The Newest Journey

I've been away from this blog for a little more than four years, owing mostly to my last job which had some level of Fight Club Rules 1 & 2 about it. While there was plenty of content to discuss, I didn't feel that I could reliably do so without endangering my contract.  I avoided writing at all to ensure that I wasn't at odds with the job. I'm still bound by a contract, but I have other things on my mind.

A lot happens in four years. When I last wrote, I'd returned home to New Jersey after working in California for 2+ years. I was in the midst of an in-between job that entailed gift-wrapping goods from a small local overpriced boutique (and you can head over to Head2Desk if you really want to know how thrilling that role was).

In October, I was hired by a company in St. Louis, Missouri to be a specialized on-site consultant at a company in Connecticut. I did two weeks of "training" in St. Louis (where I found that I adored this "Gateway to the West" and the people were just about the friendliest you could hope for, and the food was fantastic). I moved to Connecticut and consulted for 10 months before the host company decided I was a good fit and I was hired there as a full time employee.

 

St. Louis: Home of the friendliest people, the best barbecue, and the worst sushi

 

I worked first as Help Desk support, then eventually as a process engineer in 2012-2013. And to be honest, I kind of loved it there. It was stressful and hard to get things done, but I relished working in an environment where my ideas mattered and my coworkers were willing to challenge me. And somewhere in there we had this test.

On the scale of soft-skills acceptance, I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I accept things like the MBTI and discussions about gently coaxing your staff to do what you want like a 10-week-old puppy with general understanding and a few grains of salt. I 'get' it, but I also think people should challenge these "tools" and "scientific schema" because accepting blindly isn't really how science works and it's not how I like to approach the world anyway.

So, this test. A lot of the new-agey stuff about how you are thinking about your work and your role and, ok, yes, yourself. This was a real opportunity to truly consider what what made me happy and was I 'working toward' that happy goal? If not, why not? What was I doing, not working toward being happy?

So there I was, in the middle of this mandated self-reflection having a little bit of an identity crisis. What do I love to do? Lots of things. I have a hobby-problem. Too many of them. But I like baking. And I like feeding people. And I like making other people happy. And it's hard to be unhappy when you're being fed. I've always kind of thought about opening a bakery or a tea shop. Well, why the heck not?!


But here's the thing. I don't have any experience running a business. I don't know about supply chain, or really managing people. I don't know about negotiating contracts or doing the books. I don't know about tax law. Man, there's a whole wealth of things I don't know, and Wikipedia can only get me so far.

The answer to life, the universe, and everything you wanted to know about 30% of life on earth. 

For the other 70% you'll need to conduct your own research.

My mother had been talking about me going back to school for years. Well, for Biology, but still. As the first person in my family to graduate from college, I thought I was already doing ok, and frankly, getting more (and more expensive) education wasn't high on my list of things to do to achieve success in science... it just doesn't pay off at this point in American society. But Business School is probably exactly what I need if I'm going to start . . . well, a business.

And so I began the harrowing process of applying to schools. A lot of them. Cornell, UNC, UofWashington, UofArizona, Penn State, Georgia Tech, UofIllinois. And school visits. God, that was exhausting. And interviews, and resume writing, and talking with a smile and a twinkle in my eye, like I know they want me to. As a pretty hardcore introvert, this process was daunting and terrifying and so unlike anything I wanted to do. I wanted the knowledge, but not the process. But that's not how the world works.

I'll probably relate a little bit more about the admissions process some other time. A lot goes into it and I'm already teetering on the edge of long-winded here. But the end result, is that some schools received my resume and did not immediately assume I was a know-nothing poser or incapable of completing the work. And some schools even offered me excellent encouragement to attend their particular institution.  And that is how I wound up at Penn State.

 

Hope you like mountain lions. They're obsessed with them here.

You're going to be seeing a lot more of this guy. 

And I moved into an apartment that I currently don't share with anyone (though that might change), and I get treated to beautiful views like this at sunset.

