Current mood:

content

the brady engineers
work went slightly awkward today. to explain, i'll have to complete the character sketch i started with the people at my work. so there's grandpa, from my experience, there's ALWAYS a grandpa prototype. sometimes you get lucky and have a grandpa mentor you at work who has a thick polish accent and keeps calling battery 'butter'. so when you hear butter powered devices, you think 'how on earth did they ... why, that's genius! butter! of course!'

i've finished working on a project that my supervisor assigned to me, the brother prototype. i say he's the brother prototype because while he teaches me, he pushes me to think and challenges me. kind of how my older brother back in the days used to do to me when i used to call him up 1 in the morning asking him for help on my engineering quizes. well anyway, my supervisor, John, has been a really good mentor. i've learned a lot from him. when selecting a company, that's what i've always wanted: a place to grow, kind of like a marijuana plant under black lights in a closet. or whatever they do to grow those things.

lately however, my manager, Dave, the father prototype, has been wanting me to explore different areas. these areas weren't John's expertise, but it was Ken's, or the grandpa prototype. Ken is a really nice grandpa type, but just not as cool as my butter powered mentor from my internship. dave has a daughter my age, so often times he'll think of me being someone else's daughter (like my dad) and gives me guidance in that manner. so anyway, lately i've been working with ken on learning a tool for design. the thing is, what he's been teaching me is very basic and things i could pick up on very easily from background. but nonetheless, i didnt say much because i was working on a project then assigned by john. but the project just dwindled down this week as i delegated the project to someone else to do some testing on it. while that's going on, i start doing the things Ken's assigned me, but again, it seems very basic and i feel unchallenged. Dave on the other hand was concerned as well and came up to me wondering if Ken was using me as a technician  rather than an engineer. well, actually yeah, i guess so in a way. so i went to dave this morning and explained to him i didnt feel challenged with how Ken was mentoring me, and i really appreciated how John mentored me. dave says he'll take care of it.

he talks to ken.

i got to ken's cubicle after their conversation to ask a question about one of his assignments given to me. shortly after explaining, he tells me that he's had a talk with dave about me. 'oh.'

ken: "dave tells me that you don't feel challenged, so i'm hoping you can tell me what you want"
me: "um, well, uh.."

i smile wide several times, stopping myself before i said something stupid.

ken: "why don't we go somewhere where we can get more privacy?"

that sounded like a good idea. i eagerly agree thinking we're going to one of the conference rooms. i let him lead, and he walks into my cubicle, which is directly across from his.

ken: "now that we're in you're cubicle and have more privacy, let's talk"

that made me feel better. i eased up and secretly smiled at the thought of what he considers privacy, and the conversation went really well actually. the father, brother, and grandpa prototype have all decided that i need to know more about what they're designing, so they're going to hold a two hours babysitting conference to break things down to me.