virtual contentment*

It’s an odd thing to be grateful to have work. Since Friday, I’ve been swamped, and not with the usual annoying secretarial sort of work. Among other things, I’ve been doing some very basic calculations (addition, subtraction, and a drop of multiplication)** for a new approach on one of the major bridges in NYC, which at the very least makes me sound cool when talking about my job. After a couple weeks of getting paid to come in late, leave early, and surf the web, I hit an all time nadir (my very sad attempt at improving my usage of vocabulary) at work last Wednesday when I was rebuked by my taskmaster for not asking him for work even though he was out of town, which felt so utterly degrading, and coupled with my having "turned down" an "offer" to spend three months on the field because I wouldn't be able do it (religious conflicts and otherwise)***, the whole situation of not having anything to put on my timesheet, of being offered humbling work that I couldn’t accept, and of being expected to go around and almost beg my superiors for work, was too much, and I came close to crying on returning to my dreary cubicle. But then, one of my real bosses called and the mending of the situation began. Happiness in the work place is not all about the people you work for and with, but I’m realizing more and more that working with reasonable and considerate people makes a hell of a difference. Still, improvements aside, so long as I don’t love my job, I’ll probably go back to school, and I have a least a couple people supportive of that idea (from an email from one of my undergraduate scholarship donors):

Your note about your education options is about what I had hoped for you. I don't doubt that you'll dump the entry level experience and go on: you're much too clever a young lady to be satisfied at this point in your career.

And I probably shouldn’t be blogging from work or about work, but eh…


*flaunting my newly coined expression despite, or perhaps, in spite of BPS's calling it an illogical construction.

** I miss calculus, but doing some math is better than nothing. Sadly, it seems that my differential equations skills, along with the majority of my rigorous engineering education, may never get utilized.

***But even if it didn't present any real problems, the idea of spending three months watching construction workers pour concrete, checking the concrete for cracks, observing as they lift the concrete into place, would have made me extremely resentful: I didn't spend 6 years getting an education to be wasting away on the field...