{"id":260,"date":"2016-08-05T21:54:45","date_gmt":"2016-08-05T21:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/dora15\/?p=260"},"modified":"2016-08-05T21:54:45","modified_gmt":"2016-08-05T21:54:45","slug":"working-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/2016\/08\/05\/working-happiness\/","title":{"rendered":"*Working* *Happiness*"},"content":{"rendered":"

So it all started with an email…<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was in the middle of exams, when I got an email back in May. The subject: “Summer communications work”. It was from the ChemEng\u00a0Communications Officer… Ohh well, I thought it’s like a one-day something, some promotions, whatever. Then I read the email…<\/p>\n

“…I am looking for someone to do some part-time work on departmental communications…”<\/em><\/p>\n

“…The work would be quite varied, essentially assisting me and would consist of things such as writing short news stories, managing social media channels and putting together the newsletter…”<\/em><\/p>\n

“…given your great work on the blog I thought I would approach you first…”<\/em><\/p>\n

“…Please let me know if you\u2019re interested…”<\/em><\/p>\n

My first reaction was: OH MY GOD!!!<\/strong> Then my second reaction was: OH. MY. GOD. Me. Working. For the department. OHMYGOD. It took me an hour to write a reply, because every time I started, I used way too many exclamation marks, and I didn’t want the guy to have second thoughts. You know, he could realise I am actually terrible at English and the next email would be something like “Ahh well, sorry, I found someone else who doesn’t use exclamation mark as the only form of punctuation…” So I wrote back and the next thing I know, we are arranging a meeting to discuss the details…<\/p>\n

\n

Dora-June16.docx<\/strong><\/p>\n

My first day at work was… interesting. And scary. And I was super-nervous. And I didn’t know what would happen.\u00a0I was expecting that by the end of the day my boss would realise I am quite terrible at English and he would say something like “Well, I think maybe you are not ready for this job yet. Please do not come in tomorrow.” But he didn’t say that \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

We went through my to-do list and I got access to things like the social media profiles of the department. A couple of months ago when I liked the departmental Facebook page, I thought “Oh wow, this is such a cool page, posts almost every day, interesting content, nice pictures…” And now I was suddenly in charge of it!!! OMG!<\/p>\n

Originally we agreed that I would work 10 hours a week. On my second week, I realised 10hrs\/week will be impossible to do… I\u00a0wanna work at least 168! [It must be quite annoying to my boss that no matter how many times he says I should take the day off, I still show up. My family is\u00a0actually worried that my boss will fire me because I am annoyingly crazy…<\/em>]<\/p>\n

\n

The number of words you understand: 5. The number of words you have to write about it: 500.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part of the job is to write about newly published papers written by members of the department. Ok, I am studying ChemEng and they are writing about ChemEng, so it can’t be that difficult, right? Well… When I opened the first review, I had to take a half-hour break after the first paragraph… \ud83d\ude42 So how do I do these?<\/p>\n

1. Read the paper. Translate the most-used word.<\/p>\n

2. Read it again. Try to understand what the title means.<\/p>\n

3. Copy it to Word. Decide how many paragraphs you want.<\/p>\n

4. Read it again. Highlight the key bits with different colours according to which paragraph they are relevant to.<\/p>\n

5. Read it again. Get the feel of it.<\/p>\n

6. Take a deep breath. Write.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Layer opacity and other animals…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Apparently, those display screens around the department don’t fill themselves up with content. (How strange…) And apparently, the website headers are not magically generated, either. (Interesting, very interesting…) So I met with Adobe Photoshop… To those who think Photoshop is about “you have a spot on your face? just photoshop it out”, well, I thought that, too. When I opened it, I was like “haha, this is just some fancy version of Paint, right?” How bloody wrong…\u00a0It took me an hour and two tutorial videos just to save a file… \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

But when you see your work back on the website, it was worth every moment.<\/p>\n

\"*endless<\/a>
*endless happiness*<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

“Minor edits to your nice piece”<\/strong><\/p>\n

So how is my summer job after one and a half months?<\/p>\n

I LOVE IT.<\/p>\n

When I walk into the foyer and my powerpoint is on the display screens…<\/p>\n

When I open the website<\/a> and my headers are on the top, my articles are on the bottom…<\/p>\n

When I open the facebook \/ twitter \/ instagram, and I remember when I scheduled the posts…<\/p>\n

It’s just amazing.<\/p>\n

One year ago, I was checking the ChemEng website every day, because I was desperately waiting for the “Imperial experience” to start.<\/p>\n

And today, I am checking the ChemEng website every day, because I am working on it.<\/p>\n

It’s like a dream… And I don’t want to wake up…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So it all started with an email… I was in the middle of exams, when I got an email back in May. The subject: “Summer communications work”. It was from the ChemEng\u00a0Communications Officer… Ohh well, I thought it’s like a one-day something, some promotions, whatever. Then I read the email… “…I am looking for someone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1032,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93059,93438,420,93757,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character","category-chemeng","category-college","category-comms","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1032"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/student-blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}