by the phone

So I've been having an odd experience lately of seeming to wait by the phone. Partly this is because my service provider has not cleared up a bug in the system that causes the phone to randomly choose not to ring. But there is also the other part: I am waiting for it to ring. I am waiting for news and closure on several matters, both on the personal and career front.

I am beginning to see the tide turn, and beginning to recognize the value I bring to this environment. It was hard at first, since my experience is not something that's particularly valued in the classroom. It's often not directly relevant to what comes up in core classes, and I've been challenged to draw the links by myself, for myself. But I'm starting to notice that my connections can help people, too, and my experience is still worth a damn somewhere in the world. That I'm creative and I can make a way, and that matters. Well, at least here I'm considered creative. In my old job, we all were because we had to be. We had to fix stuff or jerryrig it because stuff was often broken and we mostly didn't have the standard tools or the time for lasting fixes.

Which is why I'm waiting by the phone on the career front. I'm hoping to get "the call" for a great internship on one hand, and expecting to receive phone interview initiation calls on the other. There are enough interesting and engaging opportunities to explore for the summer that I feel optimistic that I am finding the right mix of fit and chances for development and exploring new areas.

I realized that the tide was turning while actually sitting in an interview. I have been branded a career-switching poet and been liberally patted on the head since I got here. But I went to an interview where the other person could readily see the directly relevant value of my previous experience. It was a little jarring. I'm so used to psyching myself up to exude confidence and draw the lines for my interviewer that I was unused to the other person drawing them for her/himself. It felt so peculiar that I actually had to fix my face. There's some learning to be gained out of this, and I'm not sure exactly what, but I'll no-doubt have plenty of time to think about it when I'm not studying for finals.

In other happenings, I'm excited to be departing for a service learning trip to Brazil this week. This trip comes at a difficult transitional time on the home front, but I hope it will all work out.