If you hadn’t noticed, I have really been slacking on blogging. My last post: January 31, about one of those fluke warm winter days. That was almost 4 months ago… oops. Since then, I’ve been busy with SWE region conference, a work trip to Seattle, representing SWE at the FIRST championships, working on a new way for SWE to recognize innovative outreach techniques, presenting my final SWE CLCC modules (noticing a pattern yet?), and enjoying the Midwest as winter turns to summer (as usual, spring lasted for about a month). I’m also getting ready to be the buddy for a summer intern who starts tomorrow, and who is conveniently also a Mizzou chem E.
The biggest change going on right now is at work. I started as a full-time engineer in June 2013, about four weeks after I finished college. Though I interned in the Seattle area the summer before, I knew that I belonged in the Midwest, and somehow, miraculously, slid into a full-time position at Boeing in St. Louis, conveniently my hometown. So I headed off to my new group, supporting production support for different aircraft than what I’d learned as an intern, working with different systems and standards, and having only met my new coworkers briefly during a tour in December 2012, before I’d accepted the job.
One of the things I found most curious about my new group was a flag prominently hanging from the ceiling – bright blue, with a giant F emblazoned on it. This, as I came to learn, was F Troop.
F Troop was a show that ran for two seasons in the mid-1960s, about a dysfunctional Army outpost in the Wild West during the Civil War. I’ve only seen a few minutes of the show, but now that I’ve been sitting here for almost two years, it makes perfect sense. The show is full of slapstick comedy, jokes, and general goofiness… and so is my group. After two years as an engineer, I have come to the conclusion that even though engineers grow older and grayer (and some lose their hair), we do not ever grow up. The behavior I came to expect from my classmates in college is the same as what I found when I started working. We make fun of each other, have experiences that are retold for months or years afterwards, and yet also manage to work together to get things done on time.
So, today was actually my last day in F Troop. Awhile ago, my management started putting together our M&P team for some new work at the site, and I was on the list. Though I’ve been working on my new program for a few months, it will really become a reality tomorrow. That’s because tomorrow, I’ll be showing up to my new desk, 2 miles further north on McDonnell Boulevard, in a building where I can see the outdoors from my desk and won’t have to check for my safety glasses in the morning. Instead of calling one of my coworkers on the phone every day, we can talk from across the aisle. And though this move will make my new tasks a little easier to execute, I am going to miss F Troop terribly. I often refer to this group as my “fifteen extra dads”, since most of them are my parents’ age or older. Proof: when I started dating Kevin over a year ago, they instantly started giving me advice, and constantly ask when I am going to buy a house and get a dog.
I am so excited for my new adventure. Though being on a new program is challenging already, I am so happy getting to learn new things every day as we design and build the next twin-aisle aircraft. Electrochemistry and reaction kinetics have always been my favorite pieces of chemistry, and I am still elated that I managed to find a job that uses those two fields to protect airplanes from corrosion in the fleet. And now I will even get to go back to Seattle sometimes, to the part of the country where I fell in love with aerospace all over again.
But for now, the important thing to remind myself is that my commute just got 2 miles longer, I have to keep driving, and best of all, that I’m an F Troopian for life. 🙂
Kate
Planes & Pink 