Week 4: Personal Contributions

Despite having a long Fourth of July weekend off from work, I feel as though the past two weeks have finally allowed me to collaborate closely with others and contribute to an important project. I recently joined on a project at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), where I am assisting a senior associate and a manager improve back office efficiencies and administrative software. I am passionate about mental health, and although I am not directly assisting researchers or mental healthcare providers, I believe that by helping the employees at NIMH, the new efficiencies will trickle down and somehow add value to those who receive grants from NIMH.

Through this project, I have also gained skills in analyzing data that has been formatted in a way that is unfamiliar to me. I have spent my time decoding workflows that were created by the IT department, so they involve some IT-specific steps that are not intuitive to me. Nevertheless, I have received a lot of support from my team members, and I have become increasingly comfortable with them and feel able to ask questions.

In order to access the data, I have to be at the client site. So, I have traveled to NIMH and spent my days “hoteling”, or working in an office at the site, with my team. This experience has allowed me to witness closer relationships between employees, which can sometimes be difficult in the large main office. I previously worried about working at such a large company, because I think interpersonal relationships are important to a pleasant working environment, and I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to form such relationships. However, this experience has demonstrated to me that friendships form in pockets of the company, and come about naturally due to the nature of team-based work. I just hadn’t witnessed it until now, because I wasn’t working on a team.

The work I’m doing may not be the most important work in the world, but I clearly see how I am contributing to the team. Going through the workflows is time consuming, and I’m able to break down the important takeaways and save my team time. I do feel appreciated, and I’m excited to continue working with them for the remainder of the summer.