My Thoughts about My Job

I am thankful that I get this job before I was graduated. Sorry if this sounds rude, but honestly I can not imagine me being jobless and doing nothing everyday. My dream job was to be a quality-operational excellence specialist in a pharmaceutical industry. I was, and still am, quite interested on how to make a dependable system that is efficient yet able to assure the quality of the product produced. In other words, how to get higher quality yet higher yield with the same, or less, money, time and effort. It is both science and art because not only we have to understand the process, but we need to be able to manage people, machinery/instrument, starting material, environment and of course, the process itself.

However, destiny brought me to be a analytical development pharmacist. This job was not my first choice, but I took it after a long and thoughtful contemplation. Will I like this job? Will I passionately talk about my job to my friends that actually have no idea about what analytical development is? And the most important question I asked myself was: If I face problems and obstacles when I am doing my job, will this passion enough to help me go through? 

As you should agree, in a pharmaceutical industry, all of starting materials that will be processed to be finished product (active pharmaceuticals ingredients, inactive pharmaceuticals ingredients and packaging meterials) should be chosen very carefully, then tested to assure their quality. Why? Because starting material is one of the 5 affecting the product quality. And it is impossible for a pharmaceutical company to make all of the starting materials by itself. So, we literally rely in other parties (other manufacturers) to provide us something that will greatly affecting the quality of our product. My job is to assure that my company choose the dependable manufacturer that provides the highest quality yet offers the most reasonable prices. How do I do that? 

I correspondence with the starting material manufacturer, asking them about everything my company needs to know about their product quality and their company's reputability. I communicate with the Purchasing Department to make sure that my company get the most from the transactions we make future, or made in the past. I develop analytical methods to test the product. I validate, or verify the method. I communicate and work together with the Quality Control Department to make sure that those methods are applicable to be implemented in my company. Each of those activities can be broken into many sub-activities. That is why I am so busy in the office, because there are so many things to do and so many problems to solve. But hey, long before I decided to work in a pharmaceutical industry, I know that the pressure of working in an industry is enormous. But I decided to work here anyway. Why? Because I think I am still young. 

Yeah, I am full of youthfulness. I am in the peak of my physical and mental energy. I can work for 13 hours straight and still be okay when I get up in my bed the next morning. I can be pressured like this 5 days a week, yet I don't have to worry if I will get a -God Forbid- heart attack, major depression or any sort of mental illness. I literally don't have anybody depends on me financially. Alhamdulillah both of my parents are perfectly capable to support themselves and my brother. I can spend all of my salary to have fun every weekend, or maybe everyday, just to balance all of these pressure with leisure (but thank God I got enough financial education and still save a good amount of money every month and make an infestation plan). My parents and my brother are great. They always be my greatest inspiration, motivation and support in everything I do. I also have satisfying social relationship with some carefully selected people. Along with my parents, my brother and of couse my very own self, they are my true support system. They are people I love, depend to, and care about. With this level of energy, this amount of love from my support system and enough money in my youth, it is actually tempting to play safe-take an "easy" job. But why play safe? I don't want to play safe right now. My youthfulness is not going to stay forever. I want to make the most of it so I can enjoy it after my youth passes. 

I want to make the most of these youth times so that someday when I start a family I don't have to abandon them just because I still have to work as hard as I do now. I don't want to abandon them just because I "wonder what I actually capable of in career", because I have pushed myself to the limit and taste it all before I have them as my family. I agree that a woman should get the highest education so she can raise smart children. But I also think that a woman should experience what it is like to work hard and be pressured at work, so she can be a great mom. I think being a mother is physically and mentally harder than work in an industry sometimes. So I'd like to think that my job is a sort of preparation in starting a family later. I always think that a husband and a wife should be best friends. A husband should understand and support his wife's dreams and ambitions, including her dream career (and a wife should understand and support his too, vice versa). But children? 

Being a helpless creatures they are, they have to have their mother being with them. They need their mother to nurture them, feed them and play with them. They need their mother to assure the quality of the food they take, the clothes they wear, the air they breathe, the words they hear, and basically everything for them. They need their mother to They need their mother to teach them how to walk, to speak, to communicate, to go to the toilet by themselves, to eat their own meal and to believe in themselves. They need their mother to told them that they are special and loved. They need their mother to take them to school on their first day of school. They need their mother to take care of them when they are sick. They need their mother to listen to their first cry, their first word, their first stories and all of their stories. When that time comes, my job will not be my main focus.

I would like to believe that I do everything by choice. My own choice. Actually this belief helps me a lot. I choose to be here. As someone that is still learning how to be a responsible adult that can hold herself together, I will do everything to well...to hold myself together :)