Posts Tagged ‘work’

Upon your graduation … some advice to the Class of 2012

May 14, 2012

Since I’m never going to be rich or famous enough to offer tips for success to new graduates, here is my advice for the newly minted graduates of 2012.  Some are funny, some are serious and some flat out address my pet peeves from the class of 2011.

25. Live beneath your means, at least for the first 5 years out of school. 

24. Do your own taxes.

23. Take a class on retirement planning. This summer.

22. Get a copy of your immunization records, birth certificate and medical records.

21. Get a number of a locksmith.  Put it in your cell phone and glove compartment. Trust me.

20. Set your Facebook profile to not let people auto-tag you in pictures.

19. Tight clothes are never appropriate in the work place.

18. Trust me, your boss knows when you come in, when you leave and how many breaks you take.  So do your co-workers.

17. Find a hobby that is off the beaten track of what your friends do.

16. There isn’t a job beneath you; there isn’t a ‘dream job’.

15. Eating fish at your cube will result in comments being made.

14.  Share chocolate not drinking stories.

13. Learn to travel alone.

12. Take a job you think you might be interested in.

11. Stay in touch with former employers, professors and colleagues.

10. If you get fired (and you probably will), spend some time thinking about why you were fired.  Generally both parties could have done a better job in communicating.

9.   Always write a response to your review: just don’t sign and date. Put some thought into the critique of your performance.

8. Know a job you would excel at, know a job you would not like, know a job you would want if you could have any job in the world (even if it’s not in your field).  All are popular interview questions.

7. “I’m a people person”  or “I’m a hard worker” are probably the single most over-used phrases in the hiring process.

6. It’s ok to say you do not aspire to be a people manager.  Some people manage projects better than people.

5. Keep your work colleagues separate from your friends.

4. Stay current with your profession, even if it’s on your own time.

3. Take advantage of tuition reimbursement offered by employers.

2. Leave your laptop, cell phone and blackberry at home during your vacation.

1. Find your passion.  You will be spending a lot of time during your life at work: working in an area you feel passionate about makes all the difference in the world.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Oh Monday. . . .

December 5, 2011

A complete and total Monday.  The good: I managed to trouble shoot an issue with my car (I know nothing about cars but understand basic circuitry and figured out the positive cable from the battery was loose causing the light to come on.  My plan was to open the hood and tighten it but hey, I don’t have the grip strength to do that so off to the mechanic I go on Wednesday. Joy.)  One of my co-workers called in sick so I tried to deal with double the normal work load while pretending that the pounding migraine might just go away before oh, Christmas.  (It did after a copious amount of caffeine infusion).

I finally received the package from Best Buy Worst Store Ever.  Still haven’t heard from them, don’t expect to but hey, my sister’s Christmas errand is complete (trust me, I’m grateful, even if it is on my kitchen table).  Today would have been the perfect day to grab takeout, hit a drive through (ok, I do admit to hitting the golden arches today during the quest for caffeine, I hadn’t had any in a few days and was suffering …. I’d say like heroin withdrawal but that might be an exaggeration: on which side, I’m not sure) or something else.  Instead I made it 2 for 2 in my I’m not buying prepared food, I’m eating only what is in my pantry/kitchen/ and as local as possible (I do have somethings that are not S.O.L.E sourced left over that I’m not going to just toss).  What can I say, I’m drawn to the Dark Days Challenge in the sense that it forces me to think in advance about what I’m going to eat and where my food came from (couple that with the fact I’m still shaking my head at McDonald’s being an Olympic sponsor for some reason) and who is ‘profiting’ from my purchases.  Hey, I’m all for people making money: I’d just prefer it to be small businesses.  Again, based on zero scientific evidence, I do have to wonder if the increase in allergies, migraines and other expensive but not deadly health conditions is related to fillers in our food (but I’m a history major with a masters in theology, I know how to ask questions …. lots of them).

Anyway, today I wanted meatballs. Not a heavy pasta dish with meatballs.  Just meatballs (don’t ask me why).  For some reason, I had taken out some sausage from 8 O’clock Ranch this morning, grabbed an onion,  opened a jar of whole tomatoes from my CSA share at Nourse Farm I canned over the summer and mixed in some dried rosemary from my mom’s garden and mixed it with some GF bread crumbs.  I wound up freezing 1/2 into a meatloaf for later this winter and cooking the rest.  I made a sauce with some Fromage Blanc from Foxboro Cheese, half and half from Shaw’s Farm and a few leafs of spinach stirred in from the Somerville Winter’s Market.

I’m sure, oh, mid-January, I’m going to be screaming for the love of an avocado but right now, my past 2 attempts have been tasty.  The 2 items out of the radius, the meat and the rosemary.  If I make this again, I’ll add a pinch of salt: it needed a bit to offset the acid.

Meatballs and Spinach

Comfort food for a Monday

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Cooking, CSA, Dark Days Challenge | Leave a Comment »

Task: Also a 4 letter word

August 19, 2011

Days 4 & 5:

  • Simplify work tasks. Our work day is made up of an endless list of
    work tasks. If you simply try to knock off all the tasks on your to-do list,
    you’ll never get everything done, and worse yet, you’ll never get the important
    stuff done. Focus on the essential tasks and eliminate the rest. Read
    more    .
  • Simplify home tasks. In that vein, think about all the stuff you do
    at home. Sometimes our home task list is just as long as our work list. And
    we’ll never get that done either. So focus on the most important, and try to
    find ways to eliminate the other tasks (automate, eliminate, delegate, or hire
    help).

