Week 2:
Project Transitions

June 7, 2013

My supervisor called me a workaholic-in-the-making on Tuesday at 5pm, an hour and a half after I was supposedly “done for the day”.  A red flag flashed repeatedly right in front of my mind’s eye: WARNING. I know that I’ve always had trouble leaving projects unfinished, but this week was a prime example of why that quality may not always lead to the healthiest life choices for me. Naturally, I came in the following day and stayed even later. I know, roll your eyes. But hey, at least I love my job enough to stick around after hours. Regardless, I clearly need to work on setting myself some time limits.

I am not proud to say that, up to this point, this is not an uncommon conundrum for me. As I said, unfinished projects frequently drive me up the wall. As a student on the Cornell Hilltop, there is always something going on while I’m at school, be it a twelve page paper, a Student Senate meeting or a midterm exam. I am used to having a long to-do list. In fact, I relish having a long to-do list. So when I was presented with a spreadsheet a mile long of event signs to be created for Texas Swing (including but not limited to 95 gift certificate labels, eighteen reserved table signs, and over twenty miscellaneous event signs), I was anxious to start crossing items off the list. I buckled down, saddled up and printed more than 50 color pages of signage to be hung all over Saturday’s fundraiser (which, unfortunately, I have to miss as I am currently out of town for the weekend at a family bar mitzvah).

As I experimented my way through the labyrinth of multiple graphic design programs, I was grateful for the experience of having previously designed lobby displays for Cornell Theatre productions and countless fliers for campus activities. Hours of practice in my residence hall or on my computer or in my professors’ offices primed me to work on visual projects quickly under pressure. It has developed my eye for what looks good and developed my computer and motor skills so I can produce what looks good fast. Practice over the last two years saved me boatloads of time and frustration while I worked to contribute to Texas Swing. It let me focus on what I was doing and not how I was doing it.
And I did fully focus. It proved to be such an engrossing project that my twenty hour, 3 day work week became almost thirty hours. I was just making up for the time I am out of town this weekend, right? Jokes aside, though, I did learn a lot this week. Among other things, I can now

-Use Adobe InDesign

-Run a Facebook campaign as a business (scheduling posts and everything!)

-Assemble silent auction materials for hundreds of people, and

-Mail-merge any Microsoft Office programs under the sun in very little time.

As she helped me put together the above list in my weekly wrap-up /processing meeting, my supervisor, asked me what personal skills I had learned in addition to the logistical skills. I was reminded then of why I am in Austin. This fellowship is not just to learn the logistics of computer programs or the semantics of event planning. It is also to learn about me. Logistic skills are great and now I won’t have to learn them later on, but equally as important: This week I learned to exercise my patience, reel in my perfectionism in order to produce a quality product in a timely fashion, and attend to my own personal needs, even (and especially) when that involves setting myself some time limits.

Next week I start training for case management. I will be shadowing real life case managing sessions, reading a training manual thicker than my dictionary, and preparing to take on my own case. Butterflies in my stomach cannot even begin to cover it.

I am itching to share more about my life in Austin, but one blog post can only hold so much. I will leave it at this: another week, albeit a short one, has flown by faster than I’d like. I am so lucky to have the time I do in such a rich, nurturing city and workplace. Thanks to all who have made it so and thanks for reading!