it was over, one of the experts asked "what might be a reason not to create a budget?"

I was perplex. I had never thought of that. Where I worked, our finance people kept giving me a hard time about budgets and projections. My mind was racing. There must be a logical answer to this question?! 

My first reaction was to joke about it "tell me a place with no hassle about the budget, and I'll apply for a job!" However, this was probably not the time or place to crack jokes.

The only idea I could come up with was the scenario of a stable one person business where costs were recurring every month, quarter and year? Or, if you were in the lucky position of having tons and tons of money at your disposal and costs didn't really matter? (Again, let me know if that company exists, and I'll apply..) 

To this day I never found out the answer, btw. I asked classmates and teachers, they all thought it was a bogus question.

Back home, we had a couple more final lessons before the course was officially over. We were informed what the next steps were going to be. We were going to get a letter by mid-November. If it was a thin one, it meant you passed. A thick envelope, however, was going to include registration forms for next year's courses and exams.

I tried to go about my days for the remainder of October and the first weeks of November. I was busy at work, so it wasn't too hard. One morning a classmate started an e-mail thread. "I passed" she wrote. "I'm so relieved. What about you guys?"

Immediately I canceled my lunch plans. Instead I raced home to check my mailbox. It was empty. Darn.

Same procedure the next day. My neighbor's newspaper was in my mail. Bills, bills, a postcard from a friend who spent some time relaxing on Gran Canaria, good for them. And then there was an envelope. From my school! It was pretty thick. 

My heart sank. 

How could this be? 

I always had good grades, I passed the written part, which was a requirement to be admitted to the oral examination, where I thought I did well, too, except the stupid no budget question!

With trembling fingers I tore open the envelope. A bunch of what looked like advertisements fell out. I picked them up. They were from the Lucerne tourist office. Hotel and restaurant recommendations, things to see or do,...

What the...?

There was a letter, too. 

"Congratulations on passing your exams. You scored (insert really great result)! Enclosed you'll find your personal invitation to the graduation ceremony which takes place (insert date) at the convention center in Lucerne."

A load off my mind!

I decided to pull my classmates' legs. Some had replied to the the thread, confirming they had passed, too.

"Hey guys, I can't believe I got the fat envelope. I'm afraid to open it. Those who passed, please tell me exactly how thin your letters were?"

Everybody had a good laugh. Evrybody except the girl with whom I swapped dates. The additional two weeks she carved out, didn't help, and she failed. 

PS: the pictures were taken last year and the year before, so they're current. Just to give you an idea what the bilingual (French / German) city of Fribourg in Switzerland looks like. 

So tell me, did you know the the alarm on your phone does not require cell phone reception? Have you ever slept at at Chinese restaurant? Did an unanswered exam question haunt you?

Let me know below, and don't forget to share the link to your blog post