preparations
Work ended last Friday, and tomorrow I'll be leaving for Japan. I almost feel as though I've been treading water over the past week.
Despite hitting a few bumps in the road with my main project (chlorine dosing stuff), the people at Warriewood STP seemed very happy with the work I did there and gave me a nice evaluation to take away. The "bumps in the road" basically centred around the fact that the people at the site were operating the chlorine dosing systems with very little theoretical knowledge of what they were doing, that they found it difficult to see that there were no easy answers to the questions they wanted me to answer, and the more I looked, the more it appeared that this lack of knowledge was commonplace throughout Sydney Water. Any attempts at explaining my point of view to others, and trying to get people to see that easy answers weren't possible to some of the questions they were asking made the project all the more frustrating. My supervisor said that I was being "very theoretical" and was under the impression that I was struggling to "put theory into practice".
Ultimately, I think that my work on this project means that the chlorine dosing at the site isn't necessarily more efficient or effective now compared to when I arrived, but if it looks like things are going wrong at the site, we probably have a better chance of understanding why things are going wrong and what we could possibly do to rectify the problem. This isn't exactly what I had in mind as a project outcome when the project was called "optimisation of sodium hypochlorite dosing", but it appears that by "optimisation" my supervisor actually meant "find out anything you can at all about about this project and tell us what you find out, because none of us have much of an idea about any of this stuff". I did that, everyone seems very happy, so all is good. I still don't think the guys at the site really realise why I was frustrated in the first place, and to them I have simply learnt that being "too theoretical" isn't a good thing. I can live with being misunderstood.
Anyway, work's over, and despite what I just wrote on the whole I did enjoy my time there. My main intention for this entry was to move towards getting my head into order before heading off on my holiday. I said that the last week has felt like treading water. Actually, I've felt a bit like that for a while now. In order to make things happen for myself I've had to take care of a lot of little practical things. Despite still being a very relaxing place to be, work has actually kept me busy. I've also had to sort through my insurance claim from the car accident. I've had to take care of all the preparations for my 2 months away. I've been busy doing a whole range of things that I havn't felt the impact of, I've been caught up in all the little things that seem so necessary and havn't allowed myself any room to breath. And guess what? Still no room to breath. I did intend to write a lot more in this entry, but time does not permit. Oh well, at least I can now look forward to the long plane rides and train trips :)
Despite hitting a few bumps in the road with my main project (chlorine dosing stuff), the people at Warriewood STP seemed very happy with the work I did there and gave me a nice evaluation to take away. The "bumps in the road" basically centred around the fact that the people at the site were operating the chlorine dosing systems with very little theoretical knowledge of what they were doing, that they found it difficult to see that there were no easy answers to the questions they wanted me to answer, and the more I looked, the more it appeared that this lack of knowledge was commonplace throughout Sydney Water. Any attempts at explaining my point of view to others, and trying to get people to see that easy answers weren't possible to some of the questions they were asking made the project all the more frustrating. My supervisor said that I was being "very theoretical" and was under the impression that I was struggling to "put theory into practice".
Ultimately, I think that my work on this project means that the chlorine dosing at the site isn't necessarily more efficient or effective now compared to when I arrived, but if it looks like things are going wrong at the site, we probably have a better chance of understanding why things are going wrong and what we could possibly do to rectify the problem. This isn't exactly what I had in mind as a project outcome when the project was called "optimisation of sodium hypochlorite dosing", but it appears that by "optimisation" my supervisor actually meant "find out anything you can at all about about this project and tell us what you find out, because none of us have much of an idea about any of this stuff". I did that, everyone seems very happy, so all is good. I still don't think the guys at the site really realise why I was frustrated in the first place, and to them I have simply learnt that being "too theoretical" isn't a good thing. I can live with being misunderstood.
Anyway, work's over, and despite what I just wrote on the whole I did enjoy my time there. My main intention for this entry was to move towards getting my head into order before heading off on my holiday. I said that the last week has felt like treading water. Actually, I've felt a bit like that for a while now. In order to make things happen for myself I've had to take care of a lot of little practical things. Despite still being a very relaxing place to be, work has actually kept me busy. I've also had to sort through my insurance claim from the car accident. I've had to take care of all the preparations for my 2 months away. I've been busy doing a whole range of things that I havn't felt the impact of, I've been caught up in all the little things that seem so necessary and havn't allowed myself any room to breath. And guess what? Still no room to breath. I did intend to write a lot more in this entry, but time does not permit. Oh well, at least I can now look forward to the long plane rides and train trips :)
posted by Gene at 1:40 pm
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