Month: November 2024

After taking the suggested tests: Stress Inventory, Coping & Stress Mangement, and Type A Personality test, I have come to realize that I at my current state in life, I might not be in the best stage to handle a ton of stress.

According to the Stress Inventory, I scored a 233, which puts me in the category of at least a 50% chance of mental breakdowns in the next two years. That feels reassuring! I do have a lot going on right now, but I am not quite I warrant breakdown level. I guess it might depend on what you define breakdown as. According to the Coping & Stress Management Skills Test, I scored a 48, which indicated I had a Problem Focused Coping issue. Since I am not willing to pay, it was pretty minimal in the diagnosis. That being said, my score was colored red, so I know it was not good. I do think that this test might be a bit over generalized and doesn’t quite align with me perfectly. Lastly, the Type A Personality Test scored me as 36 which was red, so I assume that means not the greatest. The most telling of the summary of me was “Your interactions with others, while characterized by warmth and tolerance the majority of the time, may occasionally be tinged with impatience and hostility.” This may be true or just might be how I am feeling at the moment.

All the tests aside, I feel like I handle stress relatively well considering all the things that are going on in my life. That being said, I can appreciate these test scores and try to think more critically in my life about how stressors affect me.

Motivating factors: When it comes to compensation, especially for doing a full-time job, money is a huge factor and motivator. A full-time job means that you will be spending 1/3 of your life in this place and giving up a lot of your abilities and talents, so of course compensation is something that is a motivator or a de motivator. It is also likely that “compensation” takes form in other ways than just money. For example, many full-time jobs offer health insurance and retirement benefits. For me personally, I chose my current job because of a multitude of compensation factors. I had been laid off from my previous career and was coming close to the end of my severance. I was offered my current role, and while the money was less than motivating, the other compensation factors were extremely attractive and made me consider. In my current role, I don’t make as much per hour as I used to, but my benefits are extremely better. I was also able to negotiate my starting wage a bit higher than offered, so it all worked out in my favor. I was willing to take the ego hit of “losing money” on paper, but in reality, gaining much more because of the benefits. Ultimately, what led me to accept the offer that was not as high as I wanted it to be was for two reasons, the benefits were so much better than my previous job and would make up the difference in my salary lost and because I wanted to finish my degree and this role would enable me to do so in a fast manor and with a large discount. Oh yeah, you can’t forget the fact that I wanted to start making money again, as I stated earlier, my severance was running out and unemployment wasn’t cutting it. Keeping my household afloat with no money interruptions was my main motivator and I clearly lucked out because of all the other benefits I am receiving.

Beneficial Experience: A few years ago, I was able to participate in a 3-day diversity and inclusion training with fellow employees and the entire executive council at my previous organization. This 3-day training was intense and also amazing. While I will acknowledge this type of training would not be good for everyone and is only appropriate at certain times in an organization and/or when the employees have somewhat of a relationship, I will still argue that this was an extremely beneficial training for all who had the privilege of attending and participating. This training included multiple interactive activities and multiple times where we all had to crucially think and explain our thoughts. This training was very beneficial for all that attended, and we all learned a lot about each other and the world.

Non-Beneficial Experience: I have always felt that training via online module for any topic that is crucially important to the organization and the well-being of the employees does not fully train employees on the topics. Many trainings that are thrown at employees with nothing, but an email and an online module are not taken all that seriously and do not effectively train people on most topics.