11/30/22

I feel incredibly young at my job. I work under the umbrella of the research division, but that division is split up into smaller subsets. my particular subset is the Office of Sponsored Project Administration, which is then further split into more groups. so, really, I work in the Contracts and Industry Agreements (yes, the CIA).

the entire research division is huge, but my actual team I work with daily is only four people. I am 25, and my coworkers are 37, 41, and 46. all of them with kids and marriages and mortgages and real adult things to juggle and worry about. so sometimes I really feel my age, especially when the person I’m closest in age to in this office is our freshman work-study student, Rey.

lucky for me, I really like my coworkers. they’re all really intelligent and pretty funny. during the height of COVID they had a schedule worked out where only one of them came into the office at a time, and I can tell the toll that has taken. while I’m on my probationary period, I have to come into the office everyday, and every single one of them loooooooves to talk my ear off. guess that’s the result of being the only one in the office for over a year. thankfully, they’re all really interesting and I have a lot to learn from them, so I typically don’t mind sitting and listening to what they have to say.

at first I was worried that they would talk down to me or treat me like a child, but that hasn’t been the case at all. I feel respected and heard and they walk the line of being helpful without giving unsolicited advice very well. tomorrow we’re getting a new coworker! I hope they’re in their 20s, or at the very least don’t have kids yet – I need more numbers on the “no kids” team in this office. fingers crossed!

things I am grateful for: my CIA team; the fact that we have an Einstein Bagels in my work building; and morning walks with Zoey.