The Life and Times of Alann

Today at work i was talking to a fellow planning lab intern (Jon) about whether or not our boss Chandler was coming in today or if he was out of town. In order to solve the dilemma Jon decided to get onto the net calender and look up Chandler's work calender to see if it said anything about where he was. One of the options with this calender is that you can schedule a meeting with someone and write notes/letters to them at the same time. The problem with this is that there is now way to make individual letters private. So if your calender is seen by someone so are all the comments on it as well.

In his calender was a letter to the HR person who works with him on the planning lab system/organization. In this letter he makes some very bold statements about people that are not necessarily the kinds of things they want you to know about. At one point he makes mention of an individual who is labeled by their mentoring partner as incompetent, and while some of us in the lab knew there were problems between these people it still would not be the best for this individual to see the comment about them.

There are also comments about who is rising stars in the company and who beat the odds and did better on their own than anyone would have guessed, once again comments that may cause some strife between colleagues. While i found many of the comments to be interesting regardless if i agreed with them or not, i found the ones that were presumably about me, because of thier context, to be very intriguing. I am not mentioned as a good or a bad but rather an unknown. Not in the context of my quality of work, but as in my position in the company and if i will continue on in the planning lab.

It has been no secret between me or anyone in the company that while i enjoy working for them and doing the work they give me, they have yet to produce a project or introduce to me a project area that really lights my fire. While the other two planning lab people have found niches in the company and have expressed desire to go full time after graduation, i have never tried to get more than an intern position there and don't actively go out and hunt for projects to work on. I am not worried about being let go nor am i offended at the comments that are made about me, i just think that maybe i am being compared too much to the others in the planning lab and not enough on how i am doing on a personal level of achievement and interest.

Since i have started I have become more interested in the work that I do and have always said that if a project area can be found that i like, i have no reservations about joining the WSA team. The problem is that we are only exposed to what projects come down the pipeline to our office for what the "real" employees are interested in doing. The company does way more services than just the things that come into the office, but because of the way the company is setup and they way the planning lab fits into it we never see anymore than what is usually sent to the office. If i were to go to another office i would see more of a different kind of workload, but this planning lab is centered in this office and there is no way to shuffle work from one to another easily.

The company has recently lost its President and Jon and I are hoping that the new leader will take the planning lab idea to the next step and make it a corporate idea so that it is more flexible in the opportunities it can offer the interns/employees in training (as it is really seen as). I really don't have a point to this story, i just thought that the situation would make a good story to read so i typed it out for fun.

In school related news i am trying to get into the masters program and am thinking of getting a masters certificate in real estate finances to accompany my degree in planning. I am doing this with the idea of either working for a land development company, someday starting my own company or being able to round out my education on the built environment so if i join another consulting firm or government planning department i can have a better idea on how the market will drive the future development of the specific area i work in, this way i can make more relevant recommendations for policies and procedures.

As for the family, we are all getting over our colds and everyone is happy. Becca had a job interview as a part time at home seamstress which we will see how it goes and we are continuing our mini biggest loser challenge to lose weight. As soon as we find out about grad school we will let everyone know, but for now i need to go.