Alice Wang

6.00/6.30 AM

I’m the kind of person who needs multiple alarms to get up in the morning, so I set them to 6:00 am and 6:30 am. After hitting snooze multiple times, I get up to have breakfast and get ready for work. I live fairly close to the office, so it’s usually faster to walk than to sit in rush hour traffic. I head out at around 8:15 am with my bag and, most importantly, coffee.

8.30

I arrive at the office at around 8:30 am and change from my sneakers into my office heels. I realised this wasn’t as uncommon as I thought after starting at CSC. I then pop my packed lunch in the fridge on my floor, fill up my (very large) water bottle, and head back to my desk to ‘check in’. One of the COVID-19 measures we do is vacating every second desk to make sure we’re social distancing (you’ll see the ‘Desk Available’ and ‘Desk Not In Use’ stickers in the picture). This means that those working in the office are ‘hot-desking and not using ‘their’ workstation to allow for flexibility in office/at home working arrangements. To help with contact tracing we have QR-codes on every desk, in meeting rooms, and in the café/kitchens. So ‘checking in’ every morning by scanning the QR-code is a super important first thing to do.

This morning I plan to do some research into the scope of the word ‘asset’ for our governing legislation and draft a decision paper for a compensation claim we received.

11.00 AM

Each of the 2021 cohorts of graduates has a mentor from within the business (someone who’s manager or senior manager level). The content of the mentorship program isn’t pre-defined so I talk to my mentor about all kinds of things, like navigating the workplace, professional development, his experience moving to a different country to work, or where the best place to buy cheap, but nice furniture is. Today we go to the coffee shop in our building (which has really nice cookies) and talk about how I’m finding my first rotation, he asks me to reflect on what I’ve learnt so far, and we chat about how I’ve found living alone for the first time.

12.00 PM

After I head back to my desk, I see a message from one of the other grads, so we decide to have lunch together in one of the café areas in our building. These areas look over the street on one side so they’re nice and sunny at lunchtime, and a perfect place to take a break during the workday.

1.00 PM

I’m approaching the end of my first rotation so I have a meeting with our Grad Advisor and the Senior Manager for my potential next rotation. We have our meeting via video call as not everyone is working in the office. The meeting goes well and we lock in the dates for my second rotation.

1.30 PM

At 2:30 pm I’m presenting some legal research to another business area, so I spend the hour before finalising my PowerPoint, reviewing my notes again, and going over what I plan to talk about with a Lawyer one last time. About 10 minutes before my presentation starts, I head to the room, ‘check in’, and set up all the tech that’s needed. The presentation will be a mix of in-person attendees and online viewers so I set up the video call so it’s ready to go.

2.30 PM

All the in-person attendees arrive, so I start my presentation. I’m talking about a new regulation from ASIC which will change the way we think about our social media usage when promoting our business. I had been doing research on this regulation for about two months and this particular interaction with social media for several weeks. Two Lawyers also came along to support me and help answer any tricky questions, so I didn’t feel too nervous.

3.00 PM

After my presentation, I tidy up the room and wipe down the surfaces, debrief with the two Lawyers, and head back to my desk.

I plan to continue working on my morning tasks and also do some preparation for an event we have coming up for Privacy Awareness Week. I’ll be helping our intern hold a panel discussion on the past, present, and future of privacy in Australia, with the Hon Michael Kirby AC CMG. I’m really looking forward to hearing from all our knowledgeable speakers and can’t wait!

5.00 PM

The end of the working day! I say goodbye to my colleagues, change back into my sneakers, and head home. Since I’m always in a rush in the mornings, I prepare my lunch for the next day and pack my bag so it’s ready to go. Depending on how motivated I’m feeling, I might squeeze in some exercise before picking out something to watch than getting distracted by my phone for an hour.

10.00 PM

I start getting ready for bed before some notification or another distracts me for too long. I finally settle in (sometime before midnight), resting easy knowing that my bags are all ready to grab and go in the morning.