Culture Shock?

Can you believe it?  I’ve been working for 6 weeks now…how time flies.  So far I’ve been very happy with my job.  I’m getting to lead a couple of cool projects, I’m starting to better understand forecasting (a big part of what an ABM at Del Monte does) and I’m gelling with my team.

I’ve also gotten to do some cool things, like tour our Hanford, CA tomato plant, and attend a “photoshoot” for Contadina (complete with “food stylists” and champagne to close the shoot!).

Adjusting to working life after business school has been tough though.  Here are some of things I’ve noticed:

Weeknights are short!
I usually get home at around 6:45.  Once I’ve changed, sat down for dinner (lately I’ve been lucky b/c Em’s been cooking a lot) and digested, it’s already eight.  If I want to stick with my plan of sleeping by 11, then I have to start winding down by 10:30, which only leaves me 2.5 hours a night.  I have to be efficient if I want to squeeze in some gym time and computer time (for blogging and email) around the quality chill time I spend with Em.  Sometimes, I’ll bring home my work comp to do some work, which makes it even harder.

Weekends are short!
How come the weekends fly by so quickly?  I guess having 4-day weekends in school for my second year didn’t help.  Neither did having 2.5 months of complete freedom this summer. I feel like I blink my eye and Monday’s already rearing it’s ugly head.

Sleep is important.
I used to think that sleep was way overrated.  That I’d gladly sacrifice 2 hours of sleep so that I could get 2 more hours of “me time,” and that my performance the next day would only be marginally affected.  Oh, so wrong.  Now, if I want to be alert and sharp during work, I need to get those 7.5-8 hours of sleep a night.  I guess I didn’t feel like in school and at my old job, I had to be THAT awake and quick on my toes.

B-school is good prep for multitasking. Getting deluged with emails during b-school has definitely primed me for working life.  I can sift through work emails with ease.  But, for all it’s virtues (calendaring, meetings, etc.), Outlook is vastly inferior to Gmail on 2 things: email threads (how nice would it be to have gmail threads at work?) and search (I can’t find anything I’m looking for…I feel like the search function only searches the email title).  Microsoft, get your sh*t together.