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It's funny how the words used to define oneself change over time.
When I was younger, I used to be forceful, determined, stubborn, hard-headed... I was a force of nature. It didn't matter what it was, if I wanted to do it, I would do it and damn the consequences. There is a reason why large, powerful mammals appeal to me - I am a bull Goddess, a bear, a moose. I put my head down and charge, and I don't back away from lesser creatures, even when they run in packs and my flanks are heaving. I had the drive and stamina to push through and come out unscathed. I am still somewhat determined, somewhat forceful, but only with myself. I do not express discomfort, boredom, fatigue or frustration at work. To do so, to me, is a sign of weakness. Where I work, it's a good way to put out a welcome mat for everyone to step on and wipe their feet. I go to work, I do my job and if I cannot do my job without expressing some sign of emotion, I gohide in the bathroom take inventory or pick up used toners or something. This whole getting my degree thing has been a revisit to my younger days. No matter how much I've hated the past five years, I've stuck with it and done the work. It's coming to an end, and like most of my younger endeavors, the fruit is not worth the labor. I hate doing work for work's sake, I want some kind of reward at the end.
A part of me wants to stick around with my current employment, try to somehow prove myself as worthy to be even a humble computer help desk tech. I feel I was hired on false pretenses. I went to that interview guns blazing, full of expectations for my future. It was my opportunity to put my schooling to use. I wanted to be an 'entry level computer technician'. I am not a computer tech, or a help desk tech. I am an office assistant. I buy things, I deliver things, I pick things up, I move things, I count things. But I do not fix things. At least, not items of technology. Editing a Word document is not the same as tracing a software bug or prepping a server for deployment. A large part of me knows that unless I got a transfer out of this department and into say, the main Help Desk for Clark County, I would never be considered for anything more than what I'm doing now. It has nothing to do with budget cuts or layoffs or cost containment. It has nothing to do with my skills, which would have improved with practice and actually being allowed to use them. I'm a take-charge person, a self-starter, so it wasn't like I didn't try to push my way into things. I wanted to learn, to get experience, to get better. It mostly has to do with the supervisor and her delegation of skills and employees... It sounds like sour grapes, but she's had to compete with men for her entire career, and I think because she's struggled so long and hard to get where she's at that she somehow doesn't feel other women are up to the demands of better titles or bigger responsibilities. The guys in the office get the challenging projects, the collaborative efforts, the gratitude - and the girls get the secretarial tasks. It sounds like sour grapes, and I'll never try to push it with Admin, but everyone in the office knows it and feels the effects of the resentment and anger it's caused.
It's not all the actual job, though. All during the process of getting my degree, I've been learning something about learning. I need time in order to learn. I read the material, go over the coursework, take notes, retype the notes and redo the coursework in order to absorb what I'm being taught. Being in college and working has not left me much time at all to learn. As a result. I've found myself having to study to take the tests instead of learning anything. I cram all that crap into my brain, take the tests, pass the class and promptly push it out of my mind so I can shove in the next class. Even if I'd taken all these classes in person, it would have been the same way. Granted, it gives you class time, with lectures and presentations and a smattering of hands-on work, but most of it would have been the instructor going over the chapter instead of me reading and re-reading the chapter, taking and transcribing the notes. There's so much of what I went through over these 5 years that got thrown by the wayside because it wasn't pertinent to the exams, and a lot of stuff that is now completely obsolete. The stuff I did manage to learn wasn't part of my job description. Most modern help desks do not repair hardware. They buy new components & install them. I just diagnosed a problem (uh, why is your GPU running at 120ยบC? Is that smoke?!) and bought & installed a new GPU in Rob's PC. I was doing that before I got into school. At work, there's one guy who does all the hardware stuff. Mainly because it's all Dell computers, which are almost completely modular, and some things like monitors that are treated like FRUs. It also used to be that when you replaced hardware, there was some manual configuration that had to be done, drivers to install, that kind of thing. Now computers auto-detect hardware & install drivers automatically. I haven't manually installed a driver in years.
The end result of the past two years is this: I give up. I surrender. I let go of everything I had set my expectations on 5 years ago. I quit. I'm going back to something I know and something I know I can do. I can probably do it better now because I don't want anything in particular out of it. I'll go to work, I'll do my job, I'll try to have fun with my coworkers while I'm there, and after May 17th when I get my degree, instead of coming home to homework, I'll come home and play with the dog or play WoW, and I'll pay my fucking bills. Who knows, maybe if I score enough OT, we'll move to Washington or something.
