Oh, the people you’ll meet!

On the way home from work on Friday, Kathy decided we were going to play hooky and not go home right away. She had a taste for mussels from Bonefish, and that was where we headed. She even drove the big girl way down the interstate to get there. We had a nice dinner all by ourselves and relaxed for an hour and a half or so. She had had a rough week at work and so we deserved it.

I’ve actually been having some fun at work lately, feeling more like a counselor, since I’ve had so many appointments lately. I was a little rusty, but now I’ve been able to really nail it with some people, coming up with the perfect thing to say, or getting them to tell me what they really want.

The other morning at about eight o’clock, an interesting person came to the office without an appointment. Turns out she was an erstwhile art teacher who graduated 12 years ago when there were no jobs in that field. She started doing secretarial work and stayed with it, but now she wants to give it another shot. I got her to talk about what she’s been doing and how it relates to her goal. She’s the one out there with the neighborhood kids playing badminton, organizing crafts—now it’s on her resume.

Some of the other people I met included:

-The serious young social worker who is relocating to the Carolinas—she mentioned an air force base. Maybe that’s where a boyfriend may be stationed. She didn’t volunteer that information and I didn’t ask. I did get her to smile a few times, though she kept focused on the task at hand: getting her resume together and figuring out how to relocate to a new city and find a job..

-The harried linguistics major with a tiny diamond nose piercing who wants to teach English overseas. She wants to go to Greece—Crete, in particular. I mentioned that I wasn’t sure there was a market for that there, but that’s what she wants, and she’s certainly not going to listen to some old guy tell her how it won’t work.

-The earnest, not-so-young any more man who spent the last ten years working in finance instead of teaching math, which is what he really wants to do. After seven years of school, he’s anxious to make his move, but feels like the Colossus of Rhodes, straddling the gulf between the sure thing (boring old job) and the uncertainty of landing his dream job in teaching.

-The secretary with the Tracy Chapman ‘do, who majored in fashion merchandising of all things, and worked for HBO in New York City, had a daughter and is now back living with her mom, looking for “something stable, but in an artistic environment.” How’s that for a tall order?

Even though I complain about having to do three peoples’ jobs—and it has been hard at times—it’s been good to get back to what I liked about this job in the first place. Kathy had to remind me of that lately. Maybe some day we’ll get some more people to help us, and I hope they are good people, but in the meantime, I am fortunate to be in the company of such wonderful students, so motivated, so driven, so hopeful. There is an amazing group of young people coming up—Generation Y, Millenials, whatever you want to call them—we’ll be in good hands.