Finding Myself Again

I find myself at a crossroads.  I love being a fitness instructor and all of the things that come along with it.  I am more excited about a new workout outfit than I am about a new dress.  I love interacting with people and hearing their stories.  I love encouraging them to meet their goals and consoling them when things don't go their way.  My fitness classes are my social life.  We laugh, we talk, we dance, we sweat and then we go back to our regular lives.  Most of my week is full of practice and planning for my classes so that even when I'm not teaching most of my energy goes to fitness.   

My real job brings me very little joy.  I still like the idea of what I do but what I actually do at this point is far away from where I started.  As an engineer I solve problems.  I look at data and try to come up with solutions to those problems.  I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I solve a problem.  I enjoy the praise that I get from others when I solve a problem that has existed for year.  But after 15 years I am less of an engineer and more of a manager.  The problem with being good at your job is that you get promoted out of doing those tasks that you enjoy.  Most of the problems that I deal with now are related to people and not case studies.  On a good week, half of my time is spent being a real engineer.  

After 15 years I am burnt out.  I am at the point where I'm going to be promoted to upper management (which would equal no time being a real engineer) or I need to change careers.  If I was willing to work for a state or local agency I would have more chances to be an engineer until my retirement.  But, in doing this, I would give up the salary and the freedom that I have become so accustomed too.  Realistically, I could never afford to be a fitness instructor if I didn't have my engineering salary to pay for all my trips and certifications.  And I definitely wouldn't have the time to teach as often as I do if I had a 9-5 office job vs. a flex schedule.

So how to I find balance between a job that often feels like it is sucking the life out of me and a job that feeds my soul.  My life as an engineer is solitary and lonely but I wouldn't be able to afford my house, my car, anything without it.  My life as a fitness instructor is amazing.  I feel like a rock star. I can be myself and express myself with wild clothes and over the top hair styles.  When I go to business meetings I dress conservatively and keep to myself.  I have tons of great clothes in my closet but little opportunity to actually where them. 

I never thought I would say this but sometimes I miss working in an office.  I miss the business lunches and the water cooler conversations.  The happy hours and the office gossip.  The Christmas parties and summer picnics.  Because as much as I hated the high school clique-i-ness that often came out of those situations, it was a social life.  I always had plans for the weekend.  I carefully selected my clothes for work and other events because I cared about what people thought of me and I would be seen by a lot of people. 

Sometimes I wear my pajamas all day or until I head to the gym.  When I have meetings I put on nice clothes but usually that's just for a few hours and then its back to the sweats.  I try to force myself to get dressed up once a week and go to the office and go out to lunch but that almost makes it even lonelier.  I sit in my office by myself, I go out to lunch by myself and then I ask myself why I wasted the time getting dressed when no one notices me anyway. 

Of course my work friends were acquaintances and not lifetime friends.  They didn't really know me. It was all surface stuff but that's really what I'm missing.  A social life. Something to fill the gaps between fitness classes and sitting at my desk alone.  I recognize that the me from my fitness classes isn't the real me either. It is the other extreme of my personality, the loud, outgoing party girl.  But living at these two extremes and nothing in between leaves me feeling lost and lonely more often than I'd like.      

Me and the PE Exam

Next Friday I will take the PE Exam for the third time. The PE Exam is the professional engineering licensing exam. This is the third time I am taking it because I am not a studier. My success at school was related to my ability to absorb what the professors said in class and take good notes that I could reference during exams. The problem is that this exam covers a broad range of topics, most of which engineers do not use in practice.

About 75% of the material on the test is related to topics that I have not studied since college or have never studied at all. So I have to remind myself of things that I once new and teach myself the things I never knew about. This is an open book test where you can bring in as many reference materials that you like. But that isn't helpful if you don't have your reference materials marked and don't understand the concepts required to solve the problems.

I was never one of those kids who spent hours at the library. Every time I tried I ended up getting bored and putting my head down for a nap. But that is exactly who I need to be for the next 9 days. I need to come home from work and put in a solid 4 hours of studying every day. I need to do in 9 days what many people do for the three months leading up to the test. I know that if I do this, I will retain the material well enough to pass.

The PE exam is an optional exam. It doesn't make you more of an engineer than other people. It just means you were willing to torture yourself and sit through two 8-hour exams and spend a lot of money to get licensed. But it does mean that you get to review plans and reports and stamp them as a professional engineer. It means that you can review reports for other companies that don't have a PE on staff and charge them $120+ an hour for the service. In a lot of companies it means you get paid more than someone who's doing the exact same job.

For me it means that I'm as much an engineer as the person who I hope to one day replace at my company. I feel like it will give me more validity and confidence when I go into meetings and people assume I'm the secretary because I'm young, female and black. It makes me more marketable in my career and gives me the opportunity to make a little extra money on the side or as a part-time job in retirement.

In my business, a lot of people who didn't get engineering degrees in school call themselves engineers. So even though I did earn my bachelor's degree in engineering and have been working in the industry for almost 10 years, there is nothing that separates me from them in a lot of people's minds. Maybe that's shallow but it's my motivation. If I don't pass this test it will be because I didn't try hard enough and failed myself yet again.