They might be as confused as to why you keep calling pudding “biscuits”.

Step out of your own cultural context for a minute. You do not own English, and there is no reason that the way it is used elsewhere should be understandable to you, or vice versa. If anyone had rights to the language, for that matter, it sort of makes sense that it would be English people, right?

But that doesn’t really matter. English is the first language of millions of people around the globe, and the second language of maybe billions. Not only each disparate group out there using it, but actually each person within each group uses it differently. This is the nature of language–it is dynamic. It grows, evolves, regionalizes, incorporates words from other languages, and changes to meet unique cultural context.

It is not the role of English people to account to you for their use and understanding of their own language.

I’m serious. People are not going to change. IT is like any other industry, you get the good, the bad, the ugly and the strange.

You can control none of this. The only thing you can control is your reactions to what is going on around you. You don’t know why these people were hired, you won’t control whether they grow and expand or remain where they are or drift off or get fired.

This is beyond your control. Don’t waste your time with it. If you don’t waste your time, it won’t stress you. Do your work. Do what it takes to document things so that you are not blamed for another’s incompetence, and then move on. That is the only way to deal with the stress. You don’t get caught up in the things you do not control. That, and affirming your own existence and being satisfied with your own work.

Fun

All of the above doesn’t leave much time for fun. To keep my sanity, I squeeze every bit of free time out of life to ensure that I’m not missing out on opportunities. Of course spending time with my family is fun, but for the sake of separation I’ll be excluding that time from this section (I feel I did the Family section justice). As part of my free time at home I enjoy building side projects. I love creating beautiful web applications that could benefit the lives of others. My passion is creating things for others through programming. I love the feeling I get when someone enjoys something I’ve made. I can’t get enough of it. I’ve started hundreds of side projects, “finished” a few (is a project ever really finished?) and am working on a promising one right now. I love it and can’t get enough, but I pace myself so that I don’t squander precious time with my family.

In my opinion, you should be thinking about looking for work. Try to network and see if there are employers were looking for analytics. This is different from analysts. They could be market research companies, companies are looking for pricing decisions, and even productivity.

Look to companies where the culture and business processes are not instinctual. Rather look for companies that require analysis.

Unfortunately, one becomes more Bible as one becomes more familiar with the tools of analysis. This may be SAS, business objects, or any other reporting environment.

In conclusion, a massive degree in analytics should result in a job sooner or later.