Foundations Blog 4

The most recent job that I have held for a long period of time was my job as the student worker for my university's registrar's office.  I started this job at the beginning of my sophomore year and kept it until I graduated.  This job held many different responsibilities that increased in number and in responsibility over the three year period.  In the beginning I only did office work of minor importance such as filing and scanning documents, assisting with student questions, and keeping everything organized.  As I got more familiar with the surroundings and how things worked in the office, I was able to answer the phone, send emails to schedule appointments and assist with questions, and print transcripts for students and alumni.  At the end of my third year, I was a part of the graduation ceremony by counting the 967 (I still have the number burned into my brain) diploma covers and diplomas of all graduating seniors.  The physical environment I was in was an office, made up of six individual rooms, in the lowest floor of our school's administration building.  I had my own desk with a two-screen computer, a desk chair, and a scanner/printer.  I was the first person you saw in the office, which made me the first person to address any questions, and made me be on my toes at all times.  The social environment included of six people, five women and one man, who were all employees of the office.  This environment influenced my behavior greatly because these people helped me learn, answered my questions, and were essentially my bosses.  I grew very close with all of the employees and still keep in touch with them today, so they were very influential in my undergraduate career. 

This job required many skills in order to do it correctly.  It required different motor skills such as grabbing papers, bending over into filing cabinets and boxes, and reaching up to tall shelves in the different rooms of the office.  I also had to have processing skills such as sequencing when going through the different steps of scanning and filing documents.  Social interaction skills were also very important since a large portion of my job was interacting with students, parents, and alumni.  I had to make sure I regulated my emotions effectively even when I was stressed or frustrated, I had to make eye contact with students and faculty when appropriate, and I also had to clarify a lot of information when students or parents did not understand a process.  

Since I worked in this environment for three years, including summers, I did develop a routine associated with work.  I would begin with responding to emails and voicemails, move on to filing and scanning documents, and then would end with cleaning or organizing the office.  The other employees in the office also got into a routine of leaving everything they needed me to do on sticky notes on my computer.  They would do this at lunch time each day because that was around the time I would come into the office and they knew it would usually be done by the time they came back from their lunch break.  Completing my own routine, and fulfilling the expectations of the employees's, helped define my role of a student worker, but I also held the role of a friend to all of the employees, too. 

This job reflected my motivation because it kept me very busy.  I have always been a motivated person, but in college trait really shined.  I always took a full course load of classes, worked this job 15 hours a week, and was involved in extra curriculars. I was forced the be motivated in everything I did and develop great time management skills because of it. This job also gave me a lot of responsibility.  Not every student would be trusted with the transcript of every student in the school's history, but I earned that trust over time.  I value being a trustworthy, honest person and the responsibility to hold very important information reflected that.  I also believe in giving your all in things you are involved in and to never bite off more than you can chew.  I knew going into my job that it would be a balancing act between work and everything else, but I believed that it was important for me to provide for myself and to get more involved.  

The main person who gave me feedback in this job was my first boss Linda.  She would give me feedback on which things were most important to do first and how to do different processes efficiently.  In the beginning, Linda was not the best at giving feedback in a positive way.  She had to learn that when you tell people everything they are doing wrong first, accompanied by a negative tone, the person will not have a positive outlook on their performance or an optimistic view of the future.  When she did this, I felt shut down and like I was not doing anything right, even though I knew that I was.  It took me telling her that we needed to communicate in a different way that would not hurt either of our feelings for things to get better.  Once we cleared the air about how she gave feedback, we had no problems and I was very receptive to her feedback and was able to go about my job like normal.