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10:34 p.m. - 2003-06-21
5 days and counting
The youngest summer student seems to have become my responsibility at work and that's fine with me. B had said the day before she had run out of tasks for him to do so could I keep him busy? Yesterday he was going through some documents that needed to be assessed and sorted before they could be worked on, under my direction. His questions demonstrated a significant amount of understanding of the contents. I was impressed and we had some great conversation about the data. It's the first time I've come across someone in this group who has any real working knowledge of the sciences involved.

This is the student that they've been giving tasks that would bore a 12 year old to tears and then wondered why he hasn't shown more enthusiasm or initiative. Hard to do when there's nothing to work with. Truth is he has considerably more knowledge of the material I work on than the people who are designated management in the group. It's hard to assess and assign work when you don't know yourself what is entailed. On the other hand, another scientist sent B a list of documents he wanted her to pull for him - again very basic to the material worked on everyday. She didn't even know what they looked like. She turned to me and told me to do a physical search while she ran another check in the database. I pulled them with no problem except that I kept thinking it must be a trick question because it was so simple. It wasn't. B sat in her office waiting until I finished. The balance of my time yesterday was spent helping C. Also fine with me.

The problem with all this though is T2. At the team meeting in the morning, all she had to say to me was "will you have all the boxes on the table by your desk done by the time you leave" (next Friday). Appears none of the rest of the team knew I was leaving then either from the reactions, but nothing more was said. Can I have all that done? Well one box can't be addressed until the information we requested three weeks ago is given. Even then I can't get it all done if all of my time is spent helping B and C and mentoring the student. Also I have gone through several boxes of data in addition to the ones she first mentioned, but I'm guessing none of that will count come Friday.

Just before lunch the recruiter from the agency that may have work for me called to clarify a few things and to ask when I could get together with him for an interview. D came into the library and slammed some files on the table. Maybe he was angry about something else. Then he picked up a hammer and started banging on something even though he could see I was trying to talk. 5 days and counting, I am.

Went walking with my original walking partner at lunch. She finally talked about what had really been bothering her the past little while. Family dynamics. Every family grouping seems to have that one person who isn't happy unless they are in the midst of a conflict with someone else in the family. My walking partner is the target of that person in her family's troublemaking right now. She says that no matter how hard she tries to avoid the conflict the other person won't stop trying to pick a fight. Sounds like my ex's mother but that's another can of worms. All I could really do was listen and commiserate. It sounds as though she is doing a great job of coping with it, but it does wear one down quickly.

At the end of the day I asked the student to pick up the material sorted on the floor because I wasn't allowed to leave anything out. I'm not allowed to put it on the table either "in case someone else wants to use it" - but what's another catch 22? I imagine I'll hear about it on Monday. The student asked why all the rules were different for me. How am I supposed to answer that without putting him at risk of reprisal. He also asked about what contract work was like and if this had been a good or bad assignment. I just said I really liked working with the data and all the students, and left it there. Not right to leave him vulnerable to T2 and B's anger if he asks those questions in the larger group.

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