The exam so far is just a little over 5 weeks away, and I've been hitting the books nearly anywhere from 12-20 hours on the weekends to catch up. If I'm lucky, I might squeeze in 3 hours during the week, which is a FARCRY from my planned 3 hours/day. All of this revolves around work related stresses.

My work stress is bleeding into my life again.

It isn't unknown to the steemians who follow me that I had a really stressful 2017 in terms of work. When we rolled into 2018, I had a long discussion about my future career at the company and I've made an effort to point out to my bosses that I was unhappy with my situation. Work was calm for most of January so I was able to relax and forget about it for a few weeks, but it everything woke up in February and it hasn't stopped.

In that time, I've been falling asleep and waking up feeling like I need to fight of flight and it hasn't been very good for my emotional health. I'm not going to die or fall into depression, but it is significant enough to make feel upset and behave a bit more irrationally. In fact, some of my co-workers have noticed that I'm significantly more irritable than usual and when I reflect on it, I'm pretty disgusted at how I let myself behave that way AND that I can't control it.

Unfortunately, there is a lack of sympathy from my bosses because when I explain to them how I feel, I normally get some nods and an "okay". In fact my boss brought in another supervisor for reasons unknown, and all he did was criticize me for spending too much time doing certain things about projects that he knows nothing about. Then he abruptly leaves.

Everything comes with a price

At this point, I'm back to feeling uneasy about work. The stress that consumed me last year is resurfacing, and it seems as though looking out for your own self interest is the only way to survive in the company. Unfortunately, I hate working under that umbrella because it creates a highly negative working environment where no one elects to compete for the best position within the group. Rather everyone defers responsibility to someone else and the handful of people who care, suffer the most.

Where will I be in 6 months? At this rate, it might not be at this company if I can't reach a level of monetary compensation and authority where I feel like I am progressing as both an engineer and project manager.

ON ANOTHER NOTE, MY SAMPLE STEEM TSHIRTS COME TOMORROW! WOOOOOHOOOOO

Picture of the Day:

The PE exam is an open book test, but since it is a timed skills test, having books to reference is only good if you know exactly what you are looking for. In fact, for many questions, there are multiple ways to arrive to the answer, so it's up to you to know how to get there. Otherwise, there is simply not enough time to try and figure things out on the fly.

These are the books I'm bringing to the exam, and I've learned that some people bring 3-5x more text books. While I understand that you want to have all your resources with you. I seriously question how much time I will have to actually find the book I'm looking for and then search through it for guidance, which I might not even know how to utilize.

So with that said, the simpler I make this for me, the higher the chances of getting the questions I do know, correct.