The Beginning of a New Chapter

I know, the titles of the last two entries are quite cheesy, but they truly reflect my attitude toward the whole job change situation.

I wish I could have posted on Monday right after I finsihed my first day at SAIC. I left work on Monday excited about my new job. An excitement that I'm still experiencing. I'm still in training though, so we'll see if this excitement holds up when I actually start doing real work. :-p

The environment at SAIC is similar to ICASA, but extremely different in lots of ways. SAIC is more organized and structured. It's a Fortune 500 company and has employees located all over the world, so the structure and organization is expected. When I arrived for my new employee orientation on Monday, they took me to this room that looked and felt like a board room, complete with tall black chairs and a telecom telephone. It felt so cool.

During my orientation I felt like management textbook exploded in front of me and came to life. For those of you who don't know, I'm taking MGT 330: Organizational Behavior this semester. In this class we have been studying different management styles and techniques. During my orientation I was picking out all the management theories that are being practiced at SAIC. I definetly give the company an A for using a wide variety of motivational theories. No wonder why this company is so successful!!

During orientation, I also realized that I'm going to have to adjust from being a student worker at NMT with almost no "rights" to being treated as a full-time non-student employee. Although my position is a part-time intern, I'm finding out that this only is a title and a dictator as to how many hours I can work. It seems like the only difference between part-time and full-time employees at SAIC are the number of hours each type of employee are suppose to work and a couple, not many at all, differences in the benefits package. For example, as a part-time intern, I'm eligible for paid-holidays,medical benefits, and a retirement plan. That's completely unheard of at NMT. You don't get crap as a student worker at NMT. So these are the types of things that I'm going to have to adjust to at this new job. It's a different mentality and work environment, but so far I'm liking it.

Today was my second day on the job. In all honesty, I think they are having a hard time getting me set up and ready to work, i.e. getting me a computer, a place to sit, and allowing me to finish all the training that I'm require to do. I'm not upset or furstrated because I understand how things just don't fall into place sometimes. Meanwhile, I'm learning the ends and out of the company, meeting people, and reading about the my group's work. I now know how to get into the restrooms (they are locked), who I need to go to for questions, and where the water is located, which is not too far from the office that I'm projected to work in. Although, when I worked at ICASA, the water cooler was about 4 feet away from my desk. Can't beat that. :) (These are the important things in a job - sarcasm).

So, after day two on the job - I love it! I think this move was the right thing and I'm glad that I decided to work for SAIC. Like I mentioned, there are a lot of adjustments that I'm having to make, but that would be for the majority of job changes. Although I usually frown on major changes, this one I'm smiling at and am looking forward to adjusting to. Sigh...I'm growing up.....meh.

I'm looking forward to Friday because I get to work the entire day. Ouch, I haven't worked a full eight hour day in a really long time. It should be interesting. Hopefully the three o'clock sleepies won't get the best of me. But the coffee pot is next to the water...and that's not too far from the office......

~Carmelita