Life Changers!

Sometimes in life, something happens to change the way you see life, your outlook on everything. Such as going on a mission (check), getting your first real grown up job (check), meeting the person you're going to be with forever (check), or getting eye surgery (CHECK!!!) I was thinking of life changing experiences today, and I have loved my life and all the things that have influenced it, but I don't think I have ever had such a dramatic life changing experience in such a short amount of time like I did this week. My life is significantly better than it was last Wednesday. (Wow Tara, could you be more dramatic). No, because I am being serious. Last Thursday I had PRK which is an abbreviation for really long words that I can't pronounce, so we will continue to refer to it as PRK. This is an alternative to Lasik eye surgery. I guess my eyes wouldn't work for Lasik or something like that, so my eye doctor told me he could fix my eyes with PRK. At first I was skeptical... you can fix my eyes? These eyes? The ones that have been in my face my whole life. Because this doctor doesn't know what its like to have MY eyes. My eyes are so bad. I'm not going to say they are the worst because I'm sure people have worse eyes than mine, but for me, they were so bad. I will never forget my first eye check up in 2nd grade. The nice lady didn't ask me what the letters were on the screen, she said, "Can you see that?" To which I responded. No. She kept putting other letters on the screen and I kept saying, "No, no, no, no, no" Finally I took a guess... "G?" And she said "no." A week later my parents got a letter in the mail saying I needed glasses. Horrible timing, we were just about to go to Park City. So I had to get super geeky ski googles that went OVER my already geeky glasses. I had braces, glasses, and I felt like a dork for years.

Finally I proved I was responsible enough for contacts. Now I don't feel so geeky, but that didn't improve the quality of my life, just the quality of how I looked. (hahaha). I still had to worry about stuff getting in my contacts, changing them every month (was I really supposed to change them EVERY month?) buying solution because I felt like I was always on empty, going to the doctor every year to get more, not falling asleep with them in my eyes, not going swimming, or enjoying the beach like my friends would, having them fall out in public and not being sure what to do other than just put it back in your eye... and the list goes on. Contacts were great, but they were a hassle. A hassle that I lived with for a decade.

I met a girl in church a few months ago that was my age, and she just had Lasik. I always knew that Lasik was something I wanted to do eventually... but when does eventually ever really come, you know?! I knew that I couldn't have it if I was preggo or could become preggo, so was I going to wait until my kids were all grown up and I was in my 40s, when your eyesight goes bad anyway for being old. I was sure it was one of those dreams that wouldn't happen. But one day I drove past an eye surgery place and thought... wait. why not?! I'm a grown up. I'm not having kids right now. I can afford to treat myself. So I went to the doctor, he told me he'd fix my eyes, I believed him... and HE DID!!!!

Last weekend was arguably one of the worst weekends of my life. Filled with darkness, bluriness, and never ending movies and netflix. Sure it might sound like it was nice and relaxing, but it was anything but. I did have a cute boy nurse me back to health, and that was pretty great, but when he wasn't there, it was miserable. I was afraid it didn't work, I thought my vision was gone forever. I had a couple of priesthood blessings to reassure me, and did a lot of praying in that time. Yesterday when I went to my post-op appointment, the doctor was blown away at how good my eyes were! Most people don't see this well after 5 days, he said! I wouldn't say my vision is perfect right now, but it is SO much better than it has ever been in my life.

My life has changed, and I love it so much. I love being able to see first thing when I wake up. And I love reaching over to put my glasses on and remembering, oh wait, I don't need to! I love that I don't have to worry about putting my contacts in or taking them out every day. I love that I can just see things. I feel so very blessed that I have vision. I always thought this would never happen until I was resurrected and had a perfected body. Not when I was 23!!! Things are good. Life continues to change around me, and I continue to embrace those life changers, but for now, I'm just going to be happy that I can see! I love being able to see.

"How can instantly improve vision not be at the top of your to-do list?" - Brian Regan

I wish to go to the Questival

Today I'm embarking on the craziest adventure of my life. Here we are starting off at that Festival!

Second Floor Supervisor

Today was one of the best days ever! About a month ago I applied and was offered the position to be an interim supervisor. Its been really great. Being a supervisor has been so fun. At first I was worried because my go to answer for the past year at work has been "Ask your supervisor." And now I am the supervisor so I have to come up with the answers... hopefully they are right ones too! Today was great though because I was offered the permanent position. I am officially a supervisor for MemorialCare at Sutter Physician Services. My start date is March 16th, exactly 355 days after my start date with Sutter Physician Services as a Quality Coordinator. Thats kinda neat. At this pace I will be a manager on March 15th of next year, and a director on March 14th of 2017! Woot Woot!!!

