Bridging the Gap

As with almost everyone who’s pursing a professional degree in academia, the anxiety resulting from the anticipation of entering the professional workforce is usually only dwarfed by–probably the fear of death. You always hear the stories of the companies that are a total nightmare to work for. You always see the gross depictions of the professional working environment on the television. It skews your expectations and intensifies your anxiety towards the inevitable.

My personal situation, which is probably not THAT unique, is that I didn’t have any experience in a professional setting throughout the course of my academic career. Sure, there were odd jobs here and there that didn’t really amount to much but provide a minimum wage now and then, but that was pretty much the extent of my work history. Don’t get me wrong, those experiences serve its own purpose for personal growth, but it doesn’t really contribute towards gaining experience in a true professional environment. There is nothing to really prepare someone for this transition besides actually experiencing it. There are, however, a few discernible aspects of the work environment that I’ve noticed, and that I feel as though directly contributes to my productivity and quality of my work produced:

• A collaborative team environment vs a management-employee relationship.
  • This allows me, personally, to feel as though I’m contributing and working on a project (the perspective of essentially “owning” my own portions), and makes it not feel as though it is just another assigned task which I must complete as per rigid criteria after rigid criteria (the perspective of just doing work for someone else).
• Flexible work schedule.
  • I chose to work from about 9a.m. to about 4p.m., and an hour or so anytime after that at home (as long as it constitutes an 8 hour day of work). There are also some days when I am able to work remotely, which provides even more flexibility. It’s a proven fact that some of the best ideas and solutions to problems were derived while in a state of relaxation, or “non-thinking.” When you don’t have to worry about clocking in and clocking out, it allows for more time to concentrate on what you’re doing, when you need to.
• Incremental exposure to new platforms and applications.
  • It allows for deeper understanding and reduced stress from having to cram so much in a short period of time. Understanding of the technology and concepts fuel creative solutions rather than code regurgitation as a result of memorization.

So how much of a difference is there between academia and the work environment? Based on the three bullet points above, absolutely nothing. Any respectable college will emphasize collaboration with your peers, and the course schedule that you choose (to a certain degree) is structured as a few hours of instruction that incrementally exposes you to new concepts, and the rest is up to you to finish the work. Now, that’s not to say that some companies may function differently for their own purposes, but the similarities that I’ve found have made it helpful for me to transition.