My first week on the new job.

I began work for the Office of the Indiana Attorney General this week.

The first day

I had to force myself to get up incredibly early after not being able to get to bed before midnight (even with the help of Benadryl). I wanted to work in plenty of slack to shave and get dressed up; naturally suiting up takes a bit more time than throwing on my usual t-shirt and shorts. I was scheduled to check in at my office at 8:30…although driving to Indy from Bloomington only takes roughly an hour, I left at 6:45 to account for possible traffic issues in downtown Indy as well as possible issues of getting lost since I hadn’t been there before (I landed this job through an interview held within our school). Sure enough, I arrive in downtown Indy a good 40 minutes early, and initially thought I overshot a bit. Then traffic got thick really quickly. Then I struggled to find the parking garage we were directed to, making me worry that I was actually going to be cutting it close. Then I finally found it and was turned away by a lady saying the garage was full, which compelled her to direct me to another one. Happily, she gave me wrong directions to an intersection that didn’t even exist. It now became really clear that I was indeed going to be late despite the fact that I had seemingly been cautious; I phoned in and apprised them of my situation before I ever actually got late. Eventually, after arriving to within a few blocks of my office 40 minutes early, I strolled in more than 45 minutes late, agitated as could be. Obviously I apologized profusely, and they did understand (especially given the unexpected parking issues that had plagued others as well). I was assured that no harm was done and that nobody I was working for would even realize I was late since I was just dealing with HR people for orientation initially, but it wasn’t exactly the auspicious debut I had hoped for either. Orientation is what it is. It’s boring no matter where you are, but companies have to do a certain amount of it. By orientation standards, this was an eminently tolerable day. They got most of that stuff out of the way, and midway through the day we were already assigned projects to work on and basically told, “Have at it. Tell me if you have any questions.” There wouldn’t be much else to say, except that a surprising twist took place during the second half of the day.