I am delighted to say that I not only survived my first week at my Awesome New Job but have managed to both get useful things done and have been really enjoying it. So, here’s an update.
Places:
I’m adoring Maine so far. I’m living half a mile from work, I’ve figured my grocery store and other practical options, my bank account is finally fully accessible, and I handled a bunch of the other necessary details (like registering the car and getting a new license) before I started work. And of course, I acquired a public library card.
The weather has also been lovely – after a miserable July in Minnesota (including record-breaking heat and humidity) that made packing incredibly miserable, it’s been a joy to be somewhere where it’s topping out around 85F (sometimes very humid) and where it gets substantially cooler (lower 60s, upper 50s) overnight. My kind of weather.
I’m settling into the new apartment, as well, though I am still very light on furniture. (I have a futon, some very basic clothing storage, and a very comfy arm chair.) I’m enjoying the ‘figure out what will work in this space’ part, though there are moments when I’d like, y’know, bookshelves.
People:
I’ve been enjoying getting to know all of the library staff (except for the couple currently on vacation, but I’m looking forward to getting to know them too.) Everyone’s been great about making me feel welcome, answering my questions, and explaining things.
I haven’t gone very far into looking at making social connections outside of work yet, but I have some ideas of where I’d like to start with that. (I wanted to give myself a few weeks to settle into my new work schedule – plus, several things of interest kick off once school is back for the fall.) Technology’s making it easy to stay in touch with friends in Minnesota. It’s nice when that works.
Work:
As of this afternoon, I have almost everything we need me to have (we’ve got one more set of software installations to work on…) to do my job. (Though parts of that took longer than we’d have liked.)
I’ve set up my work laptop the way I want it, read a bunch of internal documentation files about the library, learned the first part of creating images for the public computers and their classroom lab space (the rest of it, I’ll be learning on Monday.) And I’ve started exploring Flash. (Since a chunk of my job is “Be helpful when people have technology questions”, a part of my job description is “Learn how to do stuff on the software we have on computers in the library.”)
And I’ve helped with some technical support issues, and proposed a new project, and been in some productive and effectively run meetings.
I’ve been coming home tired, but very content, which is really excellent for week 1 of a new job.
Transition:
Besides the obvious transition – moving 1500 miles across the country is obviously a big one – there have been lots of other things too. This is my first time combining a new job with a new place of work that wasn’t familiar to me since 2000 (so, 11 years).
(I’ve started other new jobs or roles since then, but not where I was figuring out all the “Where is this thing?” and “How do I get to there?” at the same time I was figuring out all the new job stuff – two different volunteer roles, and a short-term job for a librarian on leave at the school I did my graduate work at.
And the library building has *seven* staircases, most of which don’t go to all floors, so I keep having to figure out which staircase works for what I want. This was complicated this week by them getting waxed one at a time, so I kept going “Well, I could take that staircase, but I can’t today, so, um…”)
It’s also my first time bringing lunch to work in 11 years (since my previous job fed us lunch and had us supervise the cafeteria at the same time…) so that’s been an interesting thing to figure out what works for me. (I suspect I’ll eventually want a bit more variety, but for right now, I’ve figured out things that work while not taking a lot of prep time.)
Updates of other kinds:
I have tons and tons of links sitting in a bookmark folder for a links post, and hope to make that happen on Sunday. I also have plans for ongoing posting in various ways, but I’m still trying to figure out exactly what that might look like.
(If there are things you would particularly like me to talk about, I am open to suggestions, too, though chances are good that libraries and technology (and the mixture thereof) are going to be high on the list anyway.)
Recent Comments