On Having a Job and Associated Deep Thoughts – Part 4

(This is another installment in a series of posts about my job and where I want my career to go from here. For previous deep thoughts, here’s Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.)

Last fall when I started this series of job thoughts, I wrote about some recent events that had spurred my self-reflection at the time. A year later, I find myself in a similar situation thanks to a few things that have happened in the last month:

1. I applied for a promotion that I was highly qualified for — just like last year. I was encouraged to apply by people in a position to recommend me, and I did my research — just like last year. But unlike last year, this time I didn’t even make it to the interview round. My resume was rejected somewhere in the Human Resources process. When I found out, I was astonished, then angry, then frustrated, then finally resigned to the fact that it is what it is. The HR decision happens in a black box and once made, it cannot be changed. Instead of continuing to beat my head against that brick wall, I have chosen to be patient in hopes that something better will come up in the future.
2. I finished my rotation with the ISS Chief Safety Officers last week. I really loved that entire experience, and am disappointed to see it end. I learned a LOT, and also realized that I would very much like to pursue that career path…but I feel rather flummoxed on how to get there (especially given my recent job pursuit snafu described above).
3. When my group lead returns from her special assignment in a couple months and my stint acting on her behalf ends, I will be 100% back to my old job for the first time in 17 months. And after nearly a year and a half of doing most of my old job plus the assignments associated with my various rotations…I’m a little scared of fading into the woodwork, and that I won’t have enough to do.

I’ve talked to my management about each of these things, and I’ve heard my name tossed around as the potential person to fill several different needs…but I have nothing concrete to show for it yet. I have no forward plan. I’m not sure I can say I’ve EVER really had a forward plan.

I have been working full-time at NASA for just over 12 years. (I always feel the need to include “full-time” to indicate the distinction from my 5 previous years as a co-op student. As much as we like to say that being a co-op prepares you for the “real world” of having a job, there are still some areas where the differences are like night and day.)

I spent roughly the first 4 years as a trajectory analyst, the next 4 years as a flight controller, and the last 4 years in my current role. Notice a trend here? I’ve got a 4-year itch in my relationship with jobs, apparently.

When I moved from flight operations to the world of safety and mission assurance in 2010, I essentially “reset” my career. I found myself in a completely new area with new coworkers, new management, new goals, new everything. And while Safety has been a surprisingly good fit for me — something I absolutely never predicted or expected — it has also been a bit like starting over, at least from a career path perspective. Any credentials I had from the space shuttle operations world no longer meant much to the space station safety community.

This has been both good and bad, in ways I couldn’t have fully appreciated at the time I chose to move. I’ve been able to achieve things and get recognition that I never would have gotten in my old job due to the size of that organization and my particular place within it. Put in simpler terms: the safety organization is more compact, and it’s therefore easier to become one of the larger fish in that smaller pond. But in many ways, I also feel like I “lost” 8 years of experience. I’m well into the “mid career” category based on my age, but to Safety, I suspect sometimes that I’m still considered “new.”

On Monday, I spent a couple hours in the JSC television studio filming an interview that will be boiled down to 3-5 minutes and put online as part of the Women@NASA initiative. I will share more about that soon, but one of the questions was about any life lessons I wanted to share. Out of nowhere, I found myself talking about persistence and patience.

Persistence and patience. Those two things don’t really seem to go together at first glance, and yet maybe they DO. One of the biggest benefits to my career “reset” was the opportunity to start fresh, work hard, and speak up for myself in ways I haven’t in the past. So in many ways, I’ve spent a lot of the last 4 years being persistent — about what I’m doing, about what I need, about where I can help.

We are ingrained with the idea that persistence always pays off. And it has for me in many ways, but in some ways it hasn’t. But maybe it will…if I give it time.

Maybe it is time for me to be patient.

(to be continued…)