My First Job
Physical health has been a priority of mine since high school. I started lifting weights back when I was 16, and during senior year I started going with my dad early in the morning before school.
We would get up every morning and go lift at 4:45 am. It was one of my fondest memories of high school, and going that early made me feel like I had something accomplished already before school.
That being said, the weight room is one of my happy places, so I started working as a Facility Operations Associate with The University of Alabama's Division of Student Life, University Recreation.
I started at the end of May of 2022, and was promoted to a Facility Operations Supervisor in the middle of September of 2022. Some of my varying duties are listed below.
Operations Associate:
- Working the front desk and ensuring that everybody who entered had access to the facility.
- Checking out equipment to patrons and keeping up with inventory.
- Cleaning various pieces of equipment, spotting patrons, enforcing rules, etc. Lots of grunt work.
Supervisor:
- Opening and closing the facilities, keeping track of keys and which went to what doors.
- First to respond in case of emergency until medics got to the scene, got CPR certified.
- Selling guest passes and equipment, got trained on handling monetary transactions and how to inspect card readers.
Challenges and Growth
While this position did not contribute much experience to my degree, I do believe that it helped me tremendously for my future career. The biggest aspect of this job was customer service.
I struggled with this at first, and learning to talk to people was an obstacle that I had to overcome. Whether it be trying to discuss ideas for projects or trying to convey my ideas more efficiently, I can definitely see this being a major skill that will be needed in my future.
I feel like my generation can't talk because they're so absorbed into their phones, and engineers have it even worse because they tend to be more naturally introverted anyways. That being said, I think that this job helped me grow in the way that I learned how to have more effective interactions with my peers.
I made so many connnections through this position, and they were with both coworkers and patrons. It seems like I can't get a workout in without saying hi to 15+ people every time I'm there.
Even the older people say hi and know me by name.
It's a good problem to have, and I'm grateful for the experiences and skills that University Recreation has brought me. I sadly stopped working this position in January of 2023 due to a new research position that I picked up. The people I met there really mean the world to me and I've made a point to keep in touch any time I see them.