The Times They Are A Changin

  Truer words were never spoken. However, despite my desire to blog and share everything that's been going on, I've been a little afraid to do it because of who might be reading... Remember last year when I was like, oh, I think I'll leave grad school to go to work full time because I like my job? Yeah. The tides have turned a bit. I don't regret leaving grad school, and I don't regret starting work full-time, but it is taking a toll.
    My physical health is not terrible, but it's definitely affected by working at a computer all day. Sitting at a desk with a gigantic monitor (that always seems too bright no matter how low I turn the brightness control down--I think it's at 35 right now out of 100) for 8 hours a day is bad for your health. Period. I get up, walk around, grab a snack, chat to my coworkers, but then I have to go back to my desk and work after a few minutes of break time.
    I know I have eyestrain. I know my posture's not great anyway, and looking at a computer all day doesn't help. I have started to get a little twinge in my lower back sometimes from my desk chair, even though it's probably more comfortable than some of the office chairs we have. I get tingles in my hand sometimes from using my mouse if I have to do the exact same task for too long in one day (there's a name for this I read the other day, but I can't remember what it is right now). I even have a trackball mouse, which is supposed to be more ergonomic and easier on your hand and wrist, and most of the time, it is, but you do anything for too long and you're bound to get some carpal tunnel symptoms. Not only are these things I could tell my doctor, but I'm also stressed. Eight hours is just a long day. And I always feel out of the loop or behind on my work which stresses me out.
    We currently have an influx of interns at our office which is causing me more stress. Our new three year plan is to have a company "fueled by interns." Now, they're all nice people and I don't begrudge them coming in to get job experience, and I certainly didn't go to business school to say whether or not this is a sound business plan. But I have to admit, it makes me a little nervous. I'm not afraid that one of them will come in and take my job. I'm more afraid that interns won't be enough to keep up with the workload we have because they aren't trained well enough or aren't there enough hours in the week.
    I was hoping they would arrive to relieve some of my workload so that I didn't have to worry as much as I do about how much stuff needs to get done. I find that lately, I've been a little more forgetful than usual about some things, which makes me think I might spread a little too thin between doing my administrative and assistant work (aka my job title) and my more time-consuming and more job title fitting duties of managing and editing the content for our websites.
    It's really hard to switch back and forth between playing the admin role and the editor role, and I have to do it several times during the day. I have brought it up to the boss about being shifted into a job title that fits my duties more accurately, but that would mean they would need to find another assistant, and with the intern plan they are running on now, they seem reluctant (if not downright adverse) to the idea of actually hiring someone for pay.
    On the one hand, the intern plan makes a little sense to me. They sell it as, we want to make sure the person likes to be here and likes the work here before we hire them, and we want to make sure we like the person and they fit in and do good work before we decide to hire them. But on the other hand, these are all kids. They are college students who don't see our little college town as the end of the road in terms of career options. I don't blame them. So it's hard to find an intern that is not only good at what they do but wants to stay here for longer than their 3 month internship requires. There are plenty of talented, smart, hard-working kids that are coming in, but that also means that they are talented enough to find a job somewhere else where they can make more money and live where they want to live.
    I'm not going to complain too much about the money, because it's not my main complaint to make, but technically, I should be making three times as much as my rent, and right now, I'm only making about two times as much, not including all the damn utilities. And, technically, a competitive wage for the type of job I do is quite a bit higher than what I'm currently making. I currently fit into about 10 different job descriptions--no, I'm not exaggerating--and some of those jobs are supposed to pay three times as much as I do, based on current industry trends. Even though I don't have ten years of experience, I am still doing a job that someone with ten years of experience would be doing, and I think I'm not doing too bad at it either.
    But my main focus, as I said, is this intern thing. What I think is not being said, or unfortunately, perhaps not realized, is that more interns will go than stay. It is not only somewhat inefficient to have to interview so many new people because you're always looking for replacements and people to fill new, previously unfilled positions, but it is also inefficient because a lot of these interns need to be trained and acclimated to how our company works. That takes time that an intern who's there for maybe 8 to 10 hours a week doesn't really have.
    Again, I have liked all the interns we've had so far. They're all nice people and most of them are doing a good job at what they've been assigned. But I know most of them are not going to stay past their internships. They're going to graduate and move somewhere else. The incentive to stay here is just not high enough. While they may enjoy the work, they don't enjoy it enough to stay in town. Or, they may enjoy the work, but they don't enjoy it enough to get paid what we pay.
    I have stayed because it was enough. I like the work. I like living here. But they're raising my rent when my lease ends in April, which is going to spread me even thinner than I already am. I budget like a champ, but this is going to be a little rough without another raise. And with all these changes that are happening, I'm not entirely confident the company will still be here in three years if the intern plan fails.
    Although this new plan is the major cause of my concern for my job security, there is also the fact that they fired one my coworkers a week before Christmas. I haven't quite gotten over that. Not because it was right before Christmas, and not because we were friends. It's the principle of the thing. He worked harder than all of us did, stressed out more than the rest of us did, and was pushed and judged harder than the rest of us are. He didn't deserve it, even though he is probably better off not being here anymore because I know he is way less stressed now than he was.
    What it comes down to is that without him, we are down to two full-time employees, including myself, and with all the new work and new clients and stuff that we are planning on adding, we are extremely, perhaps dangerously, understaffed, no matter how many interns we bring on.
    All in all, I'm worried. I'm stressed out from working forty hours a week, I'm too tired at the end of the day to take care of myself as well as I'd like, I'm worried that I might be on a sinking ship, and I'm worried that I might have to move in with my parents again if things do go south. (Yes, I'm mixing my metaphors. Deal with it.)
    As much as I complain here, I have started a "positivity journal", thanks to a handy-dandy free app that I got for my Kindle (my over-budget Christmas present to myself). I have been told I'm too negative and complain too much, so I started trying to track some of the good things that happen to me during the day so that I have some of the good to balance out the bad. I think it's helping. But it's not going to stop me from sharing my thoughts here because they always come out so much more cohesively when I write them than when I tell them to someone else.

