7 December 2015
Student induction day #2. Pretty much the same as student induction day #1, except there are more delegates. Clearly word has got round that this is the bestest CIPA and ITMA event of the year. The new students quickly make friends with one another and after that we cannot shut them up. I expect they are exchanging notes on the best and the worst firms to train with, who pays the highest salaries and who throws the best Christmas parties. After Mr Hodkinson’s talk about professional ethics, they exchange notes on which firms break the most rules from the IPReg Code of Conduct. After Mr Dixon’s talk about business practice, they exchange notes on which firms charge the highest rates and whose billing figures are best. After my talks they exchange notes on the latest episode of I’m A Celebrity, because they’ve never heard such rubbish in their lives. In the afternoon, Mr Luckhurst gives his usual soothing presentation about stress in the workplace. He describes the symptoms of stress, which I can virtually recite off by heart now. Not cleaning your shoes. Not putting your makeup on. Not going down the gym. Too much alcohol. Yeah, yeah. I am sure these are not really signs of stress, just signs of getting your priorities right. Of course, as everyone knows, if you are suffering from stress you should talk to someone about it. If that talk results in you and the someone going down the pub together, that is not necessarily a solution to your stress problem (see above re symptoms). If it results in you and the someone going to the gym, that is a marginally better result although probably more expensive. If it results in you and the someone going into an office together, shutting the door and filling out a P45, you have picked the wrong someone to talk to. It seems to me that if going down the pub is both a response to and an indicator of stress, then whoever invented pubs was playing a cruel trick on us all. Later, Mr Harris from ITMA gives a talk about qualifying as a trade mark attorney. Mr Harris can remember the Bad Old Days when the trade mark exams were so difficult that if you plotted the marks on a cumulative frequency curve the only way you could get a pass was by quantum tunnelling. Fortunately, ITMA got rid of the qualifying exams and now you have to go on qualifying courses instead. The cumulative frequency curve for a qualifying course looks a little bit different, because if you have paid the qualifying course fee you don’t expect to have to resort to quantum tunnelling to get your certificate at the end of it.
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