on life

Whoop whoop,

It seems my life never stands still, but I guess for right now it is back on track. For right now my address is Sønderborg and I am working at Danfoss for an internship.

To be honest, the transition to work has been a lot harder than I expected it to be. The first many weeks were spent pretty much like this: sleep, work, eat, TV, sleep. When I came home from work I was so exhausted that literally all I did was watch TV, read, sleep, eat, etc.

Now that it’s been two months (nearly halfway already?!?), the rhythm is getting a little easier, but the chronic tiredness still seems to be hanging around. An average day:

Alarm clock at 6 AM, shower and get ready for work after a few snoozes. 7 AM, leave for bus station where colleague picks me up. 7:30ish-7:45ish, enter office. Anywhere between 3:30 and 4:30 (usually around 4 though) we leave to go home. Somewhere in between (12:30-1) is a half hour lunch break in the employee canteen.

It’s not just the new schedule of getting up early, it’s also the many thousands of new impressions and new things to learn and experience every day. It’s being nicely dressed and behaving professionally and thinking about every move. It’s trying to do as much work as possible and still doing it all perfectly. It’s working hard and concentrated for about 8 hours straight.

As a student, you can plan your days and working/studying hours pretty much however you like. When you need a break or a nap, you do just that. Sometime that means that you end up studying into the evening hours, but that’s ok if it means you could hang out with a friend during the afternoon, go to the gym, or cook a nice dinner (procrastination is awesome). For some reason beyond my understanding, none of those procrastination actions (in Danish: overspringshandlinger) are socially acceptable at work. You are expected to work concentrated and efficiently while you are at work. Crazy concept.

It’s nice to go home from and not be worrying about homework; to have that free time for whatever I please. I enjoy not feeling that same chronic guilt that I’ve always felt when I was taking regular classes, when there was always something to be read or something to be working on. Still, that doesn’t mean that those hours after lunch aren’t sometimes difficult to get through, and that my caffeine and coffee consumption hasn’t sky-rocketed.

Still, the work is interesting. The people are nice. I’m pretty sure I’m headed in the right direction as far as my major and my ambitions. I am getting excited about going back to school for my last few classes and then writing my thesis and then finally being DONE! I am excited about getting a job in a few years, getting a nice apartment, having a real job and more steady finances.. I think I’m just about ready to be done with the student lifestyle.

I might make a more detailed post about what I’m working on at work another day. For now though, here are some links to two articles I helped create. I can’t claim sole credit for any of them, since they were group efforts. This isn’t my regular work but two small things I was asked to look at, make input, edit, finish, etc. It is nice to be asked my opinion and to be involved in these small things too, and to have a bit of external proof that I was at Danfoss

http://heating.danfoss.com/xxNewsx/086fe61b-9738-4b3a-ba55-d64b175ed018.html

http://heating.danfoss.com/xxNewsx/d701d2ee-a3c1-48ef-bbb1-ed8a77d17304.html