Thoughts of the Lady in the Tower

2004-03-25 - 2:55 p.m.

Government Scrapbooking

I had my first great work disappointment yesterday, and cried on Richard's shoulder about it last night. Today, it doesn't seem that that great a thing, but yesterday it was.

I struggled and fought through six years of college (for a BS and an MS). I've done crappy jobs to fund this schooling (RETAIL HELL, food service hell, tutoring student athletes, secretarial work out the wazoo, culminating as a slightly glorified technician). I went through it, always thinking to myself, "this is why I'm going to school; this is why I'm going to school."

It helped me stay on track with my studies and grit my teeth and bear the unpleasantness (mostly mind-numbingness) of the job.

We have bi-weekly meetings with our supervisior, and at the last one (almost two weeks ago), I mentioned that I was running out of work to do; so he said he'd find another project to put me on.

Tuesday I mentioned to him that I only had about enough to fill 3 hours a day for the next few weeks (while I wait for a test plan to get approved). Well, every quarter they assign projects (I wasn't around last time, so that's why my assignments are a bit thin), and they're going to do it in two weeks. In the meantime, they'll find SOMEthing...

The next morning, I got to sort through a HUGE file box of pictures, pull out duplicates, categorize and sort in some sort of fashion (I was told I could "be creative" if I had to), and file into binders.

I finished the task in 4 hours, simply because when I have a task I hate, I just put my head down and DO IT, so I have to spend as little time as possible on it. Needless to say, they were shocked at how little time it took me to finish.

What can I say; I grok filing systems and spent years doing secretarial labor. But once I had that MS in my hand I didn't expect to have to do it again. It's not like we don't have secretaries!

And as I read back over it, it seems so petty. So I had to file some pictures (from 1997! pre-digital camera age). I jokingly called it "military scrapbooking" and tried to laugh about it, but it still hurt.

::sigh:: It looks like they decided on a project to put me on. It's a little strange, since I'm supposed to "learn how to be a test director" with this project . . . but I'm already a test director for another series of tests that's much further along (testing for that project will be in three weeks; testing for this new project will be in August).

One difference, though, is that for the testing I've been working on they gave me a tech support guy to do all the materials logistics; I get to do it myself on this new project (oh boy!).

Another difference is that the other project is near the end stages of a development project (we're almost to production). This 'new' (to me) project is more science (we want to find out what happens rather than we want to make a tool).