Late night, come home, work sucks. I know. 

What do you think of this 3 year plan? Or my poor health? Or life in general?

Tell me about it in the comments!

One Door Opens and Another Shuts

  That good news came through! Apartment settled! Move in countdown: 5 days. Next time I post, I may be bitching about moving in. On the bright side, 80 percent of my stuff is still in boxes from moving out at the end of June, so that's all right. I am super excited. I've told pretty much everyone I know, and now the rest of the world, that I found an apartment. It's a pretty nice place, actually. Somewhere I could actually imagine staying for longer than one lease. The only thing that isn't as nice is the price. (As usual, I've found something to complain about. Bear with me.) The actual apartment is a decent price for the area I live in, but I have to pay all the utilities, for the first time ever (look how grown up that is!). Needless to say, I will be following all of the low-energy, efficiency rules to the letter, and then some. But, it has the primary requisites I had in mind--dishwasher, price range appropriate, and they'll let me have my cat, with additional rent (lame, but the majority of places around here are that way--fortunately, the pet fee/deposit on the place was already paid by a previous tenant, and because it's a sublet, it rolled over).
    I am so glad to be going back on my own. I am grateful to my mom for allowing me to live in the basement, again, while I looked for a place, but it's going to be really nice to have my own space and my own stuff, all in one place. The plan is to move the majority of my stuff to my new place, meaning a lot of the stuff that is still at my dad's place is going to come to the new apartment in addition to all the crap I have at my mom's now plus what's in storage. Reunification of everything.
    I never really minded having half my stuff in one place and half my stuff in another place, carrying bits of my life around with me as I traveled back and forth between the two. That was part of not wanting to grow up, I think. Keeping all my stuff in one place means I'm really responsible for all of it. It's my job to lock the doors, my job to pay all the bills, my job not to set the place on fire, and my job not to let the cat get outside.
    Minor subject shift: fall semester starts next week up here! I actually had a dream about being back in school last week. This is the first semester start in five years that I've not been fully aware of. I was in school for three and a half years, out for one year, and back in for half a year. Even during the year I was out of school, I was fully aware of going back to school later. Now, the prospect of school is gone for the near and foreseeable future, and while it's a little strange, it's good. I get to really try to do things my way, and maybe I'll fail, but maybe I won't. I'll do my best. Now I just have to get my budget back on track having to pay rent again.

Budgeting sucks. Especially after four hours of it.

Crisis Averted

After being stressed out for about two weeks now, the looming storm on the horizon has disappeared and it's sunny again. Well, maybe sunny with a few clouds.
    So, as promised, I will get into the "stressor number 2" I mentioned last week. (Just to clarify, this is the reason I've been absent and erratic from Insistent and Persistent for the last couple weeks--sorting all this out.) After long deliberation, some of which I've shared here, I've decided not to continue grad school in the fall. There are plenty of reasons behind it, some of which include job prospects after graduation (or rather lack thereof), not enjoying being a teaching assistant (which indicates probably not enjoying teaching in the future), and liking my job more than school. I never thought that would happen, but for now, I consider myself lucky.
    While I realize I have disappointed many people making this decision (a couple of whom I haven't had a chance to tell yet), being young and knowing myself well enough to make pretty good decisions about things, I had to go with the decision that would lead me in the direction I wanted to go, rather than a direction that other people wanted me to go. Sometimes those two are the same, but this time, they aren't, and I couldn't keep doing something that meant more to other people than it did to me.
    So, that's done. It's official. I turned down about 12 grand in financial aid (plus tuition waivers) for nine months of school next year--another thing I never would have thought I could do. Turning down free money is even harder than turning down free food for me. And with that done, I'm down to four weeks of school, not counting finals, of course.
    One of the best parts of finally sharing this decision is that everyone has been really supportive. I had been so worried that they would ask all kinds of questions and demand more explanation than I was prepared to give. So, me being the overachiever that I am, I prepared explanations, as in-depth as I could, to explain my reasoning. But no one did demand that kind of explanation. Not yet, anyway. But the people who needed to know most, the school, and certain family members, know now. I still have to tell the teacher that I TA for--and while I can hope she will have the same optimistic and supportive attitude as everyone else so far has had, I still doubt it.
    A good outcome of this is that I really don't regret this semester, despite the amount of stress and anxiety it has caused me. I don't think I would have known that I didn't want to be in grad school until I had done it and seen what I have seen and learned what I have learned. I'm a big fan of process of elimination, and doing a semester of grad school has shown me that it needs to be eliminated as a possibility for me and my future job prospects. However, it's not completely eliminated. I may still decide to go back, later on sometime, but if that day comes, I will definitely be applying to a different program. As much as I like philosophy, I never saw myself with a career in it.
    Although I never had the idea that the particular job I have currently would be anything more than a temporary place for me to earn money until I got my financial aid to finish graduate school, I'm glad that it has turned into more than that. A place with good people, good opportunities, and satisfying and challenging work. I'm not counting on doing it forever, or being at the same company forever, but in the meantime, I think--and desperately hope--that I've made the right choice. I get to be a grown up for the first time in my life, and for once, the idea doesn't completely terrify me.

