For the past few years my eldest niece and I have developed a tradition. Once a year, for her birthday, we go to London. I exchange a kidney and a small part of my soul for lunch and sensory overload at the Rainforest Cafe or similar and then we go and see a West End show. The first year we went to see Matilda and the messages in there about not being afraid to be smart, to speak up for the things that matter to you, and to challenge authority affected both the 6 year old and the 37 year old equally. Last year, after seeing School of Rock, I quit my job. Honestly, that's how it happened. I thought 'do I want to become Miss Mullins, or do I want to be Dewey?'. Why aren't I doing more of the things I love? What happened to the little girl with big dreams? So the next day (which just happened to be the only day that quarter we were in the same country) I met my graciously supportive boss for a coffee and resigned. "I'm happy for you " he said, even thou
If you've ever studied psychology at any level you will have come across the Stanford Prison Experiment . In which a group of students were randomly chosen to act the role of either prisoner or prison officer, and given certain rules and artefacts that reinforced their role. The upshot of the experiment was that ordinary students did some pretty crappy things to fellow students after not long at all, influenced solely by the culture that had been created around them, many elements of which in isolation could look pretty benign. I'm reminded of it as I try to explain my take on women in the workplace to various people. The Presidents' Club dinner for example. The media's take on this is to focus on examples of poor/lewd/shitty behaviour from some of the men in attendance. Because of course, sex sells and the topic du jour is sex scandals of varying forms. That isn't my primary issue with the Presidents' Club. Imagine for a moment we are talking about the