But today I want to talk about why being a second floor supervisor has been so great. There are activity rooms on each floor, and ours has a ping pong table in it. One of my first jobs as a supervisor was to come up with a gift to give the agents for meeting their goals last month. I got them all ping pong paddles with a note that said "Way to Smash that Service Level!" It was pretty clever if I do say so myself. Well one of my favorite co-workers in another department also happens to be working on the 2nd floor now. And when he found out we had ping pong paddles... lets just say things got real.

We managed to meet together three different times, during lunch, on a break around 3, and after work today to play a bunch of games. We are keeping score too, and the first one to win 20 games has to buy the other one lunch! I'm about to get the easiest free meal from Cafe Rio Ever!!!

In all honesty, this job is hard. I got there at 8 this morning, didn't take a lunch, and worked straight  until 5.  Supervisor Tara is WAY busier than Cordner the Coordinator. I don't even realize that I worked through lunch until its about 2:00 and I'm starving but have meetings and things that have to get done. Luckily though the ping pong is pulling me through.

So here's to my newest adventure. One year home from my mission and I've got a nice new promotion to celebrate! I'm thinking I'm going to enjoy 2015! Its possible it will be the BEST YEAR EVER!!!

I Think I'm Funny!

Dear Blog,
I haven't blogged in SO long. Recently I was going through my old entries and I forgot something...  I am a hilarious blogger! I feel bad that I have deprived the blogging world of my funny entries for so long. So as of today, I'm back baby! Get ready for great blog posts from yours truly.

Dear Work,
Thank you for hiring me 50 weeks ago. Time has gone so fast its hard to believe I've worked here a year now. And thank you again for the promotion. This week (all two days of it) has been great so far and I'm really excited about my new supervisor position. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I think I will be boss at this new job! (Pun intended!!!)

Dear Utah,
Have I mentioned lately how much I love you. Its been the best year of my whole life. I especially loved how you surprised us today with a little random snow storm! Yay for March snow!

Dear Roommates/Friends,
You are seriously the best thing to have ever happened to my life. I just feel so honored that I get to be around cool people like you every day. Also... you guys make videos on youtube that gets over 60,000 views... and thats just awesome.
Watch their video here!!!

Dear Christine,
Can you believe its been 4 and a half years. You are still to this day my favorite car I have ever owned. I was just thinking about how much I loved you today while I was driving to work and felt like you needed a shout out to how great you are. Also I especially love the pink fuzzy dice that are now hanging from your rear view mirror!

Dear Current Playlist,
You are killing it!!! I  have loved driving with you on repeat all the way to Utah County and back! Mostly due to the new Carly Rae Jepsen song. I really really really really really really like you!

Dear Starburst Jelly Beans,
I'm afraid you are going to be the death of me. And yes I know I say this every year. And no I never do get the self control I promise myself I will have next easter when they come out again. I recently have bought jeans that are a size smaller than my jeans have been in a long time... but I'm worried that after this next couple of months I will be back in my fat jeans. Curse you delicious jelly candy!

Dear New Workout,
I bought you kinda as a joke but I'm really enjoying you! Hopefully you will keep me from going back to my fat jeans due to the enormous amounts of jelly beans I will be eating. Come May 1st, ya'll better watch out, Amy and I are going to be looking FINE!!!

Dear Call Center Management On Fast Forward,
You might just be the most boring book I have ever read... but I haven't read that many boring books, so... ya know! I like the conversations that come in our book club at work when we are talking about you. But tonight I need to read the next two chapters and I'm just not feeling it...

Dear Grocery Store,
Why are you so hard to go to? Like I literally haven't had food in my house for days and I still don't know why I can't just go buy some. It just seems so hard sometimes. Like paying rent. You know you have to do it but you put it off until the very last day possible. Have I mentioned how much I hate being a grown up.

Dear Future Tara,
Don't be a grown up. Its not cool. Try to avoid it as much as possible.

Dear Boyfriend,
Why you gotta be so cute?! Like literally... you're distracting me from everything with your cuteness.
I would say knock it off, but I kinda like it! And you! ;)

Cordner the Coordinator

So a lot of time people ask me what I do... and I feel like just telling them my job title isn't enough to answer their questions. My own parents don't even know what I really do for a living. So I thought I would take this time to explain a day in the life of Cordner the Coordinator!

Background info:

I work at a call center that does scheduling/registration/billing/insurance/provider services/ and other administrative tasks for Sutter Health. We have about 12 different lines of businesses that cover a number of different Medical Foundations. Every day hundreds of PSRs (Patient Service Representatives) take phone calls for patients that have questions about the above mentioned items. And my job is to provide for them the tools they need to make the patient experience the best it could be.

