My new office! Before the Fall semester started, we moved into our new building here at the PCC campus. It had been a very, very, very long time coming. The planning started almost 10 years ago, and while I have only been here for two years, "the new building" was always referred to as some quasi-mythical creature that one might be lucky to see in their lifetime. When my co-workers would mention "the new building" you could see a spark of hope in their eyes while hearing a dash of bitterness in their voices over the many promises that had never come to fruition.
Now don't get me wrong, our old center was very nice... spacious, lots of storage, and very easily accessible for the students. My work area (it doesn't deserve the term office) always seemed as though it had been a bit of an afterthought, a storage area that was turned into a work area because they had run out of desks. There were holes in the wall to allow cables to be run into other areas, the 40 year old paint was peeling off the walls, and the servers for the internet for our center in the wall panel were always creating a cacophony of buzzing, whirring and clicking. On more than one occasion, we caught tiny rodent friends (once one ran across my keyboard as I was typing). I also had no view of the outside world. People were constantly sneaking up on me while I was working on my computer and scaring the daylights out of me!
Below are photos of our old building, and my old work area.
Suddenly, we were all caught in a flurry of approving blueprints, picking color schemes, furniture and other storage options. We were deciding where we were going to be putting our desks and all sorts of exciting stuff. It seemed like that in no time at all it was time to move. And the most exciting part, I was going to have a desk in an office! Not just a desk stuck in a corner as an afterthought.
The move was a very hectic time. Furniture ended up back-ordered, plans were constantly changing. We ended up with just under a week to get everything unpacked and ready to be used for the first day of the fall semester.
Our new center is beautiful, clean, and modern... and VERY SMALL. We have had to downsize several times over to accommodate being in an area that is roughly half the size with roughly 1/3 of the storage we used to have. We have adapted well though. And I LOVE LOVE LOVE my new office! The hardest change has been my new hours. I used to work 7:30 - 4:30 Monday through Thursday and 7:30-2 on Fridays. Now I am 6:30 - 3:15 and 6:30 - 2. But I love that I am off work and have some of the afternoon. I don't feel like I am coming home going straight to the kitchen to cook dinner, then cleaning up, then going straight to bed. There is time in the afternoon to unwind.
Here are some photos of the new building and my new office!
Labels: job
posted by Jessica at 1:54 PM