New Job Offer! 🎉

I am so excited--I just accepted an offer to work for Heirloom Carbon Laboratories. 🥼

Heirloom is a small start-up in San Francisco and Brisbane that is working to pull carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it into rocks or formations to keep it out of cycle. I will be working as a simple lab technician, but I am excited to work in the lab, in climate, and in a company with so much potential.

I began this 'quest' back in late June. My good friend Mari sent me the position back on May 24th, and it took me a whole month to consider applying. I was panicking at this point, and felt like I just needed to line up a job since I had been unemployed for so long. But I finally felt my confidence coming back after a good number of interview requests so I took my shot. I sent in my application on their website and reached out to their recruiter on LinkedIn. I told her I applied and we were able to set up a quick phone call a couple days later.

And we were off. I talked with the recruiter, then immediately set up other interviews with the heads of research and development before I went off to Iceland. Those interviews felt strong, and I was gaining hope that I could join this world of active climate science work.

I kept in light touch with the Heirloom team while in Iceland and they were kind enough to push back a follow-up interview until I returned at the end of July. This was incredibly kind, and helped me truly prepare again for interview mode. We talked about my work in the lab for school courses and research, and I think I was able to defend myself and my school proudly.

That was on Thursday the 28th. On Monday the 1st I gave the HR team my references. On Tuesday the 2nd, I got messages from all my references that they had chatted with HR. And on Wednesday the 3rd I had an offer!

I'm so excited to work for this team and hope I'll be able to find my comfort zone. I start work on August 15th!

Caris Training

Participated in a week long Caris processing training. We went from the basics to the big leagues quite quickly. We've learned about different data input methods, data filtering methods, numerous ways to visualize data, backscatter vs sidescatter, and just how many varieties of data need to come together to make a worthwhile product.

Template data shows a shipwreck what appears to be a submerged house. This was in the water column imagery section. I try to keep up but there's a lot of information. Thankfully, many of the processes are near enough to GIS concepts I learned a while back. Filling data gaps by interpolating raster points by the surrounding values is a shared solution.

Our data generally involves so much vegetation that it would be hard to use many of these methods. The goal of my attending was to find ways to expedite our analysis but I'm not sure it's possible.

Lessons Learned - 2020

We all work to survive. The majority of us work just to make money and have health care (Americans). So money is always the real topic of conversation, right?

So, money lessons learned;

-Take photos of all receipts immediately, save them in a folder on your phone, and as much as you can upload or email them to yourself as soon as possible.

-Always assume the worst when it comes to accessibility/electricity. We recently had to rent a generator because the building didn't have lighting or electricity in the outlets (photo below). You can rent them (and other bigger tools at Home Depot (handy to know)).

-Stock multiples. I brought two helium detectors and two extras of the sampling canisters. The main helium detector malfunctioned as did the extra two sampling canisters. I've always been worried to buy too much on the front... but it's better than the unknown cost on the back-end to fix mistakes.

-You will be working more than you are compensated for and you're definitely underpaid for what you bring to the {whatever}. To stay within someone else's margins, I'm definitely not billing all of my time. I'd estimate 75% is billed. Is that just because I'm on the greener side? I don't really think so. I think this is the job no matter what the level.

-Just because you're struggling and grinding, doesn't mean you should do celebratory splurges. This is really a note of reflection on myself. Maybe I should rephrase to say the reward should be something internally beneficial, like time to yourself--instead of money spent.

-Job loyalty. It seems like many young people [men] get around to many companies in not too long of a time span. Maybe that's the way to go. To keep moving up and keep getting higher offers at the next place. Is this something I will do? I'm not sure. But I can't say I don't see it happening everywhere around me.