When you decide to leave the only place you have ever worked, the question will always be in the back of your mind: is this the right move? Or are you making the biggest mistake of your life?
This post is meant as a letter to my future self. That person I will become after a year of working in a completely new environment with new people and unexplored challenges. That person who will be so frustrated by the slow pace of decision making (which characterizes a hospital) that she will long for those easy days at her old job when she didn’t have to deal with people at all and nobody could monitor when she came into the office. That is what I foresee my future self to be dealing with in her new job.
Well, future self, this is me (you) still working at your old job, and I’m here to tell you how lucky you are to be working directly in the medical field! You are surrounded by a lot of interesting knowledge and brilliant people who save lives for a living. I (you), on the other hand, am here typing away on my phone just waiting for emails to come in asking me to do things. I don’t really feel like my job matters to anybody, and if I had left 3 months ago nobody would have given a crap.
Sure, I can sleep in for an extra hour when I’ve had a long night, and I could work from home on rainy Fridays, but I HATE working from home! And I hate getting up late because it makes me feel like I already started the day on a stupid and lazy note. I also have friends here in the office who care about me and will continue to be my friends even after I have left. I’m sure you’ll make your own friends. Remember to be kind to people, and to smile.
The main reason I decided to leave was because I really don’t care about this job at all. I do it day in and day out with the sole purpose of getting out of the house. I think I deserve more than that. I deserve to use my skills for something interesting that I just might want to keep learning about even after 5 o’clock rolls around, and I think that’s what you got going for you. Always remember that it might be a “job,” but that doesn’t mean you have to dislike it.
I really hope you are happy out there, and remember the role can be anything you want it to be. Don’t lock it in a box. Make sure you think outside of it. Grow on your own, find out what other hospitals are doing. Are there online communities for health care professionals you could join? Boston is your oyster.
Back to the theme of this letter, I’ll leave you with a few reassuring blasts from the past that will remind you that the grass might be greener in other places, but not in this garden:
- Being thrown into Disaster Recovery exercises in which you have zero background or input and where you end up wicked confused as to what is expected of you.
- Being hounded for lease replacement information that you have no idea how to check if it’s complete, accurate or what it even means.
- Being asked by a certain secretary-less chief to chase after their own staff to get things done. All the accountability, zero power.
- Being disappointed at the turnout of community events you organized because the community members are stand-offish assholes.
- Bullshit talks with your manager about your future in the company when you know full well you have no interest in being here much longer.
- Looking around you and realizing you do not wish you had anybody else’s job. In other words, there is no position, high or low, that you wish you were doing instead.
- Being able to get by, and even be looked at as a star, when you are just half-assing your way through. Talk about unrealized potential.
- People telling you to “tone it down” every year, and you wanting to tell them to shut the fuck up.
- Bullshit talk about change in procedures, how to have productive meetings, how to praise each other, how to manage your career path, when the culture has already made it clear that nothing ever changes, and it’s more about who you know, where you are located, and whose ass you’re kissing.
- Four words: Bullshit Mandatory Technical Training.
- Emails that accumulate by the week loads, which you have no chance to get through if you want to get any work done.
- People printing behind you interminable documents that you know are of a personal nature.
- Getting impossible questions by a certain secretary-less chief. They are stupid, irrelevant, and do not pertain ME at all. But you can’t just say No.
I hope that answers your question. Satisfied?
abi