she works hard for the money...

in my head, what i do makes a lot of sense... but it took even me a full year to figure out what i did. when i was hired, the lady i interviewed with said, "we've got another position in mind for you. you won't know what it is, and you really have no reason to trust me, but i promise you - you will love it."

and she's right.

i love my job.

but what is it?

professional road rage calmer

professional emailer

professional phone talker

professional hand holder

professional shoulder to cry on

professional recipient of venting and frustration toward anyone and everyone but me

professional middle man

professional translator

and

professional friend

if i may generalize, engineers aren't very good at talking to people who aren't as brilliant {and mathematically-minded} as they are. and your average human being doesn't know how to speak at an elevated level to which an engineer can understand. that's where i come in.

when i started, i didn't speak "engineer"

{don't tell, but i didn't even know what an engineer was}

somehow i landed in a conference room with a room full of engineers who designed roads and bridges.

{i knew my life long fascination over the sheer quantity of orange barrels in this world would show itself somehow or another.}

i communicate the "hard things" - both hard to understand AND the things no one else wants to - to the public. and then i communicate the feelings, emotions, concerns, questions, etc. back to the engineers until we reach a happy medium.

i calm ms. jackson's heavy heart when she finds out the family pet cemetery in her backyard will be disturbed by a widened road.

i warn ms. miller of the asphalt trucks scheduled for delivery the same date and time as her daughter's bridal shower in the backyard.

i make sure grandma vonda knows when to remove her sentimental ivy vines from her old fence before we install a pretty new one.

i make 1853296 phone calls to arborists, landscape architects, environmental so-and-so's, engineers, contractors, the public works director, contractors and sub-contractors to make sure everyone knows the ponderosa pine on the corner is the pine tree mary's father planted when she was a child and she grew up with that tree and it holds a special place in her heart and if we have to cut it down, she'll feel like we're cutting off a limb of her own body.

i make fliers and phone calls and conduct meetings to ensure the hippies who live up the canyon are copacetic with a new, wider, safer, bridge - making sure they know we won't be disturbing the natural rock formation 100 feet away.

i make sure the wheelchaired girl on the corner has continual ADA access to the bus stop during construction.

i ensure the burger king on the corner has his landscaping back in order to as to avoid a decline in whopper sales this quarter.

yada yada yada.

when i was in college, learning how to properly construct a press release, i never in my wildest dreams imagined i'd spend my weekday nights discussing projected traffic counts and the necessity for limiting access points to improve traffic flow for north/south movement along an arterial corridor.

but, here i am.

any questions?

and this is how i communicate engineering via email. with lots of pretty colors, arrows, and text boxes. seems complicated, but just imagine what kind of sense it made before i colored it up. silly engineers.