Focus Feels Fine
Nov. 14th, 2008 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI feel good today. Although I'm still too negative at work, I'm finding ways to make that work for me. (For example, I may expect someone to always drop the ball, which is not fair and which is also depressing, but I now am more likely to have a catching mitt ready, which makes me better at my job and thus happier.)
I decided to focus on making academic advising my next career. I've actually gotten an interview for that sort of job before. It feels like the right compromise between being fun, paying properly, not taking up my whole life, and being possible for me to actually get.
Now that I'm focused, I'm going to do several things I wasn't doing before. For example, I'm going to volunteer more for the Academic Counselor's Association, which I didn't want to do before because I thought I might suddenly stop being a member at any time, when I got my next job. (I am a member now because I work with advisers. Or at least I maintain a tool they use.) Of the two committees requesting new members, I'm going to pick the committee that's fun rather than the committee where they need me more because being in the former is much more likely to demonstrate that I have people skills whereas the latter would just demonstrate that I have skills that are already obvious in my resume.
In fact I'm doing several things like that in the opposite way from the way I normally do them, and it feels good. For example, someone came in and said, "I think X just had a nervous breakdown at the big meeting." So I suddenly decided not to use X as a reference for the resume I was working on. I was remembering that X doesn't do well on the gossip circuit (though I still don't know why). So I'm using Y instead, even though Y probably knows me only half as well as X does. Because even though how well they know me should matter more, people probably don't say much when they're references anyway, and often they don't even get called, so picking people who are well-regarded is probably the wiser strategy (so long as you're not being obviously whacked about it, like by listing the President, the Pope, and Bill Gates as your three references).
Also now that I'm focused, negative thoughts about how much I might turn out to hate being an adviser are just rolling off me. Before last week, every time I really imaged actually having some job other than the one I have, it just seemed terrible. (It only sounded good if I was really imagining having some other job, and so it was the other job that was seeming terrible.)
I heard about a study where they found that people who expected to be about to do something thought more highly of that something than people who didn't expect to be about to do it. (People had been randomly chosen to be told that they were about to do this thing, of course.) It's like your brain helps you deal with reality by trying to convince you that it's going to be fun. I think that might be happening to me. That means I might just be fooling myself into thinking I might like advising when I really wouldn't, but I don't care. (See? Rolling off.) I liked being a camp counselor a lot, and that sounds a lot more scary than advising does when you don't really know what you're doing. For example, academic advisers deal with adults who are at least technically responsible for themselves--at camp, anything bad that happens is the fault of the adults.
I applied for a second advising job in as many weeks yesterday, and today I realized that someone I know works in the same area. So I told him that I'd applied for that job opening and got lots more information about it. I don't think he'll actually talk to the people who do the hiring (which would have been nice because he likes me and actually e-mails me with some of his questions), but it was still good to learn more.
Sweet potato update - The sweet potato casserole was definitely overcooked, but it had a good flavor. I'm thinking for next time to use butter instead of olive oil, oats instead of flour, and don't chop the nuts so finely.
I decided to focus on making academic advising my next career. I've actually gotten an interview for that sort of job before. It feels like the right compromise between being fun, paying properly, not taking up my whole life, and being possible for me to actually get.
Now that I'm focused, I'm going to do several things I wasn't doing before. For example, I'm going to volunteer more for the Academic Counselor's Association, which I didn't want to do before because I thought I might suddenly stop being a member at any time, when I got my next job. (I am a member now because I work with advisers. Or at least I maintain a tool they use.) Of the two committees requesting new members, I'm going to pick the committee that's fun rather than the committee where they need me more because being in the former is much more likely to demonstrate that I have people skills whereas the latter would just demonstrate that I have skills that are already obvious in my resume.
In fact I'm doing several things like that in the opposite way from the way I normally do them, and it feels good. For example, someone came in and said, "I think X just had a nervous breakdown at the big meeting." So I suddenly decided not to use X as a reference for the resume I was working on. I was remembering that X doesn't do well on the gossip circuit (though I still don't know why). So I'm using Y instead, even though Y probably knows me only half as well as X does. Because even though how well they know me should matter more, people probably don't say much when they're references anyway, and often they don't even get called, so picking people who are well-regarded is probably the wiser strategy (so long as you're not being obviously whacked about it, like by listing the President, the Pope, and Bill Gates as your three references).
Also now that I'm focused, negative thoughts about how much I might turn out to hate being an adviser are just rolling off me. Before last week, every time I really imaged actually having some job other than the one I have, it just seemed terrible. (It only sounded good if I was really imagining having some other job, and so it was the other job that was seeming terrible.)
I heard about a study where they found that people who expected to be about to do something thought more highly of that something than people who didn't expect to be about to do it. (People had been randomly chosen to be told that they were about to do this thing, of course.) It's like your brain helps you deal with reality by trying to convince you that it's going to be fun. I think that might be happening to me. That means I might just be fooling myself into thinking I might like advising when I really wouldn't, but I don't care. (See? Rolling off.) I liked being a camp counselor a lot, and that sounds a lot more scary than advising does when you don't really know what you're doing. For example, academic advisers deal with adults who are at least technically responsible for themselves--at camp, anything bad that happens is the fault of the adults.
I applied for a second advising job in as many weeks yesterday, and today I realized that someone I know works in the same area. So I told him that I'd applied for that job opening and got lots more information about it. I don't think he'll actually talk to the people who do the hiring (which would have been nice because he likes me and actually e-mails me with some of his questions), but it was still good to learn more.
Sweet potato update - The sweet potato casserole was definitely overcooked, but it had a good flavor. I'm thinking for next time to use butter instead of olive oil, oats instead of flour, and don't chop the nuts so finely.
no subject
on 2008-11-15 11:22 pm (UTC)sally