Healthy, Unwealthy, and Becoming Wise

This week, I experienced a personal victory.  If you’ve followed my Twitter stream, you know what my victory was, and is, but otherwise, I must tell you of my proudest accomplishment in quite a long while.

This week, I interviewed for and received my first part time job. Yes, I know.  It’s a bit overwhelming to understand that I’m 22 years old and haven’t had one yet, but it’s also quite exciting to think about the fact that when I went in to interview, and really, even when I applied for the job, the situation couldn’t have been more perfectly fit into my current circumstances.

I’m a student lab assistant in our instructional technology center in the university’s library.  What does that mean?  It means that I get to do several, several different things throughout my workday, but most importantly, it means that I get to demonstrate to fellow students, to faculty, and to other interested parties the ways that they can make the most use of this fascinating thing we call technology.  I’ll compose a separate post later this week about the dynamics of the interview and the way that process panned out for me.

But, the important thing is that it did happen and that it did go extremely well.  It was amazing in the conversations that I had the day following the interview to see the faith that my friends and family, and now my supervisors, had in me.  I couldn’t be more grateful for that.  In a meeting with the lead technology specialist on Friday, I let him know that this was my first job, and though he was surprised, he did let me know that he was extremely proud of me (and of those who interviewed me) for looking past the very things that had me concerned.  Having already had to ask for one SMALL accommodation before I start actual shift work on Tuesday (I’ll go in tomorrow for paid training and module-ing.), I understood that those things just won’t be really huge issues.  This just involves moving one chair to replace it with another; really?  If that’s as technical as it gets, we’re in business.

Most of all, I’d like to thank my supervisors, who, undoubtedly will read my blog, my co-workers who are already slathered in awesomesauce, and to everyone, family, friends, and readers, who’ve had faith in me.  This situation is absolutely the best that I could have ever asked for or dreamed about, and I’m really, really excited to be working and to be studying, as weird as that sounds.  The structure that it will give is really incredible, and just like this week, I will most likely work four shifts and have two tests on back-to-back days and have 12 hours of classes this week.  I’m so ready to five in to life.  That sounds weird, I know, but when you’ve never had the opportunity, it’s exhilarating, exciting, and most of all, it allows for assertion of independence.  For me, that has been such an important thing for such a long time that I can’t even quantify how it feels to have it in more ways than one at this point.

Now, I must wind down.  Two tests, 16 hours (ish) of work, and classes all week make for a happy, but busy Erin.  New Macs in the lab? Don’t mind if I do!