It took me a lot longer to get to this than I had expected but, anyway, here it is:
I had a meeting with my manager a few weeks ago and he gave me homework for our next meeting. We’re working on mid-year reviews and he asked me to think about what I would like to do. Sounded simple enough, right? Then, I began to think about it. I had no freakin’ idea! There are so many options! Everything I could think of that I liked to do had nothing to do with my day to day job. I began to feel overwhelmed and a bit panicky.
One evening, my husband and I were talking about it and I said, “You know, I really love writing process documentation and creating flow charts and creating forms and just generally making things easier for people.” He looked at me and said “Jenn, why aren’t you doing what I’m doing?” I just looked at him. Holy crap! He was right! All the stuff I love to do at work was related to User Experience! Not from a web perspective, but that’s OK since I wouldn’t be able to apply that in the current organization I’m working in.
So, that is why I had asked for everyone’s recommendations on a book or a site they found very helpful. As I’ve been thinking about it more and doing a bit of reading, I really think I’ve finally found what I’d like to do!
The next step was to talk to my manager and get his buy in. My next meeting with him was this past Monday and it went great! I told him how the one thing I’m working on already is directly related to UX. He said he thinks we could really use someone in that type of role on the team. So, it’s all working out perfectly!
Now my next step is to learn as much as possible and, something else I would really like to do, go back to school. We do have a degree assistance program at work and my manager said to work up a plan and we’ll talk through it to see what we can do. What I’m working on now is trying to determine the best track to follow. I’m thinking that communication and psychology should be included, but not sure what type of degree would be the best. If anyone has any suggestions, please, feel free to let me know!
