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Motivation.

The Gravy-Copter!!!!
It may surprise some of you to know that even though I work with the Army, I am not a shoot-em-up kind of girl. I have shot one gun (a rifle) 5 times (at Diabetes camp of all places), and the BF doesn't even believe me about that. I'm not violent, I didn't have any clue how many presidents were members of the NRA (until Dave informed me). So, after saying all that, some people find it strange that I work on the "arsenal", hang out with Army dudes all day, and climb in helicopters that have extra large guns and a hefty supply of missiles.  But its not violence that motivates me to do my job...it's people, and those people pilot or fly-on the helicopters I help test.

In fact I remind myself on a daily basis that the data I process, the graphs I plot, the reports I write are only stressful for me today, within these weeks, for the next year or two. But the test organization I am a part of saves peoples' lives everyday, and the programs I support may impact a warfighter years from now. It's so easy to get bogged down with the numbers, and the grammar, and the processes, it's enough to give you a good stress-out fest (i.e. last week). But its so important to remember how your piece fits in, why your job is important, why people count on you to get the numbers and the grammar and the processes right. Their lives depend on it. Their lives depend on you.

I know the specifics of this post may not make sense to a lot of my readers, but surely the idea of finding your place in this world, of motivating yourself to contribute beyond what you can see from your "foxhole", of finding and remembering your purpose and giving your all each day.....this idea is no doubt universal. Because someone depends on you, even if you don't realize it.
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  1. JeffThursday, February 24, 2011

    I had this same thought a couple years into my career, when I was doing tech support for MATLAB and dealing with a real PITA customer. "If I don't do this right, somebody's bridge is going to fall down." And it's stuck with me since I switched to product development, because I don't want to be even tangentially responsible for a medical misdiagnoses or for somebody blowing up the wrong building.

    Unfortunately, that first time was also when I realized that sometimes doctors themselves just phone it in. I'm sure some of them are doing the medical equivalent of the old tech support "You need to reinstall" trick.

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