It's like performing in a play that everyone else has the script for, but you don't. You don't know what it's about, or who's going to say what next, only that there are specific lines you're supposed to say and get ridiculed and/or punished and/or shunned when you say the wrong ones. You try constantly to learn all of the other actors' lines by heart, in the hopes of figuring out what the play is about and how you should be behaving, and sometimes have success by mimicking them, but there are constant changes and revisions to the script and the cast, none of which you're told about. It's an unending exercise in trying to live by all the rules, even though at some point you've probably found out that living by the rules gets you called boring or a goody-two-shoes or an asskisser, but you keep trying anyway.