(no subject)

[confuseacat]

I'm feeling a bit odd today. It could be due to my lack of sleep over the past couple weeks. I work 8 hour days, then really just want to come home and relax before working on the stuff I want to get done this summer. I end up staying up late and it's no good.

I'm also feeling kinda lonely, but that's probably cause I'm just feeling unsure of myself and being with someone makes me feel better. See, I spent this entire week crafting up a new network environment for the company I work at. Their network has become complex enough that it's a nightmare to manage. They don't have any IT people, so when they need a new network service or server, they just tack it on somewhere and hack at everything until it works. Everything is in desperate need of a restructuring, since there is basically none now. Before I got there this summer, they hired a network consultant who hung around for a while, wrote up a network proposal, and left. I was given the proposal and asked for my thoughts. I said some things were good, but it didn't really give us the structure we needed. I mean, they want to add a new server next week and there's no practical place to put it on the network with either the current structure or the one in the proposal. So, I worked for a week and came up with a proposal of my own - six pages outlining vlans, layered DMZs with application level proxies, routing policies, firewall policies, new servers we need, juggling current services around on servers we have... not to mention including very nice looking network charts explaining everything visually. When I finished, I almost didn't want to put my name on it. It was weird. I'm a freshman intern who's basically saying this professional network consultant is stupid, here's a better idea... When I handed it in today, I'm sure I was all red, I was definitely shaking a bit, and I didn't really know what to say. It didn't go over well at all. I wanted to act atleast somewhat confident. Everyone in the office is really nice, don't get me wrong. The guy said he'd read it over the weekend and maybe I could start implementing some of the parts next week. I'll guess I'll wait to see if he likes it.

It's a good proposal... and the network maps are really pretty and professional looking... It's just that... I'm 19. I feel weird going around an office of people who are 28+ seeming to know just as much or more about certain things than they do. I know no one's going to come to me and say, Ross you don't know what you're talking about, this is an awful idea. If anything, they'd just disagree with me, give their opinion, and my idea wouldn't be fundamentally wrong, just maybe not the best solution.

ehhhhaww, I don't really know why I feel vulnerable. Sometimes writing helps, guess tonight it didn't. Bright lights by matchbox twenty also isn't helping (not that it's supposed to). Maybe I'll listen to some manu chao.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hey! You may be just 19, but there's one fundamental difference between you can all the other people in your office. And it's not knowledge. It's the fact that, as an intern, you're assigned to do all the things no one else wants to do, and you're assumed to have the time to do them in. They haven't gotten around to fixing the network because at first it was just an extra server or two, but now it's grown to such massive proportions that no one wants to touch it. So they hand it off to you. And you worked hard to make a viable fix! Good job. Hats off to you. Don't say you don't seem confident, because when you're writing about this networking report, you sound confident as hell. And you're only 19. They don't expect you to be comfortable with working in this sort of environment yet. That's why you're the intern - you're knowledgable enough to work there, but you don't quite have the workplace experience yet. And you know what? It sounds like you're doing quite well. Keep up the great work, Ross, because you are amazing.
*hugs*