She works hard for the money

Well today is my first day of work as an Administrative Assistant in the IT department of Shire Pharmaceuticals. Technically anyway. Yesterday I was here all day but I was being “Trained” (aka “throwing as much information at the Temp as I can before I go out of town for a week, then leaving her on her own to figure it out”) by the person who I am replacing at the end of the month.

Now, before I say anything, let me just preface this by saying that I feel extremely blessed to have been offered this position. Michael and I will not experience a downtime in income, which was a fear of mine during my job search. It’s also in Cambridge, which I already mentioned was my favorite part of the area so far. Not a bad commute either. From my bus stop to the front door of the building is about 45 minutes. Could be a LOT worse! So, in short, please don’t think I’m complaining, because I’m not. I’m very grateful.

However, this is going to be very challenging, and not in that “Hey I’m good at this, but this is slightly above my training level” way. No, more like in that “Wow, if I screw up one of these purchase orders worth $5,000 it’s my ass” type of way. Now, I’ve done plenty of administrative assistant work before, but it’s always been in a higher education environment and was most recently in Publishing (where I’d eventually like to end up, perhaps). This is IT stuff, which is not at all my forte. Instead of memos and distribution and editing, I’m doing purchase orders, requisitions, loaning out LCD monitors and setting up cell phone plans for people in a huge company which specializes in the very area I always failed in my High School classes.

This is not to say that I can’t do it. I just had an awful lot of information dropped on my brain yesterday so that when I got home I was completely brain dead. Then I find out that the girl who trained me is gone today and all next week to San Diego. Then she comes back for just one more week and then it’s just me. So, I am feeling a slight bit of pressure. But every time I start to get frustrated, I really try hard to remember that this job is a blessing. :)

So enough of that. I changed my profile picture again, because….well just because I like that picture!

I find it amusing that there can be 600 people on a subway car and every single one of them avoids making eye contact with any other person. I also want to know how those men can stand there holding onto only their newspapers and not fall over when the train jerks. I’m holding on to the bar and I almost bite it every time.

Michael’s first recital is tonight at the Conservatory. All of the new Graduate students are performing one song each. So that should be lots of fun! Then we’re going out to dinner to celebrate his recital and my new job.

Oh, and send out good karma for me…I entered my name in a drawing to be able to buy Red Sox post-season tickets today. That would rock my world so hard I may not ever recover. But what a way to go….