What I Do For Work Now

It Is Not Shocking

The answer is staring at a lot of Word documents that look just like this. If you're on mobile, imagine two columns of justified text squished into a single space. Narrow, monotonous, boring, corporate... also if you're on mobile and you are seeing columns I am so sorry and please feel free to turn your phone sideways (into landscape mode) to ease the experience. It just means I'm capturing the hellscape of Word documents accurately.

Staring at Word documents is a very reductionist description, but it is still apt and accurate! I do, indeed, consistently have a window of Microsoft Word open no matter what else is on the other screen. What type of document that is varies from a request form that I have to modify down so it’s 1 page instead of 3 (for efficiency, everything's about efficiency), or a 580 page course catalog that I’m painstakingly adding all the updated elements to so it’s ready to be printed for the next academic year.

Digital piles upon piles of request forms, course corrections, and I'm editing both of the catalogues my university uses. That means undergraduate and graduate. That means 1200 pages of content. It burns my eyes a little bit so I try to take breaks when I can, usually every half hour... if I remember. Otherwise, I take the breaks as my eyes demand them - when the sharp pain of digital comprehension becomes too much.

But fantastic news folks! It's not all Word documents! Sometimes they are Excel! Which is somehow! 99,000 times worse! I jest, I jest, spreadsheets make logical sense to me. Though I live in fear of causing a malfunction in the master tracking document we use and setting our workflow back into the stone ages. I am very, very careful any time I'm editing one of the All Access Administration Documents.

I can finally say that today I have finished up my edits to the catalogues and I can stop staring at them. The brief but still sharp sting of agony I felt when I finished the undergraduate catalog a month ago only to have my boss gently slide the graduate catalog into my hands... brutal. I thoughtI was Free From It only to be Thrown Back In, but I enjoyed working on these a lot, it helped me get familiar with my new university and all the (honestly) amazing fields of study that can exist on one campus. Have you ever stopped to look at the faculty or staff page of wherever you spend a majority of your time? It's a bit eye-opening to see just how many people are actually needed to make institutions run and not fall apart at the seams.

What Does A Day Look Like?

I wake up, I take myself into the office aiming for 8:30AM, and then I get to sit in front of two monitors for 8 hours. Sometimes it's a shorter day, if I have classes to attend or other meetings, but it is a lot of screentime. A majority of what I do is checking formatting and keeping things uniform and efficient across the myriad of documents my department processes. I can smell when a bullet point is off in sizing compared to the format I’ve been using for 30 pages. I scrutinize font size, I cut extraneous paragraphs, I triple-check links, and I keep track of it all in that master tracking document that if I fuck up will cause a total collapse of our systems until I activate a restoration of a previous version. I also have access to the entire online catalog aka the front facing website of my organization. Who let me have this power (my boss). I’ll be responsible with it, but still.

It is mundane, repetitive, and would likely drive most people a bit bonkers to endure. I enjoy it. :)

As a quick aside, I have to say I'm so happy I work in an environment that allows me to use emoticons when I'm sending messages to my boss. Genuinely, I like working here, everyone is incredibly nice, and the setting is not stressful. Compared to my former job of wrangling a group of twenty four-to-six-year-olds or a group of fifteen preteens, office work is a breeze. I do miss my kids though.

If you’re wondering what it sounds like for me at work, the answer is a lot of clicking and typing and sometimes my neurodivergent brain latches onto the sharp clicks and that does drive me up the wall a bit. So I usually listen to music through my hearing aids to prevent that. (Another blessing of the work environment.) Very much office gorl vibes, very much doing the same tasks over and over on endless repeat. Grateful to be here and living a "slow life" that allows me to be hectic on my own time when I'm off-campus.

Don't ask me what it smells like at work, my olfactory senses have never been up to the task and I consider that a blessing. It does sometimes get stuffy but we have windows so I can dejectedly watch as the sun disappears around 5PM now and realize I have to walk to my car in it.

I am happy to be here. Not just Here as in the job, but Here as in this specific location at this specific time at this specific juncture of my life. I spent a lot of time and effort to get here, to grad school, and I'm happy. I wasn't always happy. But I am now.