Now that I have a “real” job, people keep asking me about it.  So, I figured I’d give you all a little insight into my new daily activities.

First of all, my job is only part-time right now.  I am a Marketing Assistant for TranSystems Corporation, a full-service consulting engineering firm in downtown Norfolk.  My office is on the tenth floor of a beautiful building that looks out over the USS Wisconsin, Nauticus, and the water.  I probably won’t get to keep this office — they’re doing construction on the tenth floor right now, so I’ll probably end up having my own cubicle instead — but I’m enjoying it while it’s mine, and at least I’ll get to keep my huge computer monitor and my own phone extension.

My main task this month at work is to enter this Efficient Marine Terminal (EMT) Demonstration project into the 2005 Engineering Excellence Awards.  It’s a pretty exciting project and I’m really enjoying reading and learning about it.  The EMT is just one part of the Efficient Marine/Rail Intermodal Interface (EMRII) System which is a type of Agile Port System.  Agile Port Systems are being developed and tested in order to facilitate the increasing volume in US ports, and apparently developing and demonstrating these systems is a pretty huge undertaking.  TranSystems has been working with several other companies and organizations over the past few years to demonstrate the different parts of the EMRII and we are now in the process of planning a full-scale demonstration of the entire system at the Port of Tacoma next summer.

Since I have to enter this project in a competition, I’ve tried to learn as much as possible about it so that I can write the best possible 1500-word description and press release and create a nice visual representation.  I have always been a huge fan of efficiency, so this entire project is totally fascinating to me and I’m having a blast discussing it with the engineers in my office – mostly because I love the looks on their faces when they realize that I understand most of what I’ve read from the project proposal, the demonstration plan, and the final summary report.  After all, I’m just the new part-time Marketing girl and I’ve only been there a week!

There are other perks to my new job as well.  First, the candy and soda in the vending machine is only 50 cents.  Second, I make my own hours.  Third, there’s always something cool going on outside my window — I mean, this morning, there was a cruise ship parked outside my office.  It left around 1 pm, and then I got to watch some ominous clouds roll in.  Finally, I have to park at the MacArthur Center and walk to the building where I work, so I have a free parking pass to the mall. 

You may think I’m crazy for accepting only a part-time position after searching for so long for the perfect job, but I am really enjoying this position and hopefully it will lead to something full-time down the road.  I think I’d really like to do marketing or PR in the engineering industry — I seem to really understand it and I think that might make me valuable to some important company someday.  In the meantime, I am planning on finding a restaurant job to satisfy my cash addiction and pay the rest of my rent.  I think waiting tables will be fun again when I don’t have to worry about my lack of experience in the professional world.  I’ll also have plenty of time to continue volunteering for the USO and maybe I can even do some freelance work on the side — let me know if you need any public relations services.