Lessons Were Learned: 2019

Photo credit: u/n_that

Readers, about a year ago, I started a journal to force myself to make behavioral changes. It's my attempt to become a better person by reducing my feelings and emotions into logical, quantifiable and measurable things I can measure and alter to succeed in life. The definition of succeeding changes all the time, but currently, it means taking quantifiable steps towards a successful computer science career while fostering friendships, and now, deeper relationships. I added that last part in November of this year.

Idiosyncratically, of course, for each behavioral change, I record the past philosophy, the event that changed this behavior, and changes I will make for the future. The three this year deal with themes of decisiveness, problem solving, and generalized anxiety.

Give The People What They Want

Past Philosophy

For most of your life, you are trained to shut up. Talking in class gets you a detention. Having a differing opinion with the theology teacher gets you a detention. But now, people want college students to actually be involved and solve problems, including my boss. He said be a self-starter and wanted his employees to make the workplace better.

Once, I was given the task to take a simple inventory of the theatre. I say simple to contrast how I took inventory of the entire theatre. Instead of doing what he expected: taking a quick inventory and keeping a tally of which lights we had and how many we had, I took pictures and double checked everything. I put it into fancy inventory software which generated a huge report which separated what the theatre had into different categories.

Key Event

I came into my boss's office presenting this huge, beautiful inventory, and he looked at me like I was crazy. He was wondering why it took me about twice as long to take inventory of the theatre as it normally would, and though I thought he would like my methods, he kindly yelled at me for wasting a bunch of time.

The Lesson

Give the people what they want. Even though I did an amazing job and, in my opinion, I improved a process, I still got gently yelled at and my work was mostly discarded. My boss had me convert it to a simple name/quantity document; the pictures and other organizational quantities were discarded. In public speech, they say audience reception is the perhaps the most important determinant in a public speaker's quality. Some would say I'm sucking d****, but it achieves results. I dislike how he rejected my innovation and didn't care to really discuss why I did it the way I did... but my opinion doesn't matter sadly, does it?

Be Clear, Concise, and Be Seated

Past Philosophy

I joined run crew in October of 2017, was hired in October of 2018, and worked through October 2019. Because seniors kept graduating, I was handed more and more responsibilities, but I rarely risked making a mistake, even thought that's sort-of what my educator wanted me to do. In my mind, mistakes cost a lot of money because if I cut a piece of wood wrong, we might have to fix it (which costs money in labor) or buy more wood, which also gets expensive. Therefore, I let someone else do the job.

This philosophy of avoiding uncomfortable tasks worked up until I was one of the people in charge and was expected to know how to do the job, but like everyone else, I didn't know what I was doing. Really, nobody knows what they're doing 100% of the time and none of us are masters at are theatrical jobs. Most of the staff isn't a theatre major anyways, so it's hard to expect that they know what they're doing anyways.

Key Event

Over the summer, I produced technical drawings of the PNC Arts Annex Theatre, photos below.

The finished project.

The budget got cut and the show was moved to a different theatre, but I got pretty far with it. But before, when I went to the theatre with a co-worker with a few tape measurers, I barely knew what to do. This normally isn't a problem, but under the one, 8-hour time constraint that we had, not knowing what you're doing is a problem. Granted, my boss told me what I was doing they day of, so it wasn't exactly my fault, but still, the responsibility fell on me.

Key Event

I took one technical drawings class and knew what I was doing, but I was also with a senior mechanical engineer who makes technical drawings for breakfast. When I encountered a problem where measurements didn't line up, I turned to him and he said I don't know, this is your project Mike Chase, using a demeaning and condescending tone of voice. My heart stopped because I genuinely didn't know how to solve the problem.

The Lesson

Express your concerns clearly and specifically. I got stumped on the measurement issue, but the blame didn't fall on me. I was not prepared and my boss was trying to teach me how to do my job by tossing me into the deep end - which, is effective even though it's scary. I didn't want to seem like I was incompetent or stupid, but in the end, by trying to repeat the same process several times, I didn't make much progress. Eventually, I figured it out, but I need to be more aggressive when it's causing major problems.

If I would've addressed this problem to my boss and told him that it's not working and I've exhausted my ideas, he probably could've figured it out what was wrong in half the time it took me to figure it out because he has the experience. Instead, I felt ashamed and anxious and let it silence me. 

Part of me knows, I'd still lose a few brownie points for being: wimpy, incompetent, whiny... so I didn't. But I lost an hour of valuable time needed to gather measurements for the drawings. I'm still conflicted on whether my actions were right or just, but I need to be specific and trust my gut to address things that need to be addressed as they come up. At the very least, the ball would be pushed into his court.

Knowing When to Quit

More on this, another time. I left you with enough to contemplate.

Next Year

I rarely messed around with ideas of love and romance. My mom has been pushing me to "try." I still wonder if love is worth giving away 70% of your freedoms and 90% of your freedoms when you have children. I want to go to Alaska and see what Amish living is like at an AirBnB for a few days. But if my wife doesn't like it, it's hard to just ditch her for 3-days and do things by myself.

Perhaps it's worth it... the next adventure will be Mike Chase vs. Girls. Stay tuned - it'll be entertaining, I'm sure of it.