Q: You have a new position with LSA Technology Services. Tell us a little about your role here.
A: I am a Circulation and Service Desk Coordinator for Mason Hall and the Modern Languages Building (MLB). I am partially in charge of looking after the equipment day-to-day, repairing equipment, and supervising student staff. I also work to create the multi-media content for the Media Centers such as signage about our hours and our services. Currently, I am creating videos about how to use our equipment.
Q: Can you share a bit about your background?
A: I started out at the University of Michigan working for the Customer Experience Team (CET). Before CET, I was a freelance videographer for 3 years, the job required a lot of traveling and international work. Most recently I’ve spent time working in Mongolia and Utah.
Q: What gets you excited about coming to work?
A: What I love about the job most is that there is always something to do. If I want to learn how to do something new, I can jump right in and get hands-on experience. I also enjoy jumping into challenging jobs. One of the big projects I am working on is centralizing all of our loan documentation by cataloging the items so I can move them to our Knowledge Base. I am skilled at organizing tasks, and I would say project management is one of my strengths.
Q: What most surprised you about this job?
A: The most surprising aspect of the job is the level of support U-M provides for staff, faculty, and students. For example, there is tuition reimbursement for staff and the LSA Opportunity Hub for students. I wish I had something like that at my previous university.
Q: Have you set any professional goals for your first year?
A: My first goal is to finish my digital video production degree since I took a hiatus for my freelancing work. Then I would like to continue the IT-related certificates that I was working on when working for CET. I want to finish my ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) Foundations certification. ITIL is a body of knowledge and best practices for successful IT service management. I would also like to earn my camera repair certification so that I can do more complex in-house repairs. Eventually, I want to get a graphic design degree as well.
Q: How do you keep up with new technologies and trends inside and outside the workplace?
A: Surprisingly, I like to stay off social media as much as possible. I found that it eats up too much of my time. I use Google news for technology updates and I follow several core blogs and websites. The main thing I do is to keep up with all the different conferences in my field. My favorite conferences are the NAB Show National Association of Broadcasters) and E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), which focuses on computer consoles and video games. For time management, I follow the GTD system (Getting Things Done). I use OmniFocus (task management tool) for work and life. It helps me organize and group all my tasks such as all of my writing tasks. Then I can drag the tasks to my calendar and add a one-hour time block. I arrange it to send notifications to my phone every 15 minutes, which I try my best to follow. This keeps me from falling behind on my work.
Q: What is something you learned this week?
A: Using Adobe Illustrator, I learned how to make objects out of text. In other words, I can create a text box with words and then turn it into an image that can be transparent; that way I can layer text on text.
Q: Tell us a little about your life outside of work?
A: I am recently engaged and hope to get married in the winter of 2021. We happen to both love Dungeon and Dragons! We paint our own miniatures with buildings and tiles and create our own stories and characters. It’s fun to get friends together for a collective experience—I create the beginning of the story and others add to it. We always have a great time.
Q: Describe your perfect vacation.
A: A great vacation starts with a road trip to Michigan’s UP for some skiing and snowboarding. That would be followed by a trip to Florida or somewhere warm to enjoy the sun before coming back to Michigan.
Q: What was the last book you read?
A: I am currently reading the first novel in Gormenghast series—a 1950s dark fantasy series by British author Mervyn Peake about the inhabitants of Castle Gormenghast, a sprawling, decaying, gothic-like structure. It is considered one of the 3 pillars of fantasy in the early days of fantasy. It is a difficult read, but so far, I love it! Next on my list to read is the Witcher series, which has been developed into a video game and recent television series.
Q: What would people be surprised to learn about you?
A: I am a musician. I played the tuba, euphonium, and trombone in high school and I recently started learning piano again. I would also love to learn the guitar one day. I thought I would study music in college, but I ended up becoming a journalism major. I also design card games to play. For example, I designed a trading card game where everyone starts out with a pre-set of cards and then players buy cards off the table to add to their deck. You play until you run out of cards. It’s very creative because the game uses custom cards that I have created.
