Ok, Now I'm Going to Proceed to Try to Break You

It's my three year anniversary of working in the Registrar's Office today! Oh my goodness, it's only been three years? I feel like I've worked here much longer than just three years. It just feels like I've been part of this office my whole life, and to think that it's only been three years just seems too short of a time.

This week was a huge week for me at work. We have been working on the Campus Class Schedule template redo and new Asia Campus Class Schedule since February, and finally published it yesterday. I have been beyond stressed this past month, trying to get it finalized. We started the project in February, with the initial design concept. It came over to User Test in May, I worked all summer testing it, and finally, after 1 epic, 70 sub tasks, countless hours of testing, a million emails, and a huge batch of oreo truffles, we finally went live yesterday! Usually I don't brag about my projects, because most of them are hidden by a million layers of FERPA, but this one is open to the public, and, pardon my pride, it is beautiful! Here's a snapshot of the old class schedule:

Pretty ugly, right? I mean, it is a definite improvement over where it used to be, but it needed a facelift. You can check out how far we've come by looking at the archived class schedules, found here. Yeah. We've come a long way.

Anyway, here's the new class schedule. Beautiful, right? It's been an insane task, and went live about 6 months sooner than we were planning, which caused me a lot of extra stress trying to coordinate and accomplish this great task. 

Something I love about this job, and that I have mentioned multiple times previously, is the fact that I see the Lord's hand in everything that I do. This project has done this in a most interesting way, that really only hit me this week as we were about to publish. 

I was looking back at this summer, and all the time and energy and stressed out days, and was looking at the finished project and had a realization - this is how the Lord works! He takes us as our old version - let's say Cassandra 1.0 - and says, ok Cassandra, we need to work on you some more, so let's start talking about a new design. Let's say you need to build your testimony of the temple, so I'm going to offer you the opportunity to live in Salt Lake City, be surrounded by a dozen temples, and figure out whether you want to make them a priority or not. 

Ok, now that you've made it a priority, we're going to start testing you - do you really have a testimony of the gospel? Do you really believe in Christ? Do you really believe in marriage, and that you need to be married to become like God? Yes?

Ok, now I'm going to proceed to try to break you. I'm going to try to test every part of your testimony to see if anything isn't one hundred percent sure. I'm going to send a lot of trials, to see where your weak points are, to see how you handle hardships, to see if you can truly function the way I need you to. I need to know that you aren't going to shut down, or stop working, or slow down when there's an overload of trials. I need to know that you will not stop working at the hardest/busiest time of the year. I need to know that you will be able to handle a heavy load. I am going to test features of you that haven't been looked at in years; I'm going to update some features we should have looked at years ago. I'm going to make you more functional. I'm going to exhaust you with so much testing, that at the end of it you will be confident that you can do anything. You will be assured that you truly do have a testimony of the gospel, and of Christ, and you'll more fully be able to bear testimony of it. You'll gain confidence in yourself through all this testing, and you'll come out a whole new person - Cassandra 2.0. And you'll think, wow! Look how far I've come! I have such a great outlook on life, it's easier to keep an eternal perspective, I can more easily make righteous decisions; that was a great upgrade!

And you're going to go out to the world, happy and confident, and then guess what? Once I see that you've adjusted to Cassandra 2.0, I'm going to upgrade you to Cassandra 3.0. I'm not going to let you fade with age, but rather grow with grace. 

And then, right as I'm feeling comfortable in Cassandra 2.0, the Lord will decide it's time for another upgrade. That's how life is. We don't progress two steps and then stay stagnant the rest of our life. We are supposed to constantly be looking for places to grow and improve, much like what I do to PeopleSoft (our software that houses the student records at the U). We are constantly looking for better ways to run the system, make it faster, sleeker, more user friendly; why, in our lives, when we're so focused on having the latest and fastest working phone, and the best features on our computers, and the most recent car, are we so focused on making sure everything else in our lives is up to date, but when it comes to our own personal lives, we grumble, and complain, and drag our feet through the entire upgrade process? It's not supposed to be as easy as a click of a button! It's supposed to change our entire being! 

We are mortals, and yet we are divine beings. All of us, the good, the bad, the wicked, the righteous - all of us have divine parents who expect the best of us. They want us to become exactly like them - Gods - and as such, we must be changed!  We have to go through those grueling times of trial overload, the health problems, the financial trials, the good days, the bad days, the days you just want to curl up in your bed and die. We all need those days to grow and become the eternal beings the Lord sees us as. 

So, hello Cassandra 2.0; see you soon Cassandra 3.0.