Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Blogging from A to Z: E is for Engineer (or is it "Environment?")

During April, I'm participating in the Blogging from A to Z challenge -- one alphabet-themed post per day, starting with A is for Aruba Aftermath and ending with Z is for ... I don't know yet what Z is for, I'll figure it out when I get there.

(image from here)
"I'm not interested in work-life balance," my colleague Imogene announced to our leadership group.  "I don't want a balanced life, I want a congruent life." We spent the rest of the hour dissecting what that could/should mean ... congruent with your values, your priorities, your sense of fun.

Some people take a lot of time to figure out what they want for a career.  Me, by the time I got to third grade I was certain mine was going to be science, and I never wavered.  My undergrad degree was Natural Science (chemistry/math/physics).  My Master's in Civil Engineering made my dad unreasonably proud, since he was also a civil engineer, as was Dan.  But my entire career ended up being about water. I was classified more on the environmental side of engineering than the building-things side, studying water quality and water supply and pollution cleanup, with job titles like hydrologist, environmental engineer, and senior environmental scientist.  Having a science career that also helped protect and/or clean up the environment, that was totally congruent with my values and my priorities.   When in addition to a career about water, I started living on the water in our sailboat, and recreating under water with our new scuba diving certification, well, that was probably the ultimate congruence!

(Image from here)

2 comments:

  1. This was such an interesting post - I liked getting to know you better and learning about your background.

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  2. Funny you should mention that ... I'm not sure why this challenge is inspiring me to post about general ideas rather than specific places or activities, but it clearly is. That seems a good thing.

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