Sunday, September 27, 2009

New New York City

Just in case you assumed I went off to work and forgot all about blogging, I'm making sure to take part of this weekend to give a quick update on what's been happening since I started work on the 11th.

In short, work has been going well.

We had a brief week of training, which was fine and a good chance to see everyone from my former summer internship class.

On the Friday of training week, we were dismissed in the early afternoon, so I went with the other new New York associates back to the office.

Throughout the week, I would keep a close watch on my inbox, looking for anything that would indicate what my staffing situation would be.

I could have been staffed anywhere, or nowhere, and I really really wanted to know.

So I'm back in the office on Friday, and haven't heard anything. Time keeps ticking, and the closer I get to the end of the day, the more I'm convinced I won't be staffed and will start my career on the 'beach'

But late in the day, I finally got an email from an admin in the office.

Later on that day I got what essentially was a confirmation.

I was indeed staffed, on a local project, on a strategy assignment for a media company.

Woo-hoo!

We started last Monday, spending most of our time in our own offices. The work has been really interesting, although given it was originally proposed as a 7 week project and got compressed to 4 weeks, there has been a fair amount of work to do.

I've spent time working on a survey to potential customers, talking with vendors, and competitive landscape analyses on other products in the potential new product's space.

I'm really glad I got put on the project, now I just have to make sure I don't screw up. (That's the downside of getting a first project exactly where you want it, screwing up would make a pretty poor first impression)

Other than that, things have been ok. I'm adjusting to my new apartment (which is nice) and my new lack of cable TV (which is also ok), and my efforts to eat better (not really as ok)

It's definitely different in Manhattan. You have the convenience of everything, with the inconvenience of millions of other people everywhere. I have yet to determine whether it's a zero sum at the end of the day.