Audio
Michelle describes Hanford during COVID-19
Transcript
Drew Gamboa
What did you do after? Is that the role you're in now or…?
Michelle Molina
Not really. No, no. After that, the manager that originally hired me at WTP, he actually eventually moved to WRPS which is the Washington River Protection Solutions in town. I was working at the site. Of course, there was COVID that happened in 2020, where everyone started working from home. I was working from home. COVID was really hard for the company. We all were struggling, I think. That's why I transitioned. I needed to move on, because I started to feel stuck, that I wasn't learning. I wasn't growing. With us working from home, I was having a hard time explaining to people how I felt. So, I ended up applying for this job, because my prior manager was working at WRPS. He needed me, of course. He was the one who hired me, so I messaged him. He’s like, “Oh. We are actually hiring over here. Do you want to apply here?” I applied there. I had a panel interview, and there I went. I went to WRPS… I was actually doing something very similar, but this time, I was on the other side of the coin. I was helping with the data that we're going to be sending WTP. WRPS… We manage and maintain the tank farms that have the waste, and eventually, we send the waste to WTP, so they can vitrify it. The group that I was in is actually the group that plans the sending of waste to WTP. So whatever we send to them, we have to tell them, “This is what you're getting. This is the composition, the chemical composition of this liquid [that] we're sending to you has to meet specific thresholds.” And so, I was on the other side essentially of the coin. “This is what we're sending you. Do you agree or disagree?” I helped with plans, but this time, this job was a little bit more engineering… It feels intimidating, you know, and when I started working at WRPS, I felt even more that. People are very smart. Engineers, they’re smart. They knew so much more than I ever did before in WTP. I had to do a lot of big Excel sheets, learning Excel prompts that I didn't know before. The last three years, I have gotten so much better at analyzing data, doing calculations, writing, technical writing. WRPS has definitely… I have definitely grown a lot…
Description
Michelle describes Hanford during COVID-19 in an interview with Drew Gamboa on October 18, 2024.
Date Created
02/04/2025
Copyright and Usage Info