Moving on…
What a whirlwind these past two weeks have been! I’ve taken some drastic steps regarding my future… and have never felt better about it.
I’ve changed my major. Again. And for the last time.
For those of you who need it, here’s the recap:
I left Charlotte to come back to school. I decided to go for Radiology (Major 1), but started to doubt that early on when I realized the wait list for the program was 3 years. I switched to Pharmacy (Major 2). I went about getting prerequisites done for the pharmacy program and getting an additional job at a pharmacy. I then learned that I absolutely HATE chemistry, and chemistry doesn’t really like me either. This leads us to Sonography (Major 3). USC had a Cardiovascular Technology program that I was interested in and so I went ahead and transferred last semester. That was short lived as I soon decided that I would rather not pigeonhole myself to one area of the body (heart) and would much rather just get my BS in Biology (Major 3.5) which is pretty much the same course load as the CVT program. After finishing my BS I’d just go through a training program at a technical school for General Diagnostic Sonography.
This leads us up to the point last week when I was faced with two paths…
I got a very kind and flattering e-mail from someone in the company, I’ll call her Darth, whom I’ve dealt with quite a bit in attempts to smooth out some of our processes on the night shift. We e-mailed back and forth a few times, but the topic at hand was that she felt I was an asset to the company and wanted to know if I would like to meet with her and talk about possible opportunities for me in the organization.
I jumped on it.
Before I go on… let me touch on how I was feeling at the time about my chosen career path. I had a case of the doubts creeping on up. I had 3 concerns:
1. I like my desk job. I’ve had nothing but desk jobs (minus a few retail stints as a young adult). I don’t know if I would want to be running around all day in scrubs. It wouldn’t be a problem now, but when I get older… how would I keep it up?
2. I’m hoping that health care will be changing drastically in my lifetime. I speak of mainly administrative changes, but surely there will be many technological changes. How would these changes affect me?
3. I, as much as I hate it, am not comfortable being all touchy-feely with strangers. While I have the empathy part down, I just don’t like being too close to people I don’t know well. This does not bode well for someone looking into being a sonographer. I tried to tell myself I’d get used to it… but I just don’t think I would.
Now, these doubts were hanging there, but I was doing my best to ignore them. The elephant in the room… and I was ignoring it in the hopes it would just go away.
It wasn’t going anywhere, but I was so sick of changing my mind/major that I was ready to settle.
And then I got the e-mail.
And I forwarded it to my mother as she is always good at giving me unbiased guidance (even if it’s something I don’t want to hear). To my surprise, her reaction was that she has been praying something like this would come along to make me question the path I had chosen, as she didn’t really think It was a perfect fit for me. Her thinking that was mainly based on my own reasons 1 and 3 above.
And so I began looking at my options regarding school. I came up with a program at USC that was very intriguing, and the more I looked into it, the more excited I became. I had thought about switching over to something Technology related so many times before, but I was a bit scared to make that move due to what I had seen Alan go through after being downsized from IBM. I knew that I wasn’t interested in Programming for that and a few other reasons that aren’t worth going into here. But IS, or something along that lines… that interested me. Thats when I was told about USC’s Technology Support and Training Management program. It was a perfect fit. The four main areas the program focuses on are networking, database systems, corporate training & development, and end-user support. I feel that these four give you many directions to go in with the degree.
So I spoke to Darth last Wednesday about a few opportunities she had in mind. One of them was not so appealing, but the other was more of what I had in mind. It was a position under someone who is fairly new to the company. From what I know about her, she has a good energy about her, is open to ideas, and really wants to do the best she can for the company… which is very appealing to me. Darth is her boss, and thinks the world of her. So we decided that I should set up a time to talk about what she needs.
That was yesterday. It turns out that she is looking for a “catch all” type. Someone who can come in and do whatever needs doing, work on special projects, and interact with other departments as needed. She especially is glad that I have such a good relationship (and knowledge of) the billing department. The hours will be more flexible than my previous 4-10pm, there’s a potential for growth, and there’s a little more money off the bat. I went for it and for the next month I’ll be working 1pm-10pm until we find a suitable replacement for me to train to take over my supervisor/lead role. I’m not really looking forward to that, but once we get over that hump it will be great! My first project will be assisting in the production of training manuals on our computer systems for the many areas of the company. I think they are excited to use my background in graphics for this project. Guess I’ll have to brush up on my Quark skills!
So, that’s that. I’m on a new path… and am very much at peace with it.
Side note for those who are wondering: (and anxiously awaiting our return to Charlotte… you know who you are) I will still be finishing up school in the same amount of time… maybe one semester longer depending on what I do regarding the summer semesters. 
