lowquality.net

Today I went in for an inter­view with the YWCA. I was approved for the work­study pro­gram at school and this was one of the jobs offered to me. I really had no idea what I would be doing, but my expec­ta­tions did involve me work­ing in a small IT depart­ment. Prob­a­bly mak­ing some cables, trou­bleshoot­ing end user prob­lems, and learn­ing some things along the way. Noth­ing excit­ing, noth­ing pos­i­tively chal­leng­ing. I had been hop­ing to hear from the MIS depart­ment on cam­pus so that I could just work after class. The envi­ron­ment on cam­pus is pretty much designed to be taken down and set up from scratch any­way, so I thought that would be an ideal sit­u­a­tion. This YWCA posi­tion came up while I have been wait­ing to hear from MIS.

So, I get into the inter­view and the first thing the lady tells me is how they have no idea what they have, how it works, how to fix it, and other than a con­tract guy who comes in twice a month, they have no IT depart­ment to speak of. Addi­tion­ally, they are a non-profit so they don’t have much of a bud­get either. I, the lowly work­study, would be the guy who tries to get every­thing to work. In addi­tion to office net­work prob­lems, they also want to set up com­puter and inter­net ser­vices at their safe houses around Nor­folk. She did, how­ever, think it was cool that I was a musician.

I have mixed feel­ings. It seems like a total dis­as­ter area, but I know that some­times those sit­u­a­tions are the ones that offer the rich­est learn­ing expe­ri­ences. I would pre­fer the com­fort of work­ing on cam­pus, but if I am able to achieve any level of suc­cess with get­ting them up and run­ning, it would yield more resume pres­tige than just some dumb on cam­pus job. I have a feel­ing I could help them out alot and know­ing that I could gen­uinely help some­one and maybe even teach them some­thing is really appealling to me. Of course con­tribut­ing to the greater cause of the YWCA and their efforts to pro­tect bat­tered women is also appealing.

Seri­ously, though, I was NOT pre­pared for the level of respon­si­bil­ity this job will require.

Another plus is that they are very near to ODU. The Governor’s School sent me a let­ter today invit­ing me back next fall as their jazz bass instruc­tor. I’m not sure I’m doing that either, but this job would be con­ve­nient if I did. I really need to get an upright if I am going to keep agree­ing to do this.