Month: May 2022

I have to admit that I didn’t appreciate the information that was given to me from the majority of the surveys that were required to be taken in order to answer this blog prompt. Telling a Type-A person that they are more at-risk for health issues because they are Type-A is like telling someone to “calm down” when they feel extremely upset. They usually don’t just suddenly “calm down.” I feel that the logical part of me is supposed to respond and be grateful for the information and to use it productively, but I find assessments like these are only useful if you are either unfamiliar with them and if you have never taken an assessment like this before. My journey with graduate school has been good overall but stressful at times mostly because this is just how I handle things: I tend to get stressed about things and people when I actually care about them. I also feel that the survey that told me that I’m likely to have a significant health breakdown in the next two years is just unkind even if it is true. I have known that I’m at least partially Type-A for years and I don’t really see this as a personality flaw that I need to fix. At this point in my life it is part of what makes me who I am and I don’t fight it. I have found ways to use it to my advantage and while it may mean that I tend to get stressed out, I don’t really see the need to change as a person.

I’m not the most expressive person, and this is something that I could see as an area where I can improve. I used to journal and found this helpful, but the idea of this just kind of sounds silly to me now and I rarely make any time for it. I used to de- stress by exercising a lot; I had a lot more physicality then than I do now. Just writing this part of the blog post makes me feel like the first paragraph was a reflection of my negatively-perceived Type-A tendencies, and this paragraph feels like the part where I’ve cooled down and thought about the assessment results for a second. Answering this blog post in itself has been a reflection of my Type-A personality traits.

Organizations seem to be spending more time and money on helping their employees manage their health and to cope with stress. Companies are supplying more information and awareness training about the benefits of healthy stress management; they are encouraging employees to talk about things that are bothering them so that they don’t end up “taking their work home with them”; and they are trying to let employees work remotely in order to be more accommodating of the employees’ work-life balance needs.  

Sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryalton/2016/12/07/how-todays-young-businesses-are-helping-employees-cope-with-stress/?sh=5be41ce824c2

I have left jobs several times for other jobs elsewhere that paid better. Each time I did this, it was because I knew I wouldn’t be able to make any more than I currently made at the job I had, and most of the time I was looking elsewhere for a job because I had also decided that I didn’t care for the job itself. Because my main reasons for being interested in jobs has been for the pay, I have never experienced any real heartbreak over having to leave a job with the exception of one time. It was hard for me to leave the very first real job I had despite not getting paid much at all. It was difficult because I felt I excelled at the position, I loved that I was the only one who was in my position so I was the main authority or expert on it, and I also had great admiration, respect, and appreciation for my boss. The human element of the job was ultimately what made it difficult for me to leave. If I could make excellent money doing that job, I may actually still be there because it was easy and even fun at times, but there was a limit on the amount of money the position could pay and there was no growth potential in it.

I have also experienced what it is like to find out that I was making less than my peers and that is never a great feeling. I don’t know that I retaliated in anyway; more than anything else it made me feel like they just didn’t understand what I was really worth as someone working toward my master’s degree when my other coworkers had no formal education beyond high school. I do understand that not all employers care about how much education a person has and therefore will not compensate an employee for it, but social comparison is something I have always engaged in both with and without conscious awareness.

Both of the trainings I’m about to describe were for work. One training I received when I was just starting out at Providence Medford Medical Center, which is part of a large hospital system, and the other I received when I started working at The New Well, which is part of a larger health and wellness company based in Grants Pass, Oregon. The training for Providence was comprehensive in that they took the time to delve into what personality traits made for good employees (which they referred to as “caregivers”) and how the kind of person you are plays into how you are able to make a difference in the world in a healthcare setting. This kind of training made me feel immersed in the culture of the company and as though what I had chosen to do for employment truly made a difference. Having supervisors from all different departments come talk to us about what their work meant to them was meaningful to me because it made me feel like everyone that worked there was able to get personal satisfaction from what they did for a living. This training was both meaningful and impactful.

The other training that was less effective was with The New Well. The training that we were required to do was meant to get employees to be more vulnerable with each other and to become more self-aware through the use of a workshop called Empowered and I absolutely despised the whole process from start to finish. It felt cult-ish, and the entire time I questioned if the people that seemed engaged were sincerely engaged or if they were just having less of an awful time than I was because they weren’t new to the company and they had friends who were participating in the workshop at the same time. This training was focused on building interpersonal relationships with coworkers and to develop leadership skills, but the way the training was delivered seemed overly-emotional and for this reason, I was completely repelled by the method of the training. My obvious lack of interest made me a bit of a target for the instructors and as you may be able to guess, this didn’t make the class any more appealing to me. Part of the training consisted of staring into someone’s eyes as you sat across from them for a solid five minutes. This in no way made me a better person or employee and I will always remember how powerfully uncomfortable this workshop made me. Another part of the training was sharing an experience that was painful and how we dealt with the painful experience. There are many reasons I don’t for work for this company anymore.