Negative agency

I’m sweating and shaking, mostly just because I hate the phone. I just pulled my name out of applying for a full-time job in the healthcare IT industry, one which I am rather underqualified for and which pays much better than the program I’m joining up here.

And I’m relieved. I’m happy. I’m not sure how everything will work out, but I’m sure I made the right decision.

I sat through a 90-minute meeting yesterday afternoon with my section of the department. It was inefficient. They’re making administrative changes and adding another layer of corporate-esque software to (presumably) improve record-keeping and connectivity between something-or-other. It was all sort of redundant and vague, like the categories were badly defined, and the person leading things didn’t seem like he was convinced that it’d improve efficiency. The rest of the attendees (of which I was the only woman, unless there was someone who didn’t speak) seemed bored and disconnected. I didn’t get the sense that people had any faith in the departmental reorganization or the software. I did get the sense that there were things they wanted to be doing—that they had plenty of work. They’re programmers and software engineers, and from what I understood of the list of tasks, a lot of them (including me) would be doing a lot more “other crap” for the near future. I could feel the dissatisfaction in the room.

I realized about 45 minutes in that I’m doing this life thing right. In twelfth grade we had to write a memoir about a significant event in our lives. Mine was badly done, but it was about taking control of a social situation that I was unhappy with, and not letting some girl walk all over me. It was called something corny like “taking the wheel,” and it was one of the first times I had been decisive. This time, I feel like I’m in charge of my own life. If I don’t want to sit in a giant room filled with windowless cubicles, doing what someone else says to do, then dammit, I don’t have to. I wanted to get out of school and do something that I believed in. So I’m going to.