Category: diary Page 13 of 16

white house

On the Exhaustion of Rage, and Rhythm

By

On January 28, 2017

In diary

WORK

 

I’m making my world a little smaller on purpose.

My new job is going well and keeping me busy–the entire week last week was essentially booked wall to wall with meetings and appointments, all good–so my workday is more or less a blur between the hours of morning and evening. Because of the typical workday hours at Mitchell, and because of preschool hours, I am often the last person in the office and the last person out at the end of the day. Wohali, one of the college’s security team, stops by to lock up the house, and I have to ask him to come back later.

Once home, I try to keep the office out of the couple of hours I’ll get to see the kiddos before bed. The 3.6 mile commute between my driveway and my office is a big deal in that regard–I can work right up until dinner time, squeezing in a few extra things before supper.

The funny thing is that my commute isn’t entirely a new route–it’s just a trip up Broad Street, basically, and I’ve been making the same trip anyway to drop the kids off at preschool for years. (Also incredible: preschool is now across the street from work.) Even so, these days I’m seeing things differently.

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Community

By

On January 15, 2017

In diary

DIARY

The last time I changed employers, George W. Bush was president.

To be more specific, Bush was still president, and Barack Obama wasn’t even the Democratic nominee yet. John Edwards was still in the race at that point. So was Hillary Clinton.

This week, as I packed up my office in Davidson and closed the chapter on just shy of nine years of fundraising work there, I happened upon the letter first offering me a job at the college. It was dated on the same day I’ll start my next endeavor, which is to serve as Vice President for Advancement at Mitchell Community College.

This all began back in September, when I got a couple of emails about the opening at Mitchell, one of which I forwarded to Kel. I spent a little time thinking about it, then a couple of days later, I called the firm running the executive search process to ask a few questions. I was in Chicago at the time.

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Valediction

By

On January 4, 2017

In diary

DIARY

It wasn't all about basketball. But there was a lot of basketball.

In which I say goodbye to dear friends.

In the fall of 2007, I was an English teacher struggling to make it through a semester at a high school in upstate South Carolina. Among my challenges: teaching an Intro to Theatre Arts class whose students had desperately little interest in theatre. Even more challenging was a trio of exasperating young women in the class named Faith, Hope, and Tequila, the latter of whom was particularly more adept at managing my class than I was.

This wasn’t the first time in my life I’d contemplated leaving teaching, but it was the most serious. I wasn’t making much money, and I had little clue what else to do with an English degree, but soon enough I began Googling job openings at colleges around Statesville, and read with great interest the job description for one Annual Fund Gifts Officer position.

I had no idea what I was applying for, but the job sounded fun—it meant working for a college, a good one at that. It meant traveling around the country, something I wasn’t able to afford much as a young teacher. It meant no more Faith, Hope, or Tequila. (Although the drink makes an appearance before the end of the story.) So I applied and interviewed, and over the course of what felt like an eternity but in fact was only a modest Davidson hiring cycle, I one day opened my flip phone to hear Maria Aldrich on the other end offering me the job.

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