Then I Was…

I know it’s hard to imagine, but this week, on Monday, my office was buzzing with energy. Not ever having been a big fan of Mondays, I really noted the change in atmosphere, and numerous of my coworkers commented on it too. We’re all normally attached to a caffeine drip on Mondays, so it was a big switch.

A little background – I work at Penn State University in Development – you may know it as fundraising. We’re the people who litter your inbox with pleas for money. It has its highlights and its drudgery like every part of higher ed., but in the end we help the students, so it’s not a bad gig. There are about 25 people in my office.

During the pandemic, all of Penn State’s faculty + staff got sent home. My division worked from home for almost 20 months. It was a big chunk of time. While we were at home – negotiating the learning curve of doing every part of our jobs electronically – we reminisced about standing around chatting on a Friday afternoon; how we missed office parties with a delicious spread of treats, and the spontaneity of plunking down in a friend’s cube to catch up on each other’s lives. We were sick-to-death of Zoom meetings and isolation. We liked being home and safe, but we also wanted things back to “normal”.

Finally back in the office – we had to adjust all over again. Sure, there was some exuberant schmoozing happening from time to time, but things were far from normal. We couldn’t congregate in groups, had to wear masks all day long, and now there was also an undercurrent of – I’d rather be at home. Why am I sitting in Zoom meetings all day at the office when I could be at home in sweatpants? That longing for being together was very quickly displaced by the frustrations of our new reality. A mass exodus occurred in our division – and the rest of the world – it seemed no one really cared to be in an office any longer.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy working from home 2 or 3 days a week. Rolling out of bed, throwing on leggings and a sweatshirt and, full tea mug in hand, sitting down ready for the day in 20 minutes is not to be beat. BUT, I still think people who will never experience work in an office with a team of coworkers will miss out on a meaningful life experience.

So why was the office buzzing on Monday? It took a few months, but the people who are in the office now, as a whole, are happy to be there. We’re only all in the office on Mondays because of hybrid schedules – so it’s the day which most resembles what our office used to be – someone in every cubicle, at every desk, groups chatting in the kitchen, people joking and laughing down the hall.

Monday was Valentine’s Day, so there were stories of dinners out, cards and flowers. And one of the managers brought donuts in for the office – a sweet treat that created a different kind of buzz. The day went by quickly because we were working together to set up interviews, and complete projects. If we needed to include someone in the conversation, we walked 20 steps and asked them to join – a blessed reprieve from Zoom. It was a good day, the kind of day that makes working 8 to 5 seem not so tedious.

There are a lot of perks to working from home – or, more to the point, working from anywhere there is a laptop – but you miss out on so much if you never work in person – building relationships with members of your team. If you have a chance to go into your office still, even if it’s only once a week – take it – it will pay dividends in the end.

I have never even come close to experiencing the type of workplace buzz that occurred at Penn State University’s Development office that Monday. My Monday’s typically begin with me waking up around 7:30, going for a walk and listening to a podcast, doing some morning Yoga with Adriene (Youtube’s hottest yoga instructor), writing in my journal about my life outlook, then settling into my home office where I spend the next 8-10 hours of my life struggling to communicate with coworkers clearly through mediums like Microsoft Teams and Outlook and making PowerPoint slides for people who make way more money than I do.

My pandemic working experience will be talked about for ages. I am one of the lucky ones who graduated from college in May 2020 and began working fully virtually that summer in August. For context, I work at Deloitte in their cybersecurity consulting practice.

First, I’d like to express how grateful I am to have been able to begin working fully virtually during one of the most unprecedented times in our world’s history. I recognize that there are plenty of people, including many friends of mine, who were not so lucky and had their job opportunities rescinded, or got shafted and were furloughed / laid off from their existing jobs. I am #blessed to have been able to start my career during a pandemic, and I do not take that lightly.

That said, my work experience as an entry-level professional has been no where near how I envisioned it. As an extroverted, get-energy-from-people kind of person, I was looking forward to starting out with a class of other excited and affable new hires from colleges around the States. I was excited to go to the water cooler and shoot the shit with Ricky from sales about the Eagles losing by 20 to the Giants for absolutely no reason. I was excited to make connections with longer-tenured individuals at my company and learn the ropes from them. I was excited to make some new friends in the area and to go to happy hours and complain about our mundane work tasks over a couple of Bud Lights. Alas, a global pandemic was the only thing that stood in my way. It’s ruined my chances of making personal connections with mostly everyone I work with, and this has been one of the hardest parts of the pandemic for me so far.

In contrast with the idea of envisioning myself forming new relationships at my job and being energized by the people around me, there were also some shortcomings caused by working from home which I did not foresee that came to be a hinderance on my career growth. Working from home causes plenty of shortfalls in communication and productivity to occur. I was lucky to have a mentor on my project team who was very patient and accommodating to any / all questions I had. She was understanding of the difficult situation we were placed into as new hires working from home. I felt mostly comfortable asking her for guidance, but that doesn’t take away from the nagging anxiety that is induced by having to cold call someone to ask them a question over the phone. I am a confident person, but there is just something unsettling about having to Teams message someone to ask them 5x a day about something I’m unsure about on a task I am working on. I’m sure most if not everyone feels this little bit of anxiety in the workplace that is exacerbated by having to communicate with more senior managers. Let me know if you disagree, but I believe that if I was able to be in the room with the person, approach them, and ask them to explain things to me face-to-face, there would be far less anxiety around asking questions and would be an increase in productivity / growth for newer employees.

While I am frustrated by the lack of this interconnectivity with people at my company and the small setbacks that arise as a result of working from home, I can’t discuss all of the cons about the situation without giving some room for some of the pros.

As discussed above, I have settled into a morning routine that provides me with a sense of stability and mental wellbeing every morning. I take time to move / stretch my body, as well as practice mindfulness through breathing and journaling. As opposed to the beginning of my career when I would go to bed around 1 AM after watching shows all night, wake up at 8:50 to roll out of my bed and grab my laptop, my body and mind feel much better throughout each day. I highly recommend adjusting your schedule to wake up earlier in the day. This way, you don’t have to start out your day being sad and having to work for the first 10 hours that you are awake. I recognize that if I were to commute to the office every morning, I would not have the time to do all of my morning activities, and my mental health might suffer as a result.

Another way that I am able to stay optimistic throughout the drudgery (copied this word from you, mom. Fire vocab.) of my 9-5 (or 6, or 7) is to take short breaks throughout the day to do something that energizes me. I like to play guitar for a quick 10 minutes. Or maybe I’ll pop open a book to clear my mind of the trivial work tasks I have before me that day. Or, if I’m feeling really crazy, I’ll do some pushups or pullups or a quick core workout. Now, I’m not entirely sure how a 9-5 worked pre-pandemic since I was never able to observe it, but I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to do any of these activities if I was in a button-down and slacks at the office. These activities are part of what make my days exciting and if I was unable to mix them in with the rest of my daily work tasks, I would be very :(.

So, I am not so sure If I’ve every truly enjoyed a Monday as much as my mom did this past week. Hell, I’m not so sure if I ever will. That day in the Penn State (we are) office seemed electric. I think that the verdict is still out on how well I like this work from home thing, but to be honest, I don’t think it will ever be closed. For now, I will continue hating my lack of interconnectivity with coworkers and anxiety-inducing communications, and keep loving my morning routine and fun activities mixed throughout my days working from home. It has been going pretty smoothly so far :).