When I was younger, I used to be forceful, determined, stubborn, hard-headed... I was a force of nature. It didn't matter what it was, if I wanted to do it, I would do it and damn the consequences. There is a reason why large, powerful mammals appeal to me - I am a bull Goddess, a bear, a moose. I put my head down and charge, and I don't back away from lesser creatures, even when they run in packs and my flanks are heaving. I had the drive and stamina to push through and come out unscathed. I am still somewhat determined, somewhat forceful, but only with myself. I do not express discomfort, boredom, fatigue or frustration at work. To do so, to me, is a sign of weakness. Where I work, it's a good way to put out a welcome mat for everyone to step on and wipe their feet. I go to work, I do my job and if I cannot do my job without expressing some sign of emotion, I go
A part of me wants to stick around with my current employment, try to somehow prove myself as worthy to be even a humble computer help desk tech. I feel I was hired on false pretenses. I went to that interview guns blazing, full of expectations for my future. It was my opportunity to put my schooling to use. I wanted to be an 'entry level computer technician'. I am not a computer tech, or a help desk tech. I am an office assistant. I buy things, I deliver things, I pick things up, I move things, I count things. But I do not fix things. At least, not items of technology. Editing a Word document is not the same as tracing a software bug or prepping a server for deployment. A large part of me knows that unless I got a transfer out of this department and into say, the main Help Desk for Clark County, I would never be considered for anything more than what I'm doing now. It has nothing to do with budget cuts or layoffs or cost containment. It has nothing to do with my skills, which would have improved with practice and actually being allowed to use them. I'm a take-charge person, a self-starter, so it wasn't like I didn't try to push my way into things. I wanted to learn, to get experience, to get better. It mostly has to do with the supervisor and her delegation of skills and employees... It sounds like sour grapes, but she's had to compete with men for her entire career, and I think because she's struggled so long and hard to get where she's at that she somehow doesn't feel other women are up to the demands of better titles or bigger responsibilities. The guys in the office get the challenging projects, the collaborative efforts, the gratitude - and the girls get the secretarial tasks. It sounds like sour grapes, and I'll never try to push it with Admin, but everyone in the office knows it and feels the effects of the resentment and anger it's caused.
It's not all the actual job, though. All during the process of getting my degree, I've been learning something about learning. I need time in order to learn. I read the material, go over the coursework, take notes, retype the notes and redo the coursework in order to absorb what I'm being taught. Being in college and working has not left me much time at all to learn. As a result. I've found myself having to study to take the tests instead of learning anything. I cram all that crap into my brain, take the tests, pass the class and promptly push it out of my mind so I can shove in the next class. Even if I'd taken all these classes in person, it would have been the same way. Granted, it gives you class time, with lectures and presentations and a smattering of hands-on work, but most of it would have been the instructor going over the chapter instead of me reading and re-reading the chapter, taking and transcribing the notes. There's so much of what I went through over these 5 years that got thrown by the wayside because it wasn't pertinent to the exams, and a lot of stuff that is now completely obsolete. The stuff I did manage to learn wasn't part of my job description. Most modern help desks do not repair hardware. They buy new components & install them. I just diagnosed a problem (uh, why is your GPU running at 120ยบC? Is that smoke?!) and bought & installed a new GPU in Rob's PC. I was doing that before I got into school. At work, there's one guy who does all the hardware stuff. Mainly because it's all Dell computers, which are almost completely modular, and some things like monitors that are treated like FRUs. It also used to be that when you replaced hardware, there was some manual configuration that had to be done, drivers to install, that kind of thing. Now computers auto-detect hardware & install drivers automatically. I haven't manually installed a driver in years.
The end result of the past two years is this: I give up. I surrender. I let go of everything I had set my expectations on 5 years ago. I quit. I'm going back to something I know and something I know I can do. I can probably do it better now because I don't want anything in particular out of it. I'll go to work, I'll do my job, I'll try to have fun with my coworkers while I'm there, and after May 17th when I get my degree, instead of coming home to homework, I'll come home and play with the dog or play WoW, and I'll pay my fucking bills. Who knows, maybe if I score enough OT, we'll move to Washington or something.
Owen Wilson
Trent Reznor
