After my first 1/2 day tour, meet and greets and some IT setup and what not, I am handed off to my first PM(soon to be promoted to principal, which is surprising since he is only a year or so younger than me).  First impression and thoughts were, "ok, this could be good".  A fairly young person who could act as my stepping stone as I segued from some of my prior internship and recent grad school experiences to the world of uber architectural projects.

Right away, I was introduced to a project competition that could easily be over a several hundred million dollar budget (this is only a guess since my prior few project experiences were only up to $30 million).  This project had the works, super movie renders, a kick ass model, and beautiful presentation boards and a very thick book....a book for a competition is crazy.  I was drooling,...they had me hook line and sinker.  =)  Even now, in hindsight, it was good stuff.  From the get go, I was working 10-12 hr days even though I was on the tail end of the  competition submission, working on minor visual graphic stuff.

For the most part I felt like I could groove to this.  Yes there were some "clicks" to deal with, and still a lingering silent gloominess, but maybe there would be some light shining through the clouds.  Maybe, once I met the revered starchitect and heard his/her gospel, I would be spell bound with an overflow of design juices welling up inside me, fueling me to work design wonders one day!  However, in about two weeks I would have my face to face, kind of and learn otherwise, but before that I would get to work for my PM a bit more (I wish it was more of getting to know my PM more or getting to work with my PM more instead of "for"...funny how prepositions can make so much of a difference in life.

My PM, The Bug Eyed One:

I didnt notice it right away, but sure enough the eyes are definitely windows to the soul or lack of,........jk, it wasn't that bad.  Anyways, I began to notice as my PM would come over to check on me frequently, differences in conversation delivery.  There was "hey, you know whats really cool? this and that and that...and how blah blah blah, well...I think this is something you would be good at"...and then I would be give the assignment.  Superficial methods like these can be good if done right.  Of course it works best when there is more sincerity present, but timing/inflection/cadence/content and consistency is everything when attempting to evoke a positive response from your team.  I've actually had some good experiences working at my low paying college jobs all because there was strong company culture/vision/ and especially strong mission statement that was embedded in a variety of creative ways but  for me really came down to successful communication.  I digress, but will definitely come back to this company culture stuff .

Anyways, to make my PM's forced motivational talks a little less awkward (I think he could sense I didn't buy into these cheesy methods of buttering up nubes),  I would bite a bit and try to reciprocate just for the hell of it, but quickly faded away as I watched the PM"s lack of interest become more evident.  The other delivery method was definitely more of a theatrical one.  There was the anxious superficial imbuedment of enthusiasm by the slight tilt of his head and the eyes bugging out while speaking a million miles a minute, contradicted with arms crossed across the chest.  At first I thought the bugged eyed crack attic approach was entertaining, ...I even began to imagine my PM as this lanky adobe illustrator drawing,  drawn kind of like Dagwood from the old Blondie comics. Little did I know these antics came with an infectious side effect that creeps its way in and builds silently.  This silent but deadly ailment that still plagues me to this day....Anxiety.  The contamination from my PM's anxiousness, silently incubated in me until one day a catalyst would set things in motion.  That day my dreams began to crumble.

To be continued......

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