The Joy of Escaping Indentured Servitude

Well, the day has arrived. I can finally share with you the news I’ve been alluding to for about two weeks:

I began a job that, for me, is nothing short of miraculous, given how quickly I was able to transition to this new job and the prestige of the organization I am now a part of.

I am now a peer review assistant in the editorial office at the American Society of Hematology, which publishes the journal, Blood.

I could count on one hand the number of places I applied to, and ASH was the only place I even had time to go through the interviewing process, due to the fact I spent most of March traveling and recovering from my last job. It was also the only job I really, really wanted.

I had no idea what to expect as I walked into the office building my first day. Almost instantly, I felt like I was part of the family. Everyone there is incredibly friendly and supportive. All of the supervisors, including the one I report to, are kind, caring, fair (!), and understanding. They are quick to offer praise. For example, the person responsible for training me was effusive in her praise of my ability to master the skills necessary for the specific tasks she was training me on.

I feel like I truly play an important role in my position, and I love the work that I do. I am not bogged down with busywork, nor am I the victim of onerous and menial tasks being blasted directly at me at light speed just to get them off the plate of my supervisor who didn’t want to do them herself. I feel like a member of the team, rather than a target cleaning up after somebody else. I can happily report that I no longer have a job that’s exhausting and demoralizing. I look forward to every single day.

The workplace environment itself is a welcome change, as well. ASH is much smaller than the last company I worked for, and each of the departments make a point of interacting with one another in order to foster a close-knit environment. While my last company preached endlessly about how it allowed its employees a true work/life balance, it is already apparent that ASH actually follows through with and keeps this promise. I now work 35 hours per week with one-hour lunch breaks each day (“one hour” is a flexible term here), as opposed to the 37.5 hours I was scheduled to work each week at my previous job (I routinely had to work overtime without getting paid for it). I actually voluntarily stay at work late now because I don’t want to leave – my colleagues and I are usually wrapped up in an interesting conversation and we all want to spend time hanging out with one another, laughing and enjoying each other’s company.

Of course, one can’t ignore the benefits, in addition to everything else. They are exceptionally generous, including all the small touches, like office-sponsored lunches and a Staff Appreciation Week that astronomically trumps the version my old company has. Plus, after that week ends, we switch to casual wear for the rest of the summer and begin taking half-days every other Friday.

And I know I already mentioned this, but I cannot stress enough the difference it makes to have a fair and equitable supervisor. I know that she truly appreciates me. Her supervisor even revealed to me a great deal of the decision-making process that occurred when they chose to hire me. Sitting down to a two-hour lunch at Vidalia’s, she told me of how the HR manager wanted to squeeze in one more candidate to evaluate before making a decision. She tells me of how impressed she was with me and that, “unless this guy could walk on water,” the job was mine.

Because my workplace is so supportive and appreciative of the consistent quality of my work, I’m finally beginning to feel like myself again. I don’t remember the last time I felt this strong, secure, and motivated. I still find myself surprised when my roommate comes home every night and asks me how my day was, and I enthusiastically respond, “Amazing!”

There’s a scene in the movie, “Up in the Air,” which is about a company whose employees’ sole purpose is to fly around the country and fire people. In the scene, George Clooney’s character is speaking to someone he’s firing and he says, “Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it’s because they sat there that they were able to do it.”

I know the line sometimes sounds trite and that it was only used to comfort people, but in my case, there is a glimmer of truth in it, and I could not be where I am today if I had I not endured that anxiety-ridden, tear-inducing rollercoaster (see here: http://makingitto30.blogspot.com/2011/03/onward-and-upward-drink-in-hand.html) of being fired.

In A New York State of Mind...

So I try not to get my hopes up too easily (I always do, anyway), but my interview at H_____ was AWESOME yesterday. Not only did I know that I answered all of their questions with exactly what they seemed to want to hear but I walked out and, for the first time, I felt no doubt in myself and what I’d said during the interview. I walked out the door with supreme confidence into the city, worrying only about what my references might say about me.

