Today it really sunk in that at some-point the shit will hit the fan, and that I’d have to work overtime, staying at work past the official 4:45 “summer hours” end-time to complete my projects.
It was expected, especially since I spent the first couple of weeks without a defined project goal. So basically my already on-the-short-side 10 week internship, became a de-facto 7.5 week internship. I actually contemplated extending the internship by a week, but then I remembered all the things I want to do during my time off, and x-nayed that thought. I would much rather work long days than give up being able to travel (no, we haven’t decided where we’ll travel, but we won’t stay in Ithaca the entire time).
The hard part will be giving myself daily deadlines. Because I’m good with deadline, I like making them, or rather I hate being in a situation where I didn’t make them, things like – coming to a meeting unprepared. I can’t stand it. I guess it’s the perfectionist side of me – I like things to be done right. You could also say it’s my ego, not willing to look bad. Anyway – just as an example, today I was in the office until around 5:40, because I have an early meeting tomorrow, and I wanted to bring a completed version of a manufacturing process flow chart I’m putting together. So there I was, aligning all the little boxes, making sure all the arrows are in place and look good, and finally standing in my cube, like a kid in an art class, folding and sticking the 6 pages that this thing spans together, making sure that the lines fit together just right. The problem is not everything has such a concrete deadline. I mean ultimately everything has the deadline of my final presentation (btw – already scheduled, with most of the senior management invited, eek!). But I won’t be able to do everything last minute, and I don’t want to either. I made myself a nice little gaunt chart; detailing different “mini-projects” together make my 2 big projects. You, know I worked backwards, looking at how much time certain things will take, to see how much time I have for other things. You would thing that would be enough. It really should be shouldn’t it? I think having it there on the wall just doesn’t stress me out enough. Maybe I’ll start trying making a daily list. My problem with those is that I tend to make them unrealistically long, and then when I don’t do everything that’s on it, I let myself off saying “well, it was unrealistically long anyway”.
On a completely different note – I have a friend coming to visit me today! J is (or was) a second year at my school. We met right at the beginning of the year, and had a good vibe going with each other. She will soon be moving to the Mid-West where she got her full time job, but for now, is living with her folks on the Cape. She’s coming to the B&B for dinner, and I’m really excited, it’s like a small triumph that I’m managing to have a normal life here that’s more than just work-gym-TV-bed. :)
PS - that smily reminded me of a bit I watched this morning on Lior Shline's late night show: look at Israel is sms-ing :)
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