Hi Kristina,
I worked as an adminstrative assistant to the director of a Senior Center and I loved it! It DID take a quite awhile to learn everything and also learn that my role was mostly to make my boss look good (yes glorified secretary at the very beginning) and still help everyone in the office as I was able. I did not ever see my work as "menial". I also was the office manager but main duty was to the director. I got to know him pretty well and scheduled one on one meetings once a week. I liked him very much, learned his quirks and worked hard to make his work easier and always to make him look good and that was a good feeling for me - when the boss was happy - the staff was happy and and I felt needed and appreciated. He promoted me to executive assitant and then lots of jealousy became apparent with the staff. I did not have time to baby them like I had in the past and they felt he picked favorites. It was too bad because I really did work hard and wished I had time to do things for everyone. It was hard for these people who had been peers to work beneath me.

I would say always dress nicely and keep a pleasant and professional attitude.

Hang in there Kristina! An administrative assistant can move forward and is a very valuable asset!! Good for the self esteem if you work hard and show your talents. In my job - I got to do things I really loved also - like set up, design and maintain a website for the agency, have a network installed and maintain the system, and begin to sit in on meetings for my boss.

I think the main thing is to serve willingly and the payback is rewarding! That is how I felt anyway. I finally left the agency when we started losing funding and I knew that my next promotion was not going to happen.

This job was out of my old career fields which were teaching school and nursing but I wanted to try office work. I could have stayed on but wanted to be home kitty mom