Transitioning and Compartmentalization

[mackenzie]

When a person graduates from college (or high school, but especially college) and enters the workforce1, there are two major transitions that occur. One is social, and the other is professional. The professional transition is often much more overwhelming than the social one

Comments

[dclayh]

This is so true for me I cannot even begin to tell you. (Sciency grad school has similarly low compartmentalization to a real job.) I hate it so much that I'm thinking seriously about going into consulting or some other job that's divided into very discrete chunks.

[mackenzie]

Hearing you say that makes me realize that, without even knowing it, I sort of did the same thing. I went into temping right out of college, which similarly came in very discrete chunks.

[dclayh]

Actually, may I repost this on my LJ, so that others might share in its wisdom? (Attributed, friendslocked, etc.)

[mackenzie]

I'll unlock it.

[terpsichoros]

I wonder if this contributes to the frequency of job-hopping - closing off and creating new compartments. On the other hand, college has been that way for a long, long time.

In my experience, people fresh out of school tend to be given more compartmentalized tasks, with the more senior people managing the longer-term work, which eases the transition, probably more so than making one's office space resemble a college campus.

I think I'm going to post a pointer to this post, too.

[mackenzie]

My guess is that the necessity of college is what is causing some of these changes. A friend linked me to this article yesterday with horror. I'm still looking for the tie, but that seems to be the most obvious change.

In terms of task compartmentalization, I think it depends a lot on the industry. Once I left temping, I took on several long term projects within my first month.

Thanks for the pointer. I'm approaching this from a very privileged perspective: my mother paid for me to attend a small liberal arts college and I graduated debt-free. I'm definitely interested in getting more data points.

[terpsichoros]

Good God that was an awful article. High schools don't guarantee that a diploma equals basic literacy or respect for others, so we should get even more people to acquire high-school skills at great(er) expense in college!

[krustad]

I think that's an accurate observation. Before I got my current job I freelanced and worked multiple jobs--other than the financial insecurity aspect, doing many different things on a project basis kept me from getting bored. Now working at a "real job", I find it hard to stay motivated working the same stuff every day. I suspect I may just prefer the compartmentalized setup. So far, I don't think I've adjusted to the more-fluid work structure particularly well, and it's part of why I'll probably be headed back to school this fall.

[miss_emelia]

This is why I've always thrived in project work. I'm a huge fan of done, and project work means that I get to do the initial big push, then hand it over to others to manage the long term maintenance. It's rare that one of my things comes back to nag at me, so it's pretty parallel to the educational world. It's a nice balance point between the two worlds. I have to build long-term people relationships, but still get to push away the content.

[marianme]

Nice post.

Some people never transition and still do last minute deadline sort of work especially since many change jobs every few years.