Seriously, where has the day gone. I guess the good news is that I got a lot done this afternoon that has been shoved to the back burner. I called a potential subcontractor and talked with him for awhile getting some crucial information. I e-mailed all my invited speakers for the conference section I am chairing to bug them about submitting their abstracts. One guy was good and submitted his without having to be bugged a second time. I will feel a whole lot better once everyones abstracts are in... I still worry all will bail and I will have no invitees. This all goes back to when I was in 8th grade and my friend Fate and I decided to have a NewYears Eve party. You guessed it. No one came. They all went to the popular boys party AND we weren't invited. Since then I have feared inviting people and them not showing up.
I spent all morning in teleconference and then a group meeting. Teleconference was good on a professional note. I walked in and Miss Pink Post-Doc was once again in my seat. Irked, I took a seat at the adjacent table. One CW commented, "well seems as though there are no seats". Yeah, seems that way I replied. Teleconference starts and the team on the other end is making comments, asking questions, PM is out of the room, I have the answers and not a damn person can hear me on the other end. Again a repeat of a few weeks ago when other teammates get up and offer me their seat, I accept for this portion of the telecon... I have to. Miss Pink didn't budge. Pink shirt, pink camera phone (I didn't pay attention to see if the Pug was joining us), big pink water container, and pink notebook. Give me a break. I hate pink.
My PM chatted with me during some of the other presentations and told me that he wanted me to do some work while he is busy on another project in the next few days where I will be in direct communication with the client on this and to not to worry about going through him. This was a huge vote of confidence from him. I do see myself picking up more of a PM role with this client and his not taking back some of the small PM duties after his long vacation.
And then I got a vote of confidence from the client as well... they are sending some samples for me to work with. I see this as huge potential that they may be seeding me another task! I have a concept in the back of my head and it is a spin off from another proposal I am working on, but I think would work for this application. Anyways, the data that I get from these samples could really bolster my potential proposal to my lab for them to seed some money to continue this interaction with the client... which they are ALWAYS pushing. My team gets this money set aside every year for our use with this client. I really think I have a shot at procuring all of it. (Last year it went to bring Miss Pink onto the project for this year... stupid money.)
After telecon I had a group meeting for 1.5 hours. I hate those. Sit and listen to the TGM and admin for 1.5 hours talk about team work and team building, work together and don't lie on your time card cause we can't tell if you do since we are all in different areas. Yeah yeah yeah. My biggest problem with these is my own feelings that I don't belong. It is rare that I work with anyone in my group. I know very few of them. I feel as though I walk in and they look at me wondering who I am. I am loving my work right now, loving where I work and what I do. There are things that could be better. But then I have a meeting like this where I sit there looking blankly around me for an hour and a half and it erodes away confidence. It shouldn't, I know. But it does.
As my mentor says, many people have to work on meeting people across the lab and that is their shortfall in getting promoted. You have the opposite problem and your challenge is to meet the people in your own group and get to know the people our manager knows. The vast majority of people I work with are in other groups and often other directorates.
Well I intended on blogging mostly about Leifers and not about boring work. But alas, this is what you get. Tomorrow?
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