[Part 3] 5 year plan - where are you headed?

What it's like in an office

The topic may appear to be straightforward but moving from a school environment to an office can be quite confronting to some. I thought I would go over some quick tips for coping for your first few weeks in an office environment.

If you’re an intern this might give you a heads up on somethings to look out for!

1.      The noise level is quiet

When you’re studying getting to control the noise in your environment is pretty standard. More over, if you’re at school you can always tell your friends nearby to be quiet if they’re disturbing you. In an office that’s not always the case

Depending on whether you’re in a cubicle or hot desking things can get pretty noisy. Not only are there employees who some how forget to put their phone on silent every day – but you can also over hear the inevitable work calls where you can’t move them to another room because they need /all/ that stuff on their desk.

2.      Doors open and closed is an issue

Some how on this blog I always end up talking about the weirdest of things. I don’t know if it’s just that I’m a little bit too picky – but one of the things that I’ve really struggled with is knowing when to shut someone’s door.

There seems to be a lot of unwritten rules about this. Generally, we’d think phone call – shut the door, no call open the door. But…depending on where you work, who it is and how tense the conversation is you can be opening and closing that door all day long!

If you’re interning be prepared for a lot of awkward hesitations in the doorway. Whether you’re knocking on an open door, closed door, door way, or just staring at the people inside hoping they give you an idea of whether you’re meant to be inside or not – there’s a lot of awkwardness when you first arrived in an office.

But rest assured you’re not the first socially awkward person to have no idea what you’re doing!

3.      The printer is always broken

If you thought that your library printer was never working – then prepare yourself for the office printer. Not only are you going to be cursing out a printer that never works, you’re going to be joining a group of people who are overly tense and also cursing out a printer that is never working.

The exciting thing is – there’s always one person in the office that everyone expects to be able to fix the printer. Fingers crossed it’s not the new intern who has no idea what they’re doing! More often than not by the time the printer is actually printing pieces of paper out there’s 100 documents backed up in the system and you’re going to be using up a forest worth of paper on documents people have already forgotten about.

4.      Emailing vs. talking

Continuing on with the theme of administrative issues – whether you should email someone or talk to them is a new issue that you never imagined would exist. Except somehow when you come to work with someone within a 100 square meter radius it’s an issue. It’s either an issue because 1. You just made a coffee and really can’t be bothered to get up to talk to them or 2. If you go to talk to them they’re going to want to see it and the printer isn’t working.

But if you do print it you a. have to worry that it’s not going to get through to them and b. they may have questions which starts a confusingly long email chain that gets everyone aggravated.

Choose wisely.

But all in all, it’s fun working with lots of people who are passionate about what they’re doing. An internship can introduce you to industry challenges, critical flaws in your education and reveal whether you truly enjoy the work or if it’s time to adjust your career trajectory.

Don’t shy away from an opportunity to work in an office environment – embrace the challenge and let me know how you go either on my Instagram; lulu_hensman or my tumblr thisisluluh.tumblr.com

Or leave a comment below!