sal_amanda | Gainful Employment At Last

In the past when I've looked for jobs, I've always gotten the consolation job. Not the one I actually wanted, but the next best one. But something strange has happened since I decided mid-pregnancy that I wanted to go into higher ed administration. Things have just sort of worked out. Seriously, that never happens.

My classes all worked out perfectly exactly how I planned them from the first semester, and even more than that, things even worked out perfectly in terms of what professors were teaching what classes during the semesters I was taking them.

For money, the contract work at Adoption STAR practically fell in my lap. What a perfect gig for a grad student with a family. I got to make my own schedule and work independently.

And my internships worked out the way they needed to. Admittedly, not exactly how I wanted them, but how the universe wanted them to go. I'll explain. My first one was at UB with a friend from John's PhD program in Judicial Affairs. That one I totally wanted. But for the next one I wanted to do a program for first-generation students like EOP or TRIO, but at a smaller private college, just to diversify my experience beyond big state school. I tried Daemen's EOP program merely because it's close to me, and the director was great, but she admitted that all she really needed was someone to do assessment, which was not what I was looking for. So I made contact with Medaille's TRIO program. They wanted me in their Academic Skills Center, which included some work with TRIO, but also working with academic probation students and some other programming stuff. I didn't think it was exactly what I wanted, but figured I'd give it a whirl since it was just one semester.

Turns out I liked it there. So I got paid the next semester to be a math tutor. See, look how my background is ALL coming into play here. It got me a paying job. And when I didn't have math students, which was most of the time, I still worked with academic probation students and did some programming stuff here and there. When the semester ended, turns out they found me some hours to keep on during the summer. The plan was pretty much to work four days a week for them in the fall if nothing good came up anywhere else, so I could afford to be picky with the jobs I applied to, as if there were many in the area right now anyway. In the discussion of my fall plans, I had worked it out with my supervisor that I'd be able to do even more work with TRIO when I didn't have math or probation appointments, which made me super happy.

Now here is where the plot thickens. They redid the Higher Ed Act, which funds the TRIO grant and called for more advising and counseling and such. Medaille's program was very behind the times in its programming so there was a big shake-up and some positions opened up. The supervisor of the program was rather fond of me as she found out I had grant experience and helped them out with one they were working on at the end of the semester. So I hoped upon hope that I would be getting one of these positions.

The timeline has been a huge pain, though, because of everyone's conflicting vacation schedules this summer. But last week we finally had interviews. I felt good about it, but didn't think we'd know anything official for a while because of, again, conflicting vacation schedules. However, thanks to people who can't resist checking their work e-mails on their vacations, the recommendations were approved and I got the call from HR today.

I have the job!

And I'm just amazed at how everything has totally fallen into place to get me here. To this position that is exactly what I wanted. During this grad program, everyone would ask what I wanted to do. I said judicial or work with first generation, low income students, but the judicial was wearing off because it's a very specific job that might get me pigeon-holed. So here I am. Right where I want to be.

Spooky.

Of course, I haven't worked full-time in three years and I haven't had to be anywhere that early in the morning since Nora was born. Hmm. Should be interesting.