Sunday, July 12, 2015

Coming to you live from New York!

Hello from my new apartment in Albany, New York!

What are you doing there you ask? Well, as of tomorrow, I will be working as the Assistant Director of Intramural and Club Sports at the University at Albany.




What what!! This girl got a big girl job! All that stress and those conferences and freaking out and self-doubt was all for naught. In fact, the last time I wrote, a couple of days after that I went to an on-campus interview in Albany, obviously did well enough that they offered me the job the next day! Woohoo! But really, I am very excited and feel really great about the job. It's a new program, with people who are really open minded and looking to just make something out of it and try new things (YES! Can mold it to how I do or don't want it to look like) and I get to work with a Graduate Assistant under my supervision. *clears throat* Let me repeat that...I get a Graduate Assistant. Who works for me. That's right. You know you're moving on up when you climb the ladder, started from the GA now he'll be reporting to me. I'm entirely too excited and way too nervous (I was JUST a GA myself 2 months ago. 2 MONTHS AGO) about that aspect. Not because I'm going to work them to the bone, but because it makes me feel like I'm a real professional now.

See, Jon Snow does know something. 

So long story short, I got the job offer, took the job, flew out with my mom and found an apartment, and then had 5 weeks left in Carbondale to finish up the summer. Wow. Talk about a fast summer. My last summer of my life (non-students don't get the summer off in the real world. It's a travesty, I know.) and it was probably the shortest summer of my life. Isn't life funny like that?

But I had a great summer. I got a roommate (I know I'm really great at offering my place to people to just join haha. I should have just called it Hotel de Marissa) and spent a lot of time hanging by the pool, I went home for my brother's high school graduation, hiked all over Southern Illinois and kinda just chilled. I rented a storage box to be shipped with all my things to Albany, NY (which was sorta nightmare at the beginning but worked out in the end) and so for awhile the place had no furniture or my bed and so my roommate and I had to make dinner and eat it on the floor with left over boxes and the TV was just on the ground and I slept on a lumpy air mattress. But hey it worked. I went to an Eric Church concert with my friends and we got to go right up next to the stage because one of the girls knew a guy who got us better tickets for free. Ah, the perks of living in a small town, everyone knows everyone. It was pretty fun and I love going to live music concerts, but obviously Eric Church is more than just a concert. Swoon.

Most of the time though, I would try and busy myself and not focus too much of my energy on the inevitable fact that I would have to leave and that a huge, no colossal, change was about to happen.

Que the freaking water works. All the feels...here they come.

I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm FINE DAMMIT.

I'm petrified about this big change. I'm frightened if I can handle going from student to professional in a matter of weeks. It makes me want to puke just thinking about trying to make a new life in a place I don't know. It's terrifying just to go to the grocery store because I don't know the streets or which side the entrance is on and where the heck they stock the milk or bread and I can't even get to the gas station without using my gps. And the people...*internally screams*

I have to make new friends. All over again. But this time, I don't have class or other GA's to rely on to just automatically meet new people. I've met some through work so far when I have visited but we're coworkers and there's nothing in the contract that says we have to hang out outside of work. I'll be very busy with my job, I know that, but it's just the idea of it all is very overwhelming.

And I'm really far away. I mean I moved far away for the GA but now I'm 3 hours time difference from my parents and family and I'm almost 1,000 miles away from my 2nd home, Carbondale. That's really really freaking far. And to be honest when I got the job, that notion didn't cross my mind at all. All I could think was I like the people I met in the interview, I like the job description and I like that it's a city. A really big city that I have been wanting to live in for quite some time now. It's got over 200,000 people and about 8 different Dunkin' Donuts and Carbondale just recently got it's first so there's that for some perspective. I can walk to a fitness center, a starbucks, a dunkin' and a grocery store, clothing shop and a CVS and a Walgreens within 2 minutes of my apartment. 2minutes is generous too, I could probably make it in 1 if I was power walking.
And everyone I told that I was taking this New York job was like oh my gosh aren't you scared? I could NEVER do that.

Well duh I'm scared. But I have to go! It's a job, in the field I want to be in, in a city I want to live in and with people I can see myself wanting to work with. I'd be silly not to go. I HAVE to go. Have to.

But I still had my self doubt. Oh boy. I second guessed even as I was signing the lease to the apartment. I had to call up my roommate and pretend that I was just going back and forth between two different apartments and couldn't decide but in reality I was deciding between rescinding my acceptance of the job or going through with it. Surprise, I'm here and I start tomorrow so that's how that conversation went. And I got the cheaper, closer, cuter apartment. Boom.

And as much as I say I hate change and that I'm not very good at it I also had quite a lot of time to ponder this notion.

For as much as I rag on it, I thrive off of it. I move every year, whether I need to or not. I dyed my hair and before dying it I had cut it off by 10inches before. I consistently rearrange my furniture to just switch things up a bit. Hell, I rarely order the same dish at a restaurant that I have been to before. I love getting the pepper chicken at a Chinese place in Carbondale. Love it. I'm getting hungry for it just thinking about it. Only ordered it 2 times in the 10, 20 maybe even more times I've been though. And I do that with every place, even Applebee's! Something about having all of these daily choices and sure, I liked that but what if I really like something else?? I would miss out on that something else if I didn't try! I'm this way with almost everything I do. From places to live, jobs to work, meals to eat, clothes to wear, people I meet, the way I do my hair. Shoot, I painted my dresser a different color just because I could. It doesn't work any better, it's just different now, I changed it.

So here I am. In a new apartment, in a new part of the country, in a new state, a new city with new people and a new job. How's that for some change. And I am really really excited. Like really.

#preach

But I am going to miss all that I did change. My old life in Carbondale. Just how I missed Davis 2 years ago, and the people there, I'm going to miss everyone and everything (well maybe not every little thing) in Salukiville. And even though I've only really lived in 3 different places in my life, now onto my 4th, it's the people around you and the support system that you create that really matters. I wouldn't have changed my choice in going to SIU and Carbondale. Or loving the people that I met. Never would I change that. But maybe that's why I feel so ok and free to make these big changes. Because I have people who love and support me and who are behind me at every step of the way. I have friends who were lined up to move me all the way out to New York just because they were my friends and not for any other reason. I have a family who pushes me to go to the limits and never say 'that's too far' or make me feel like I can't do something. Sure they joke about how truly far away I am, but if they really didn't want me that far away, they wouldn't have let me go.


I think this is a good spot to stop for now. I do want to write down all the adventures I did have this summer but I'll save it for another time. Tomorrow morning is my first day on the job. I'll be sure to share that too. I might have to change my blog name though...nothing great has come to mind yet so if you have ideas, let me know!

To be continued.


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