So, this is one of those things where one I don’t have as much control as I’d like (ok, I’m a Type A control freak).  Since I am working as a temp, my work tasks are dependent on others.  I can’t be proactive using lull times to get ahead.  The sad thing is that I’ve become a the type of person who comes in, does her job and leaves.  Since I’m at the end of the totem pole, there I do what is assigned and moved on.  The sad reality of the not-in-a-recession-but-sure-looks-like-it economy.  Hey, I’m working, I have enough to pay my bills and put a bit aside, I’m not complaining.  I’ve just come to realize how much not being vested in an organization has made me disenfranchised with what I do day in and day out.

Simplify at home: oh the both sides of being single! To say I despise cleaning is a mild understatement.  Every fall, I do a massive purge.  This year, I have a hunch is going to be particularly ugly.  I have a few boxes that I haven’t unpacked: I moved to this condo in ’07. Um. I’ll make sure they aren’t things like old tax returns but something tells me they are going in the donation pile.

One of the challenges of tasks I need to simplify is my commitment to shopping locally owned as much as possible.  Yes, target is far more tempting given the fact it now has groceries.  However, I’ve found a different level of intention in shopping local (aside from the do I really need this):  chatting with the grocery store owner of the Brazilian market, having a random conversation about paint with a retired engineer at the hardware store.  Somehow, it has become less cumbersome being in the smaller places versus dodging shopping carts, reckless drivers and the general hassle of big box stores.

What are my big goals for my home this fall? Organize my guest room.  If I haven’t used it, touched it, thought about it in the past 2 years: it will be Ebayed, freecycled (maybe, that sorta creeps me out) or donated.  Then I’ll organize it into some sort of space, I haven’t decided yet (Jackson and Lafitte are angling for a kitty jungle).  The condo has been a giant to-do list for a myriad of reasons I’m not going to blog about: I’m finally ready to untangle the havoc.  Right now, I have the last 3 places I’ve lived sorta in a heap.  Ack.  It’s time to break out the calendar and map the next 8 weekends for the clean, purge, re-do plan!

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in 72 Ideas in 72 Days Project, Cats, Condo | Leave a Comment »

Cracked, broken and a little disappointed

May 11, 2011

Today I did an ‘adult’ thing: I took care of me.  Ok, most days we all do this without thought.  Today, this action involved thought.  I have been working a series of temporary jobs on quite frankly a battered and broken body.  I had accepted an assignment with the following description:

*matching invoices

*organizing slips/paperwork

*pulling paperwork, entering data

 I’ve worked for this company before: it is a fantastic, proactive corporation that is forward thinking.  The reality is that the job involved standing in a non-temperature controlled warehouse pulling invoices out of boxes.  I know my limitations; I’ve painfully become aware of them.

 The company I’m working for and I looked at job modifications: there was one critical element that could not be modified.  I am grateful for them for working with me to try to figure out how/if the job could be modified: yes, it’s the law, but I’m also a temp.

 Today is one of those days, there aren’t enough ice packs, heating packs, muscle relaxants and e-stimulation to quell the pain.  The pain is exhausting.  In the midst of all of this, I was listening to a podcast on lower back pain: I was hoping to get tips on how to manage multi-level disc involvement.  Instead, I found a podcast delivered to medical students about how many people with chronic pain are looking for disability claims.  I felt stabbed.

 As I stood pulling information out of a warehouse, I heard the myth of chronic, persistent pain continued by a medical school professor.  Today was a day I’d give you everything I own if you could promise me a pain free day.  Just one day without pain: one day.  I wanted to find that lecturer and let him examine my body and tell me that I was seeking special treatment. I wanted to find him and show him a few years of working in jobs which caused me to undergo countless steroid injections into my back, a few nerve burnings and constant pounding dull pain. Actually, I didn’t want to see him: I wanted to find the medical students who were subjected to these myths.

 A few decades ago, a wise orthopedist told me that ‘around’ the age of 35, I’d have issues in standing, walking distances.  Telling a 15 year old that . . . well, 25 is ancient.  I wish he was wrong.  I wish one minute when I was 10 didn’t alter my life forever.  And I wish I could find a job.  The sad thing: I can work; I tried to do this job and just realized that I couldn’t.  72 hours of non-stop pounding pain and not being able to modify an aspect of a job, I had to let my boss know that I wouldn’t be back on Monday.  I had to surrender and admit that while I’m willing to do anything, my body can’t.

 And just once, just once, I’d like for my body not to betray me.  For various reasons, I’ve had 31 surgeries: 28 of them orthopedic: all on my legs (everything except my left knee, knock on wood).  And I want to find the myth-mongers who say pain like this isn’t real and let the walk in my shoes for a week.  I’m not interested in disability: just a job that doesn’t leave me wrapped in ice for 10 hours.  And just once, I’d like somebody to understand how emotionally painful this is without saying something like “well, I know my pain isn’t as bad as yours but. . .” or “Oh, I hear you.”  I don’t know what I want people to say.  Maybe just an acknowledgement that the system sucks, that most people who live with chronic pain aren’t looking for an easy way out and maybe understanding that there are jobs that just can’t be done not because of pride but because of the body.  Or maybe I just want a hug.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Health Care, People, Popular Culture, Reflections | 8 Comments »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 142 other followers