American Martime Law and Fully Achieved

Yesterday I met someone who works in American Maritime Law. Not a lawyer, but someone who gets that body of knowledge ready for publishing on a big online system. In the past, I always used American Maritime Law as a placeholder when working on specifications and design documents. because it just seemed so strange. You never really picture anyone working for, or with, American Martime Law. It conjures up pictures of red neck pirates. It won't be as fun now that there's a real face to put to the content.

I had to fill out my self-review on our online system at work yesterday. My last year has basically had the parameters, learn as much as possible as fast as possible and try not to fall on your face, or at least do it where one of your partners doesn't notice. I felt I achieved this and, as it was something of an open-ended mandate where the criteria for success was nebulous, I figured I did an adequate job. Not outstanding (although I'm good at arguing that as necessary), and not that I could have done significantly better my first year because I needed to build knowledge, not information...no matter what I accomplished, it seemed to be a "fully achieved" sort of operation. Which is what I claimed across the board on the self-review. Fully achieved, fully achieved, fully achieved, fully achieved and then, down in the radio button strengths and weaknesses area, a few more strengths than weaknesses and a couple items right down the center. Finally I got to the bottom of the self-review, and the web application plops a little blue bar on the overall evaluation area to give you an idea of where you should click the final radio button. There it hovered, solidly to the left, the loser side, of "fully achieved". The moral, if you have fully achieved your goals and work for the year, you have not fully achieved what the company expects of you.