Live and learn.

To Stay the Course or Cut and Run

Is it better to stay the course or cut bait and run when you know you should?

A question our previous commander in chief might have considered, or at least, ought to have done.
   Tuesdays have become quite terrifying for me, because they require a focus on school for such a large portion of my day. I only actually like one out of the 5 school-related blocks of time I have to attend on Tuesdays. But Mondays and Wednesdays are fine, and Thursdays, while occasionally rushed, are not too bad. Tuesdays are the new Mondays.
    I have seriously considered whether I've bitten off more than I can chew this semester. Theoretically, it seems manageable. I'm only taking 9 credits--the minimum for full-time coursework at the graduate level here. However, because one class is a teaching assistant position, I actually have to attend both sections of the class, making the credit load seem like 12. Additionally, there are office hours, adding another 3 hours each week doing school-related work, pushing 12 credits to 15--a maximum coursework load for graduate level students. Being that the teaching assistant position is unpaid (since I am beginning in the middle of the school year--both unfair and unfortunate), I am also working about 20 hours a week to keep an apartment and afford myself other necessities.
    It occurred to me today that perhaps I ought to drop one of my classes to ease up the work load a bit. But, the only one I would be able to drop is an evening course that cuts 3 hours out of my Tuesdays, time that might be spent doing homework or grading. But I like it. It's interesting. It's even a little bit... fun. And the way things are going, with regard to mental stability and stress allocation, I'd rather drop the teaching assistant class, considering it cuts into my time more than anything else. So, do I stick with the class that's promising full financial aid for the next two years, despite the mental anguish it's causing in the meantime? Or do I drop it and hope I get the aid anyway? Or, do I drop the class I like and hope that that extra three hours will help?
    It's an unpleasant position, no matter how I look at it, but I haven't had to deal with this kind of stress level in a long time, and I'm really not coping too well at the moment. So it seems something must be changed to alleviate some of this stress.

   To make matters even more confusing, not only am I wondering if I should drop a class, I'm wondering if maybe I'm not cut out for grad school altogether. I know it's only the second week, and maybe I'm jumping the gun with that supposition, but stress can do that to people. I question anything and everything all the time. It's what I do. It's what school has trained me to do, in fact. But while I continue to ask the questions, I do not often arrive at any answers. Too often, I maintain the status quo--I finish what I start. And at this point, I'm wondering, questioning, if that is the best policy. I'm not a quitter. Overall, I follow through, and things usually turn out all right. But in the long run, in this particular case, is grad school going to help me achieve my goals; is finishing going to make me feel better about myself and my place in the world; is becoming a part of the academic world going to contribute to the world in the way I want to contribute?
    These are not small or easy questions. And just because I bring them up now does not necessarily mean I haven't been thinking about them for a long time. I've been thinking about grad school for about two years now. And these questions have popped in and out all through that time, but now that I'm actually here, taking classes, participating in them, doing the work, they are more real and present than they were previously. As such, I feel now is the time to seriously think about them and actually try to answer them in a way I was unable to before because I did not have the experience of it to affirm or deny my thoughts and feelings about it. I didn't know if I would be able to handle the workload or understand the readings or if I could handle it and understand things, whether I'd want to continue with it or whether I'd want to chalk it up to experience and pursue another direction.

Do you follow through for the sake of not being a quitter, not giving up, 

or do you stop when you realize things may not be as cut and dried as you thought? 

As we like to say, the unexamined life is not worth living. So at least I'm doing the examining, even if I'm not doing a good job of it, or coming to a conclusion about it. A for effort, I think.

Redemption can be like one step forward and two steps back.