Getting my bearings

The first few weeks back in corporate felt like walking into a test I hadn’t studied for. I’d spent years consulting and building things on my own terms, setting my own pace, answering mostly to myself. Then all at once: a new role, new systems, acronyms I looked up under the table, and a calendar that belonged to other people.

A couple of months in, the honest assessment is that the knowledge was there the whole time. What I lacked was context. Which person to ask, which processes actually matter, which rules are real and which are decoration. The strangeness came from applying old expertise in an unfamiliar place, and no amount of experience skips that stage.

Some days I still question myself. I’ll draft an email three times or double-check a policy I already know cold. Then a question comes up in a meeting and the answer is just there, complete, before I’ve decided to speak. Both things are true at once, and I’ve stopped expecting them to cancel each other out. I still know my stuff. I’m also still finding the light switches.