Sunday, July 11, 2010

Achievement.

I came back to Houston on Saturday night, fatigued, a bit sad to leave the festivities early, but focused on my reality of getting my demo ready for Monday.

I recall sleeping when I got home, and taking a break until mid-Sunday just to rejuvenate myself. The mental-switching cost here was huge. Playing around with SharePoint on the server was invaluable but I didn't need to actually do the site all over again. I just bombarded my brain with ideas on what I could possibly do, so I could easily hit the ground running in the morning at Chevron.

I got up early at around 4:45, and go to school a little before 6. Tom was already there, but I scared him when I walked in his office to say hello. Malcolm was here shortly after, and he was impressed too. I had my Monster drinks that the street team was handing out earlier, which everyone commented on, to say "It's not healthy! Stop drinking that!" It worked on me, when Ken took me aside to really explain where he was coming from, and it was that personal touch, not trying to tell me what to do, but to explain the health choices I make, that made me re-evaluate my decision. I later threw away both of my drinks.

For the RAMP meeting, I was to demo my SharePoint site, and I got it opened on the GIL desktop. We were in the IDE and Mike, Evan, and Jacob were on the other side. The meeting went relatively quickly and it got to my portion, which I talked through and I realized no one was out to light a match under my feet. I got some sincere questions and I got some advice on what to do next.

It felt really good to be shocked when presented with a huge challenge, and to balance the prior commitments I've made, and to finish everything really well. I got everything I wanted to do completed that weekend (besides staying with the gang all weekend), so this is one of my proudest work achievements.

JJ, thank you for turning up the pressure. It's taught me a lot in time management. Sometimes you know everything you need to know; you just have to crank it out.

From Thursday's announcement of the assignment, to calling my dad, to getting the server in my room, to going to Austin and having the time of my life, to getting back and testing, to going to work super early, to finishing the first iteration of the site in only 3 and a half hours, to demoing it in the IDE to my team, was amazing.

No comments:

Post a Comment