Back to School – Part 3

I just got an email from my principal.

Finally.

It was addressed to me and one other teacher. I expected it to be welcoming me to the school and giving me some good information for what to expect next week. Instead, it says simply:

“Since you guys have big rooms,  we are going to use your rooms for rotations the first week back to school.  We will need a functioning projector. “

That was all.

The good news: Apparently I have a big classroom.

The bad news: I don’t yet know which classroom is mine, what rotations she’s talking about, or whether or not my room has a projector, much less how how to use it.

I’d forgotten how much it stinks to be the new person.

Authentically Aurora

Back to School – Part 2

Thanks to my perseverance, I finally got issued my district email address a few weeks early. I’ve hungrily dug into all of the shared files, desperately trying to find out if there are already lesson plans in place or if I need to be spending my last weeks of summer developing a syllabus, worksheets, homework, quizzes and tests for the year. I don’t want my first six weeks to be a mess of chaotic franticness.

All summer long, I’ve been checking the district website hoping they’d update the calendar for the 2017-2018 school year. They finally did a couple weeks ago, so I found out my first day of teacher inservice would be Thursday, August 10th. I’ve had it in my calendar ever since.

To make the most of my last week of summer, Seth and I planned a romantic day trip for Monday, August 7th, and I have a specialist doctor’s appointment scheduled for Tuesday the 8th. I had to schedule the appointment two months in advance, so I was relieved they were able to get me in before school started.

Then yesterday, I checked my district email account.

The email account I only have because I’ve been bothering IT all summer long.

The email account I’m not supposed to have yet and that no one has advised me to be checking yet this summer.

I had an email “reminding” me of MANDATORY TRAINING for new teachers on August 7-8.

Note that this email was not sent to my personal email from my resume. I did not receive a call from my principal or administration. I never heard anything about this mandatory training from the HR department. The only reason I found out about it was because I had a district email address that I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE YET AND ONLY HAVE BECAUSE OF MY PROACTIVITY!!!

Seth and I cancelled our romantic day trip. He’s out $50 for tickets we already bought.

I postponed my specialist doctor’s appointment for another two months. Now I’ll have to use a precious vacation day to go to my appointment.

And I will responsibly show up for this mandatory training I only know about because I am proactive, responsible and on top of things when the rest of the school system is not.

I’m so glad I left Corporate America to escape bureaucracy.

Authentically Aurora

Back to School – Part 1

I knew there was going to be a steep learning curve entering the world of education as a first-year teacher.

Half the people I told about my new job – rather than congratulating me – offered their condolences. That made me just all the more determined to love teaching and the world of education. But so far, I am staring to see their point (much as I am loathe to admit it).

I got hired back in April. Since then, I’ve been asking my principal, the HR department, my math specialist co-teacher and the IT department what I need to be doing to prepare for the school year. I’ve had three months to do professional development, lesson planning and all manner of things to get ready for my first year as a teacher. Here’s the feedback I’ve gotten.

From my principal: “You’re way ahead of the game. Just relax. We don’t do most of our hiring until July.”

From HR: “Ask your principal.”

From my co-teacher: “Here are a bunch of links. But you won’t be able to access any of them until you have a district email address.”

From IT: “Sorry, we don’t issue new teacher email addresses until the week before school starts.”

I feel like I’m back in the world of Corporate.

Authentically Aurora

I’m an Incompetent Sloth

I’m at the office right now, and I kind of want to go to the girls’ bathroom and cry in one of the stalls. I’ve done it plenty of times before. But I’m going to write instead. Because both crying and writing are ways for me to get everything out, but the latter results in far less puffy eyes. A girl’s got to have her priorities.

I had my Mid Year Review at work this week. A few months ago, I joined a new group in the company that does Procurement for IT services. When I joined the group, I sort of knew was a computer server was. I mean, I’d seen them in spy movies and stuff. Now I’m in charge of managing a 10 year, 6 billion dollar contract for hosting and storage IT services. No big deal.

Fortunately, I work for woman who is a subject matter expert, having earned her degree in IT prior to starting a career in IT Procurement where she has worked for the past twenty years. Unfortunately, this woman is strict, harsh, and encapsulates everything one would expect from someone who grew up in East Germany. Which she did.

Since she has worked in this space for so long, this East German manager typically has difficulty speaking at a basic enough level for new staff like myself to understand. I’ve felt like I’ve made huge strides toward understanding IT in the past few months, despite our communication issues (both ethnically and technologically). For example, I can now translate this sentence:

“The CCN for the DTAO NSD went to the PPC and IBB last week. For K2, we are moving toward ROMv1 prior to DG3.”

That means:

“The Contract Change Note for the Desktop Anywhere Online new service development went to the IT Business Boards last week. For K2 Blackpearl, we are moving toward Rough Order of Magnitude version 1 prior to Decision Gate 3.”

Which means:

“A contract amendment for one service line went to two different business approval boards last week. Another service line is going through a re-pricing exercise.”

Brilliant, right? Once I learned to translate the IT jargon; then I just had to get up to speed on what the heck DTAO, K2, Filemover, Control M, Sabrix, Webphere, XenApp and TAD4D actually are. One is a license reporting application; another is eHosting software; yet another is tax reporting software.

Further to understanding the various applications, I got to connect with the various Product Managers, Project Managers, Service Managers, Product Management Advisors, Category Service Managers, Business Managers and Product Architects – both internal and external – for each of the service lines. Working on a global, virtual team, it is of course no problem at all to keep straight all the people I have never met face to face: Kelvinder, Satish, Bhavesh, Sanjay, Kayoor, Christine #1, Christine #2, Paul, Alexander, Mike, Michele, Haley, Linda, Katrin, Gerdien, Igor and Shadonna.

So now, after four months “in seat”, I still don’t enjoy the work, but I am finally starting to feel like I at least have developed enough knowledge and competence to where I can start adding value. But, as I discovered this week per my Mid Year Review results, my East German manager has yet to be impressed.

In the field where she was supposed to fill out “What this individual has done well“, she wrote:

“Despite extensive onboarding, [Aurora] has made slower than expected progress.” She went on, “She has to quickly increase her knowledge base regarding IT to be successful in the future. She should… be more confident”, ask more questions and act more independently.

Okay, first of all, if that’s the “What this individual has done well” section, I don’t even want to read on to the improvement areas. Secondly, aren’t asking more questions and acting more independently mutually exclusive?

In my last role, I was called arrogant and over-confident. Now I’m being labeled insecure and lacking in confidence.

In my last role, I was told that I dug into too many of the technological details and was advised to focus just on the commercial side. Now I’m being told that I am technologically incompetent and lacking in knowledge.

At some point, some encouragement would be nice. Either at work or at home. At work, I’m an incompetent sloth. At home, I’m a duplicitous woman lacking integrity.

I’m tired of being beaten down. Hey life! Hey God!

(…is anybody listening?)

Authentically Aurora