The aftermath of a sudden thunderstorm lights up Happy Valley. 

Taken from my back porch.

What remains now is the rest of the journey. I've got 2 years of Business School ahead of me, and 6 years of real-world experience behind me. I'll be giving a little bit of first-hand account of women-in-the-workplace discussions and more importantly, personal anecdotes of my experiences. Not just business-related but life experiences too. Let's take a meander together, shall we?

Tech Support Follies

I wish I could say that this hadn't really happened at work, but unfortunately, it sort of has. Several times. Click the comic below to see full-size.


As anyone who has ever tried to call a help-support desk can tell you, sometimes it's easier to just walk away and pretend there isn't a problem after all. Unfortnunately, I think the help-support phone people use this tactic too.

Comic is drawn with WACOM tablet and Photoshop CS1

A Short-lived Endeavor

Rosie knows all about women in technology positions.
She probably had to put up with this crap too.

The word of the day, according to Dictionary.com, is "sojourn", meaning a temporary stay or residency. I find this word to be particularly ideal for this day.

Today is the day I'm definitely certain (for real, for real) that my current job is not for me. Like Techkat, and millions of other folks our age, I work with computers for a living. More specifically, I work in hospitals, teaching nurses to use the new programs required for them to do their jobs. My own (however temporary) sojourn has already been a lengthy 4 months in the works, and my contract to stay 6 months ends in a seemingly paltry 6 weeks. Oh, I'm so ready.

I'm fascinated by the concept of learning. I love teaching others to love technology. But at a hospital where many of the nurses are well over 50 years old, many of them immigrants, this is as big a chore as any. It's one thing to teach a new program to people who've used computers before, but it's another thing entirely to have to take such baby steps as teaching someone to double-click, to use Xes to close windows, to right click a particular location. Not that I mind that so much.

Really, the factor that makes my stay at this particular company so unbearable is the way people in my position are treated. We're not nurses, so we're not union. Our schedule is changed on a near-daily basis. We are made to sign and re-sign contracts. We are yelled at for the most mundane of things like sitting ("You're taking a chair away from a nurse!"), checking the news ("Unprofessional behavior"), reading ("pay closer attention to the users!"). These things would all make a lot more sense, if we actually had anything to do in the first place.

The real problem is that our stint at any given location is about 8 weeks longer than we're really needed. We're left with 4 weeks before the nurses use the program -- when they don't want to learn -- and 4 weeks after they've mastered it and don't ask any more questions. Those two busy weeks in between, it's perfectly plausible for a person in our occupation to go an entire 8 hour shift without sitting, without using a computer on our own, without going bored/crazy out of our minds. But in those calm periods? Oh, it's just asking for trouble.

Today, I actually got in trouble for talking to a nurse. I wish I was joking. Although my time at this particular hospital is nearly over, I WILL miss the nurses I've worked with. It's interesting to find a profession that requires delicacy, knowledge, know-how and strength so completely dominated by females.

In the technology sector, women are a rare sight indeed. On my own shift, in my department, there are only two women (myself included) and at least eight men. And true to patterns that have proven themselves my whole life, I constantly struggle to keep users' attentions when the men are around. As the louder, and generally more aggressive gender, they easily talk over me, take my space and redirect other people's comments. While I'm not particularly interested in their ploys for power, I DO want to be taken seriously, and for that, I think it is at times necessary for a woman to summon up the courage to act like a man.

While I won't be looking at sporty cars any time soon, or peeing standing up, I DO aggressively approach problems I face at work. I tell people when I have an issue instead of trying to hide it like I normally would. I try to fix problems that we're not expected to fix (hardware issues are perfectly within my realm of capability, but rarely attempted by my coworkers). Best efforts aside, I know that I shouldn't have to do all this. It's not only exhausting, it's demeaning!

I have two X chromosomes, and I like it that way!

Rearranging our hours, constantly rechecking our schedule, getting in trouble for the most mundane of things . . . it's painful. And I have to wonder, are all tech jobs this way? Or just this one?