Finding my Footing

The Working World

Wow. I get it now. I am no longer a student. Sure, I’m a “student of the world” and there are “learning opportunities in every encounter.” I do truly believe in these mantras real worlders throw out there, but the truth is there is something distinctly different about operating without the structure of academia. This realization occurred to me at about 2pm on Monday.

My first week of work (last week) was overwhelming, but also really exciting. I was meeting new people at every turn, learning about the goals, vision, and work of the organization (www.accesscommunityhealth.net), and diving into the wonders of post-its and paperclips. No one really expected me to do any real work that first week… as was made evident when I was paid for a day of work on Friday that included meeting up with the quality team at our boss’s house in Forest Park and then going to the zoo! I work in one of those rare non-profit organizations that is so giant, it has to be run like a business, bureaucracy and all. Thus, things like “team-building fun days” are a must.

My first post-work week weekend rolled around last weekend, and I felt utterly exhausted. I still managed to have some fun at a few ultra hip non-profit benefits, do some yoga, and eat a meal with my mom as she drove through Chicago on the way to MN. I learned during this past weekend the wonders of having no homework. It turns out, when the work week is over, one can just forget about it until the next Monday. It is quite a handy mechanism for getting through life in the real world.

Nonetheless, this past Monday happened, and I imagine that I felt similar to how one would feel if a gentle earthquake was shaking the ground. That is, I had no grounding. I sat down to work on one project given to me by my supervisor, but soon after was called in by my boss and given three more projects, then I went to a meeting where I was given all the old interns’ projects, and then one of my co-workers kindly approached me with a two page document that she would just love for me to fax to all fifty health centers before the end of next week. WHOA! It’s not that any of these projects are too hard for me or even too time consuming; it was just that I had no idea how to organize myself around them. This was the moment I realized that my whole life I have been grounded in being a student, a pretty good one in fact. Now… now I am an employee of Access Community Health Network. I no longer just need to know how to use excel for the occasional chart making, but it is a daily application of my work. I don’t get to discuss and analyze all the intricacies of the projects I am given; I just have to do them. This is a different world.

After learning about the task function in Microsoft Outlook from my wise office-running father, I got to work on Tuesday and set out on rearranging my footing, on grounding myself into the work world. I feel that the earthquake has quelled, and I will ultimately manage this transition just fine. But, I’m not going to lie. There is a small part of me wanting to go get my PHD right about now.