06.11.08
Eagan, MN – Days 3,4,5
Wow. How time flies when you are working. I finally got onto the net and I already have to go. Here is a small recap before I’m booted from Panera.
Monday:
Orientation. I got there on time and with a full stomach, and thank goodness I did! I was moving, talking, and reading non stop the whole day (minus lunch). I got to meet my team mates, manager, and have a lot of orientation time with Wayne Dahmes (HR Manager). I am the last intern to join, so I was going through it all one on one, which made it far more interesting and amusing. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
The only problem was the night before all of this. I had slept in too long on Sunday, and when it was around 11:30pm I was not tired. Instead, I was bursting with energy. I had put off running all weekend because I didn’t have the gear for it, but I had gone to Kohl’s and gotten shoes and what not. I went running (and walking 
). I explored a lot. I did find a good spot in the park relatively close to where I live that I can go sit and the end. Its great. I got back around 1am and I still couldn’t sleep. I think I fell asleep around 2:30am, which left me very tired on my first day. Luckily Lockheed Martin is a pretty high energy and fast paced work environment (at least one day one).
When I got home I had planned on going out to buy more work clothes (because I felt far more dressy then I needed to be and because I didn’t have many things to wear). Instead I passed out and slept for four hours. I then woke up and decided it was time for food. I drove southwest of my residence to McDonalds. I decided to take a road to see where it led me and around 11:15 I realized I was twenty miles NORTH EAST of my residence, and I had found Verizon, which I couldn’t find when I was actually looking for it. I didn’t get back until 11:30pm or so, and again I went to bed late.
Tuesday/Wednesday
I was finally in enough of the system on Tuesday to learn about the fantastic learning experience of compliance training. LM requires every new hire/intern to take certain courses within their first week, two weeks, 30 days, etc. And this goes on for every employee for their entire time at the company. Wayne was telling me about the training he still had to do (some of it is renewable annually). I managed to get done with eight compliance training tests (which are easy, but time consuming and quite uninteresting). I’ve been lucky enough to be put under the wing of a co-worker, Paul. Each day has worked out to (roughly) having meetings in the morning and/or perusing the Common ARTS lab to learn things and get to know my team (Ricky and Paul anyway) and then in the afternoon I actually sit at my desk and do compliance training or various setup/required things.
Their computer system, while silly at times, is better then UNI’s in general. Your active directory password gets you into everything, and the TSS Portal (which gets you basically everywhere) is automatically known for your ID when you log in on the intranet. The only things that require other passwords are the timecard system and any passwords you require for lab machines / work assignments. Its wonderful not having one for email/web access, one for timecards and work functionality, one for my active directory (AD) work account, one for my AD school account, and probably others I’m forgetting.
I have also been lucky enough to start on a short week. Here in Eagan we have Flextime 9/80, meaning we choose our hours with our manager (I chose standard 8-5:30pm) and we work 9 hours, then we receive every other Friday off. I also found out we are payed weekly, which will greatly alleviate some financial burdens (I earn as much in one week as I used to during a whole month during school).
I’ve been getting more sleep. I’ve been eating more. I’ve been exercising. And, best of it all, I get up and look forward to working for the next nine hours! It is great fun, though the programming bit hasn’t really kicked in. The code surely is manageable, the only thing I’m worried about is learning the system enough to be a capable bug tracker, and then learning the CRAZY processes required for logging the errors. I think it will come together nicely.
I like it at Lockheed. Though this is still week one. But how can I dislike it when I get my first Friday all to myself? I don’t even know what I’ll do with myself…. laundry and other mundane things I suppose.
Well, hopefully I can stay awake long enough to drive home and crawl into the bed. I’ll try to update more this weekend.