Well, in a strange twist of fate, my former colleague e-mails me this morning congratulating me on the interview, as well as to inform me that my old company has some policy where you can’t list any of its employees as references. If contacted, the respective employee is required to transfer the call/e-mail to HR. Okay, fine… Good? Bad? Either way, the nice guy from HR at H______ seemed to want some sort of contact with my old company, A_____, as a mere formality and he lets me know that the decision has already been made…for me to go onto the next round of interviews! I’m available next Tuesday, correct? Why, yes, sir – you are indeed correct!

Even if I don’t get this job, this is a clear sign that there is justice in the world and God apparently loves me and maybe there is something to be said for all that karma crap. After all, this was one of the first jobs I applied to after leaving A_____, I was contacted for a phone interview the next day, I had an in-person interview the day after that, and today, I’m being asked to move forward in the interview process as soon as I return from New York next week. Oh, and did I mention H______ is one of A_____’s rival companies?

It’s barely past noon and I’m beyond ecstatic. And the day’s only going to get better! In about an hour, I’m off to the train station to see one of my all-time best friends in New York City for a long weekend. I get to sleep in a lavender room. (For whatever reason, I find this highly exciting.) And…I can take a deep breath and stop being the “Virginia Me.” Virginia Me is a lot of things: at times, prim and proper, other times drunk and obnoxious. I fit in all too well with the high concentration of white people in my social circles here (primarily my sorority sisters). Most importantly, though, Virginia Me is the me that evolved from age 18 on, when I left a broken home and shattered past behind.

Virginia Me is missing some very important components of who I really am. Marlena brings out the “Real Me.” In fact, she herself is a huge part of who I am – she has been more than a friend to me over the past decade. She is my sister. We have shared wounds, we practically share DNA, we’ve watched one another spin out of (and back into) control, she has fiercely protected me from myself when I needed it most and I have tried to do my best in return. She is the only person I know who can make me laugh as much as she does. I mean, seriously, I dare you to find someone wittier or cleverer. It’s an insurmountable task. I mean, REALLY:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Epigramess/111866325537964

(If you don’t already follow her on Facebook, you really should…)

And with that, I have a train to catch!

Onward and Upward (Drink In Hand)

It's those pesky few months that begin somewhere around the time when you hit second semester of your senior year of college. You start applying to jobs. You start playing dress-up with "Big Girl Job" clothes. Everything from Hooters to Starbucks are suddenly deemed potential job options, unless you have exhausted all (and I mean all) other possibilities. “Executive Assistant” is pretty much all you feel qualified for most of the time, based on the number of call-backs you get from the 9873537485793 companies to which you apply. (Zero.) I remember; I was an English major…and no one could have cared less that I spent an entire year thoroughly dissecting the histories, comedies, tragedies, and romances in Shakespeare’s repertoire. Or that I could write an A+ paper on how screwed up my childhood was. This is when you realize you have to learn the art of marketing yourself, which is NO easy task.

Questions creep up. Sometimes they're healthy questions but, all too often, these questions are your demise. We're supposed to know everything before we've so much as dipped one toe in the big pool of the messiness that we call adulthood. It's what I refer to as the “Athena Dilemma.” Except, unlike Athena, young women are expected to “sprout” out of college, so to speak, fully-formed and with a level of expertise for navigating toward a career so beyond our comprehension, it’s like forcing an newly hatched bird to soar gracefully from one coast to another. It just isn't gonna work...We don’t know how to use our damn wings yet.

Somewhere amidst the myriad of other obligations that occupied every corner of our lives while in college, we were supposed to have concocted a brilliant resume, secured airtight references, figured out how the hell to write a good cover letter, and, worst of all, honed our interview skills until they’re pencil-tip sharp.

I did all of these things.

It has been one of the most anxiety-ridden, tear-inducing rollercoaster rides of my life, causing types of confusion, frustration, and disappointment I didn’t even know I had the capacity to feel. But the tidal wave that I didn’t see coming would literally shake me to the core and cause all of these emotions to come back sevenfold, plus some new ones.

I come to you now as someone who’s been spit out of the corporate machine after holding a college graduate’s dream job just shy of a year.

Yup, I got fired.

And now I’m starting over…