You Know You're a Grad Student...

I’m (nearly) at the end of my second week of full-time employment, and I have yet to post almost anything about it! So far, I would say that my job is pretty sweet. My job basically consists of reading materials (application guides, technical papers, PowerPoint presentations, etc.) written by employees that will go out to the public.  I edit, format, and edit some more until it is ready to go. Since I’m not an electrical engineer, I don’t understand a damn thing I’m reading, but the work keeps me busy, my co-workers are friendly, and the company I work for has a lot of great benefits.

The first week of work was mostly orientation and training events - orientation in the morning (build a Tinker Toy tower!) and training after lunch (read this style guide!).  It as like an entire week of “syllabus day” (you know, when the first day of a class is just going over the syllabus?). I totally understand why that is necessary, but it was not very engaging. This week, though, I’ve gotten to take on a couple projects of my own, and there has been significantly less thumb-twiddling.  Starting next week we should be swamped with work, so I’m sure I’ll look back on these first couple of weeks fondly.

One thing I’m surprised at is how quickly I’ve adapted to the structure of a full-time job. In college and grad school there were very few set hours that I had to be anywhere - my schedule was incredibly flexible. Now, I have to be at work from 8-4:30, take breaks and lunch at a certain time for a certain amount of time. I also have to be up by 6:30 in the morning, which a month ago I would have thought was impossible, but now… I just do it. It’s not that I wouldn’t enjoy sleeping past 6:30 in the morning, but I know that I have to do it, so it’s no problem.

The job also has some pretty cool perks beyond the normal medical and retirement benefits. They feed everyone a free meal every Friday for lunch (we also have to listen to a bunch of short presentations, but I’m not one to turn up my nose at a free meal). We also have a gym with pretty cool personal training options. I have my first one-on-one meeting with a personal trainer tomorrow. I originally thought that this session would be some personal training combined with some general workout routines, but I guess it’s a lot more in-depth than that. Tomorrow I will establish some wellness goals with a personal trainer and I’ll go in later for a fitness test where they will test my flexibility, strength, aerobic abilities, etc. After that, a personal trainer will put together a fitness plan for me. That’s pretty sweet, right? Free gym access and personal training? Not bad.

So far, my job is pretty sweet. And I must say that I do not miss bringing work home with me.

Today I submitted the paperwork to set up a 401(k) at work, and I’ll be contributing 5% of my income to that account. Unfortunately, the company I work for does not have a matching program; instead I will get stock in the company (after I’ve been working there for at least two years) as a retirement fund. In the meantime, I’m going to keep contributing to this brand new account and my Roth IRA. Yay for retirement savings!

A couple times a year I get an urge to learn how to make things, and I’m feeling that way again. This time around, I can blame my mom.  She and my dad came to visit me for my graduation, and there is very little to do where I live.  After getting the tour and seeing a couple spots around town, there just isn’t much left - and since my mom was going to be staying for a week, we had to come up with something.  My mom is an avid and good quilter, and since I already have a sewing machine, I thought it would be fun to work on a quilting project together.

Over the course of about four days, my mom and I put together the tops for two different quilts, a twin-sized fish-themed quilt for my boyfriend and a king-size Beatles-themed quilt for me (below).

I’m terrible at it, of course.  Measuring and cutting the fabric is difficult, and making sure it’s all lined up as you go is also hard.  However, I had a lot of fun working on it with my mom.  She took both projects back with her to actually quilt the projects.

So, now I’ve got an itch to do my own projects.  I’m going to start by cross-stitching this:

If it turns out, maybe I can set it up on my desk at work and build from there.  The first step will be drawing out the pattern on some graph paper.   

I graduated last Saturday, and my new job starts next Monday morning.  In the meantime, I’ve been hanging out with my parents - who are visiting me from two time zones away - and it’s been a lot of fun.  They haven’t been here since they helped me move to the area two years ago, and it’s been awesome showing them around.  We saw my tiny office, walked around campus, saw the apartment I’ll be moving into soon, went out to a nice park - lots of stuff. My dad left early on Monday, but my mom will be staying through Saturday morning.  It may sound boring spending the week between school and my first full-time job with my parents, but even though I was sharing my super-tiny apartment with both of them, it has been awesome.

I think if I were hanging out by myself, I probably just would have watched Netflix and slept in. Instead, I’ve been running around, doing all sorts of things. My mom and I have gone jogging together, out to new restaurants, shopping, and we’ve been working on a quilting project together. Look, proof!

I’m totally terrible at quilting, but I’m okay at sewing things in a straight line. We’ve been working on a fish-themed quilt for my boyfriend, and tonight we began work on a Beatles-themed quilt for me (yay!). It’s been fun, and it makes me want to learn more about how to do it. My dream project would be to put together a MST3K quilt, complete with cast portraits, but I lack the skills. 

Also, my parents are awesome in that for graduation, they got me a sweet bike, which I can use to commute to work (financial and fitness win!) and putter around town, and they helped me get some new, formal business clothes for my new job. How awesome is that?

Anyway, the one thing that I really don’t like about where I live is how far it is from my friends and family. I would love to be able to do the stuff I have been doing all week with my mom regularly, instead of having it be a special occasion. If she lived closer to me, she could help me with my hypothetical project, go running, and just hang out much more easily. I suppose on the up-side, I really appreciate the time I get to spend with my family a lot more than I did when I lived close by.  It’s been awesome having my parents here