I Won the Battle of the Thesis

The Battle of the Thesis was a long, hard-fought battle... but I return victorious!! 🥳 I have conquered the Castle of Academia...

The nobility at the University of Denver have surrendered and agreed to crown me a Master of HR, and now at long last, I am able to return to the Sewing Dungeon and finally get to the big pile of your requests that have shamefully languished these last few months. 😭😍

My thesis project topic (I had only 10 weeks to complete it) was none other than work-life balance and why it matters so very, very much. To the overworked, underpaid and stressed out masses and to everyone who has ever worked in a toxic culture or for a manager who is always looking for reasons to say no, I see you. 💖 Truly, when peoples' non-work needs are considered valid and efforts are made to accommodate them, the results are amazing. Happy people do the best work.

I have always been goofy and creative, and thankfully I had two teachers in the 1980's who recognized that I'm real smart, but my brain was just wired differently... they said "don't ever let them [society, school, etc] change her." I named my two daughters after those two teachers. They have since passed away, but I made sure they knew my two daughters were named after them.🥰

So Marilyn Holliday and Helen Murray, my beloved childhood teachers, thank you SO much, may you both rest in happy peace. I may have struggled for many years, but your encouragement to be my authentic self gave me the courage to quit a job I realized was a toxic dead-end, and the courage to pursue my crazy dream. If you're a teacher and you're reading this, don't lose hope - your student(s) may struggle, sometimes for years, but as long as they are able to stay true to themselves, things WILL work out in the end!! 

I may never end up back in corporate HR because too many companies get work-life balance all wrong and I'm not willing to co-sign that sort of mediocrity. My fifth-grade teacher's mantra really has stuck with me all these years: "work hard, and then play hard".  Too many folks subscribe to the belief that adults should not play, that being silly is to give up one's maturity - nonsense! Having fun, decompressing in healthy ways to cope with stress is absolutely one of the core pillars of a good adulthood and the mark of highly effective people. Absolutely play, have fun, de-stress. 🥳 

Speaking of playing hard after working hard, I'm a terrible introvert and had to present my thesis including a video of myself presenting. I loathe being on video, I hate presenting, and I only had time for about three practice runs, so for laughs, here is the snark version of my thesis presentation, done in costume. In HR we call this "malicious compliance". I was exhausted and worn out and scrambling to submit the paper itself and humor is stress relief for me.🤪 As a child I once told my mother "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing in costume" and I have held to that pretty well. 😇 When in doubt, bring out the Viking horns and the welding goggles. 

I scored a 98.5% on this, and earned my degree with all A's and a 3.9 GPA.  

It is okay to use humor - don't let anyone tell you otherwise. At one prior Admin job I worked, I was the "safety captain" for an area of 120+ people... I started sending out my announcements in funny, snarky poetry - it was very effective because people would actually read my emails.... and they remembered them too. 😎 My manager there was so cool... not only did he laugh at my emails, but he recognized that my humor and positivity boosted morale for the entire department, got folks to pay attention to safety issues, and he gave me a performance bonus. 🙂

For the folks that have so patiently waited for me to get to their requests, your long wait is almost over. The long siege of the Castle of Academia is now over! I must briefly pay homage to the guild masters at the Cheyenne Mountain Holiday Craft Fair this Saturday December 3rd, and then I shall fully return to the Sewing Dungeon as well as catch up on photos of my secret stash of finished works. I'm about 5 coats behind on photos, as well as about 40 hats/arm-warmers and some leg-warmers. I shall remedy this as soon as humanly possible! Previews of the coats will show up on Facebook as soon as I've got photos. 🥳

⚔⚔⚔Huzzah! ⚔⚔⚔