My throat is still bothering me, but I feel so much better I could almost cry:

I spoke to my boss and HR about the problem I have with the courses I’m taking, and they agree – it’s not worth my time or the company’s time if it isn’t a good fit. They’ll also let me take other courses instead, so hellooooo Technical Writing Certificate! This is such a huge relief to me – I was really afraid that they would insist I finish the program, but for all the worrying I did it was almost a non-issue: I told my boss the struggles I had last week with making the information fit for my job, and he totally understood. I can withdraw from the remainder of the program (after I finish 3102; might as well get the credit) and look into other classes instead. YAY!

Thing the second: last week I was distraught to learn that my People had submitted his resignation.  A whole barrel of personal issues had come up for him, and the end result was his needing to find a job that would allow him to work at night so he could watch his kids during the day. This was upsetting to me, because my People is a really good guy and I didn’t want him to go anywhere (or have to train yet another replacement – the 4th in a year). I did some really quick thinking, and devised a plan that would allow him to wrangle the routers in the afternoon and evening while the temp did his daytime duties. This would allow him to keep his job, our project to continue smoothly (even smoothlier, actually – he’d have time in the evening to do some serious QA), give us the leisure of finding an excellent daytime replacement, and overlap the shifts for training. My boss liked the idea, HR liked the idea, and my People was ecstatic. I gone done did a Good Thing, and that gives me a big happy!