You know, I'm not just a full-time student at Langara. I am also a full-time worker!
When I am not at Langara either fighting to stay awake in a lecture or grinding out assignments in the college library, I am working 40+ hours every week as an office manager for a global engineering consulting firm. As exhausting as all this sounds, I am thriving in it and really hope to continue working and studying at the same time, or at least until I graduate from the DASSH program.
I take great pride in my work as an office manager. Just like the DASSH curriculum has a broad spectrum of courses, my day-to-day duties at work also offer a wide variety of tasks for me. On any given day, I could be cleaning up a tragic coffee spill in the staff lounge, troubleshooting the photocopier and its third paper jam of the day, running to the flower shop to fetch a last-minute gift for a senior staff member, going on a shopping spree through Staples for more office supplies, or even just helping project administrators proofread their documents. It can sound like a lot of work, but I really enjoy it. For me at least, I find I am rarely bored at work and wake up every day excited for what's to come.
As much as I love my job, it can be a real struggle to stay on top of things every day. You can only imagine how many requests I get in the day that are suddenly "urgent" and "important" and "needs to be done now". Not everything is a fire that needs to be put out, so a good chunk of my day requires me to balance priorities and ruthlessly sort requests based on factors such as time sensitivity, task complexity and bandwidth. If the tasks are all of equal or greater value, sometimes the decision to put one ahead of another boils down to which coworker I like more!
At this time, my job offers just the right amount of challenge and stimulation I need to stay sharp throughout the entire week and really does help me to be a more well-rounded individual. No matter the struggles that may come with being a full-time worker, I truly wouldn't have my life arrangement any other way.