(Not) Happy One Year

At approximately 8:30am this morning, my professional career at the Census reached the one-year mark. I think I didn't even notice its passing. There's not much to celebrate about today.

I don't think that I've come far in the last year. I am still waiting to be "trained" on a job. What happened is, I just sat around long enough until someone said "hey, T.J. has been around a while, let's give him some work!"...I never had any work experience or guidance. I still don't. Most of my day is spent staring off into space. The only real skill I may have acquired is from the StEPS User Group meetings I've run, being able to lead a meeting. Actually, I'm still nervous when I have to do those, especially with speaking, so perhaps the only real skill I am now able to do is the skill of writing down on a resume that I've run a regular meeting.

Financially I'm not much better, either. I could always balance a budget, some I didn't make any contribution to my learning in that sense. I did technically save some money, but the new computer I just purchased took a huge bite out of that.

This job was not what I thought it would be. My boss told me I'd be working on a survey, but that hasn't happened even though I've been told that since last summer. I learned to stop asking about it. I was also told that with my TA experience they would be asking me to help teach, though that fizzled out as well. I am given no guidance. I didn't have a computer for the first couple weeks and just sat at my desk looking at insurance information. No one cared. I feel like my boss was not looking out for me. It was often the case that he just wouldn't be at meetings we had arranged. No explanation or "I'm sorry"s, either. I am worried my automatic one-year GS-9 promotion won't get put in because it's forgotten about. Although I am too much of a softie to think I can quit, once I do it will be nice to do other things.

I think my biggest gain from this experience has been that. The experience. Now I can say I've been in the real world. I can also I've had a bad job. At least, I hope it's a bad job...it would be depressing if they were all like this. No, I'm sure it's a bad job.

Rather than celebrate a year here, today I am celebrating 50 days left in this place. My happiest thought of the day was looking at the calendar and seeing there's only two more months until I give my notice. Maybe next year I'll be celebrating one year of having left this job. Hopefully it will be at a good job. :)