The ellipses in the aforementioned title is intentional. I’ve heard the statement given numerous times, but it is one that never gets old.

Whenever you walk into a graveyard and look at tombstones you typically visualize two dates given. However, it is in between those dates you find the generic hyphen; a dash, as some might call it. That hyphen happens to be the most important part of the tombstone, and the person who lies six feet beneath it. That hyphen represents the life that was completed between the two bookend dates of birth and death.

The ellipses in my title represents that same idea for me in relation to my time here at Cotton Inc. In my time here at Cotton Inc., I have been able to make the most (or least, on some days) of the time here I have been given. Like life, my time here at Cotton Inc. is precious, valuable, and limited. So it is my responsibility to live out that time wisely, investing in as many experiences as I can.

That being said, I just completed a brilliant three days in one of the labs here at Cotton Inc. Recognizing that I had not received a ton of hands-on experiences lately, I reached out to my mentors and asked for some visual and tactile hands-on experiences to help me encapsulate experiences with Cotton. The first lab experience I had was with the Classification lab. The purpose was for me to partner with this lab to determine if there were hands-on approaches to doing what Cotton Inc. now relies on machinery to do. There is a lot of basic science and math skill sets that get used in the classification of cotton process; but now that machinery has come in to do what used to be completed by hand, even the lab scientists agreed that the task might not be easy. And indeed, it was not. This created not only a challenge for me, but a challenge for the lab workers and their supervisor. Not all of the pieces in classifying cotton can be easily translated into a 6th grade science lab, or done by hand. This aspect become frustrating because I went in with high expectations that our team was going to unite together and create something tangible and awesome for the students. But that didn’t happen, and I was immediately discouraged. But then I reminded myself, I need to make much of this experience… So, I forced myself to ask more questions. Went back to my desk, wrote them down, and then came back to the supervisor with some suggestions on modifications that could work in the classroom. Within 15 minutes, she was emailing me a slew of articles, suggestions, and videos that exemplified what I was asking for. Even more, she had reached out to one of their cotton suppliers to obtain samples for the upcoming school year, so that it would be one less thing on our plate to do later. Let’s just say, I’ve got a box of cotton on it’s way to Cary in the next 10-15 business days.

The second and third day of lab work was with the dying department. This lab was the most fascinating of all the labs I have been to thus far, and I was immediately engulfed with how rich their content in the lab related to the classroom for middle school and high school. Even better, the lab assistance was able to help walk me thru how to modify what it was they were completing in their lab so that middle school students could still run the same process. YES! Here is me, making much of this experience…

Labs are interesting to me, in and of themselves. I always have this stereotype in my head of what a lab at any company looks like (especially if it’s called “the lab”). Shockingly, my stereotypes weren’t all that debunked, which I was honestly hoping for, since stereotyping is something I speak out so candidly about. Prior to stepping inside the lab, I was worried that I may become slightly bored. Worse, I was concerned that chatting with the lab assistants would be equal to me stepping into a foreign land and not knowing the native tongue. But I reminded myself, I need to make much of this experience…