Sunday, March 7, 2010

May Your Paths Be Straight

I recall that in December of 2008, one of our engineers left our group to take another position. He felt engineering wasn't for him, and it's certainly not for most people. Some days, I don't know WHO it could possibly be for, in fact. He ended up taking a position where his primary responsibility is training our workers on all manner of procedures, and there he remains.

In July of 2009 I ended up being asked to prepare a "combat systems for not-quite dummies" to educate a few customers on how we work. It was a good time. A few weeks later, I was asked to remove the "not-quite" and make it a lecture for anybody in the company who had an hour to waste. By November I was lecturing a packed auditorium, with geeked-ness only slightly exceeding nervousness, with cameras rolling. Now that lecture is on our company intranet which means I will get teased for years to come over this. Things went well enough that I've been tasked with turning the "not-quite" into "brand new" and making it a regular training presentation for new hires. In this roundabout way I have now gained a surprising amount of responsibility for... training, without so much as changing my desk.

Sometimes, it's not about finding the right road to get where you want to go, but remaining on the road you are on until it takes you where you need to go.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

way to go

Matt said...

Oh! The places you'll go!

I can sympathize with the unexpected paths that life and career can take. For my part, I would truly not have believed it if you had told me 5 years ago that I would be where I currently am, doing what I now do.

I guess its a good lesson for us all to "go with the flow" even if that flow leads you to live in Mobile, AL and work on VARTM infused composite panels for naval construction...