As a Quality Coordinator, I use the information gathered by the Quality Analysts and the Reporting team to look for trends in the calls. For example, this month we are working on having empathy on phone calls. With my team I have created a game for the PSRs to play. SORRY! - The Game of Empathy! When they have high scores in the empathy category, they get points. We do little extra things throughout the month to encourage them to remember to have empathy on every call, and we ask their supervisors to focus on those things. Some say that I have the most fun job at the company. I am always just coming up with creative ways to help the PSRs do their job better!

So a day in the life...

I get to work around 7:45 and check my email first thing. I usually spend the next half hour or so checking out my schedule for the day and preparing for any meetings or things I have going on that day.

9:00 - I have one on ones with my supervisors that I'm over. I have 6 lines of businesses that report to me (for quality purposes) and I meet with each other the supervisors (a total of 16) each month to discuss with them their teams quality. Each of these meetings is only about 30 minutes and I tell them what my team has been doing to help them, ask them if they have any questions, and tell them about the game or focus that Quality is working on.

11:00 - Calibration Meeting: Each month I meet with each LOB (even the ones I'm not over) in a calibration meeting. All the supervisors from that line, along with a good amount of people on my team come together and we listen to calls together and grade them together. That way they understand what it is we grade for when we listen to calls. If they have an agent they are struggling with, we listen to their calls and discuss how we can help them.

12:00- LUNCH! I have great friends at work! I love my team, but sometimes I can't eat with them based on their schedules. The Admin Assistants are all about my age, and one was my college roommate Tamazine. So usually I get together with them and we eat together. Last week we ordered Jimmy Johns and had a picnic outside while we ate our sandwiches! Aww... presh!

12:30-2:00 - Desk time. I usually find myself with at least an hour or two of desk time a day. Some days I can have up to 6 hours, that is if I don't have many meetings. When I'm at my desk I have projects to work on. I just am finishing up a project that I came up with. The PSR's were all struggling knowing what information they could give out on the phones, especially in the billing department. So I re-did the billing Release of Information Guide to make it more interactive and easier to understand. I also just finished the call library, I listened to great calls, edited out the personal health information, and sorted them into categories so the supervisors could use those calls for training purposes. Every day we have a report about the customer experience that we have to upload online so the supervisors can go over those "bad" calls with their PSRs. I also have other reports that come out on a monthly basis that I look through and pull data out for our own quality reports.

2:00-3:30 - Training. I usually do one to two trainings a week. I'm in with the new hires either teaching them about what they can and can not say on the phones, or how to have be nice while they do so. Soft skills training is one of my favorite trainings. I tweak this training a lot and do it to PSRs who have been on the phones for a while to help them get even better. The checklist is what they have to do on the phone and we also have to train the new hires on that as well... That training puts me to sleep most of the time, and I'm the one giving it, so I can imagine its hard for them too!

Then usually until the end of the day I'm either working on Q-Tips (funny Quality emails that we send out) or finishing up some reporting things, sometimes I have team meetings and sometimes I just finish emailing people. I usually clock out around 4:15 and get on the freeway before the traffic is too bad!

Every single day is different, I have different meetings all the time, but that is an example of things I do all the time! I love being a Quality Coordinator at Sutter Physician Services. And everyone else seems to love that fact that my last name is Cordner, so I can be Cordner the Coordinator!

So there you have it! This is what I do! And I love it. Every day at work is basically... THE BEST DAY EVER!!!

T

Here's to Growing Up

I know many of you have heard me throwing a fit about turning 23. I don't know what it is about this number but for some reason I have dreaded it instead of opened it with loving arms as I do most of my new ages. (I think Taylor Swift has something to do with it. And Blink 182) But really... I have decided to make 23... THE BEST YEAR EVER! Why not right? Everyone says that their mission was the "best two years" or in my case "year and a half." But if that was the case then I have basically lived my life and nothing will be as good as it was when I was 21 and 22. I reject that philosophy. The best years of my life are the ones I am currently living. The best day ever is the current day that you are in. The only thing stopping you from making your day better than the one before is you! So anyway... I'm going to make being 23 the most fun EVER! And everyone that is not 23 should start being jealous, because this is the age to be!

Things I'm going to do this year.

1. Take the GRE
2. Go on lots of vacations - Mexico, Chicago, and another one that I have yet to plan!
3. Snowboard a whole heck of a lot!
4. Buy a lot of cute clothes - this one is my favorite!
5. Do what I want when I want to do it - basically I am going to enjoy the freedom of being a young adult!!!!!!!!! Thats right, you should be totes jelly!

I feel like now is the time to have a lot of fun because if I start grad school next fall (when I'm 24) then I won't have much of a chance to do fun things. So here's to the fun things in my life being RIGHT NOW!

(Also just because I'm 23 does not mean I have to act grown up. If I want to say LOL and totes jelly, I'm going to... and no one can say anything to stop me!)

So yea... here's to the most awesome year I have ever lived! I can hardly wait!!!!!!!