Day 1 down

So the first day of the new job is in the history books. It was pretty uneventful, as a lot of people were either out sick or chose not to come in due to the snow that fell hard this morning. This drive should take me 30 minutes from St. Charles to Glen Ellyn and today it took 55. The funny thing was my manager and two trainers for the day were all out, so my plans changed drastically. I wound up spending most of my time setting up my computer, working on a report, and chatting with two of the financial aid reps about their specific roles within the department.

The department is comprised mostly of females and it's primarily on the younger side. I don't think there are many people over 50 years old there, which I suppose is fine. There are some student workers there, so there are people in their 20s. Most of the people in a position of leadership seem to be in their 40s. More importantly, just about everyone seemed pretty friendly and welcoming. I don't know for sure exactly how close people within the department are, if they do events together or anything like that. But it seems to be pretty cohesive.

The facilities were also pretty solid. The Student Services Center, which houses financial aid, admissions, counseling, etc. is only four years old and it's a very modern, sleek looking building. A whole lot finer than what I had at Gordon. It can be a little easy to get lost if you don't know where you're going, since there are a lot of little tunnels and passageways that connect one building to the next. Our break room is pretty small and not that clean. We get water out of the refrigerator tap and took a couple of minutes to fill my bottle, which is not exactly a gallon. It's closer to maybe 1 liter and I had to stand there, waiting for it to fill up. The office supplies are kept in a closet in the break room. They have a lot of useful items in stock as well as some non-essentials like dry erase markers. They seem to do a good job at restocking what they're running low on.

With the software, I'm not used to using Colleague, which is where I'll access student and financial information. It seems somewhat usable. I think the big issue will be learning where to go to answer the questions that students will throw my way. that comes in time. The big key for me is to be patient with myself. Day 2 starts in ten hours. I'm looking forward to it.