Sophia Wazir

7.00 AM

My alarm goes off and I spring out of bed to get ready for work. Usually, I try to make myself some avocado on toast or if I’m lucky a slice of banana bread with a cup of tea. I take breakfast as a time to mentally prepare myself for the day ahead and plan how I want my day to look and feel.

8.15 AM

Get to work and settle in. I make myself a coffee if I feel I need an extra boost of energy and fill my water bottle up to stay hydrated. I then look through emails to flag any important tasks to prioritise. I generally receive 10-20 emails a day. Usually, these are communication with vendors to ad hoc requests from team members or communication about open items so it’s important I organise my inbox so I don’t get overwhelmed.

After checking emails, I check in with my team to see what has made it to the top priorities list and discuss open items. I then plug in my headphones to listen to some 90’s tunes for extra energy and make a start on my tasks. On a day-to-day basis, I’m exposed to programs such as SAS, SQL, and Excel. These programs help me extract data to create meaningful output for analysis.

12.30 PM

Lunch is my favourite meal of the day! I usually bring my lunch to work and end up being envious of other people’s bought food, so I often alternate between bringing lunches and buying lunches. I usually have lunch with the other grads and use my lunch hour to completely free my mind from work. This helps me solve problems better, as I am guilty of overthinking if I get stuck on something. 

1.30 PM

Back at my desk to check out emails which may have popped up about urgent work that needs to be completed. I respond to those and refocus on what is top priority. General BAU activity sees me looking at rule reviews conducted within transaction monitoring rules and monitoring system issues. At the moment, I’m working on refining SAS scripts to ensure I’m delivering accurate information to my manager and my team members.

3.00 PM

Most recently, I’ve been involved in a project to help further improve processes, technology and policies. We are in the early stages of the project and are fleshing out what we want to focus on in the project. This involves constructing problem statements and clearly identifying what we are trying to address and the method in which we will go about addressing them.

5.15 PM

Home time! I go home, get changed, and get ready to go out to do some exercise. Rock climbing is my favourite exercise because to me it’s about problem solving, mentally challenging myself and is quickly increasing my endurance. It also releases some mean endorphins and makes me feel energised and mentally reset, ready to take on another day.