Worker's Compensation

I like my job.

It has great perks (like $0.00 monthly rent and five parks within five minutes walking distance from our front door).

It provides great opportunities to learn concepts and hone skills that I otherwise would not develop. (I, for example, am a card carrying, certified van driver. And I know the most efficient way to clean up any variety of bodily fluid from any variety of surface. Impressive. I know.)

Lest you snicker at my sarcasm, let me quickly add that there are other training topics that have been truly invaluable: Crucial Conversations, Community Standards, various student development models, etc, etc, so forth: thought provoking concepts that have all become a part of my mental make-up.

But the best part of my job, the part I will miss the most when I leave, is the camaraderie I feel with my co-workers.

For the past year, I've worked with a small, four-person team. We've spent our staff meetings giggling (well, maybe I'll say 'chuckling' for Jared's sake...), rolling our eyes, shaking our fists, and racking our brains together. And "after work," our kids play together,

we go on walks, we share meals, we blog...(Anne, Anna, Jared). Can't imagine what this Project: Wyview year would have been like without them!

And before Wyview was DT. My heart still warms at the memory of my DT family. Jay Brown and his Tabasco loving, oh-so-generous, deep-south soul. And my DT girlfriends: the women who cringed with me though CERT training every time DT (our personal residence) was denoted a seismic disaster waiting to happen, the women who laughed with me in the corners and corridors of Spring Haven as we discussed child birth, breastfeeding, and a thousand other topics during every RA training break.

I don't know how many times I heard the comment "you DT Hall Advisors are so close!"

And I did feel close to these women. I felt understood and accepted. I felt content to be myself, but compelled to be my best self. And I felt loved. I offer one memorable example:

Two years ago, December found my husband and I caught up in a stressful medical situation. We were away from our apartment for the first few weeks of the month. I maxed out my sick and vacation time during those weeks and thus came back to work, of necessity, toward the end of December. It was a mind-whirling time.

One of these December days, my friend (three-towers-away-in-T-hall) called. This was not the first of her calls to inquire after my well being or to offer assistance of some kind. She and her husband had been doing all kinds of behind-the-scenes service in our behalf. But this call was a little different. Janna wondered if we'd like our apartment decorated for Christmas. I have to admit, I hemmed and hawed. I thought the whole thing would be a little bit of a hassle. We didn't really need Christmas decorations, I thought. They would just clutter up our already cluttered apartment. And they'd only be up for a little while before having to come down.

But, so appreciative of her thoughtfulness, I didn't say no. I secretly wondered, however, if the whole thing might just blow over. We'd have to get them a key to our storage room - maybe they'd just forget about the whole thing before we could work out the details.

But they didn't forget, they involved the rest our DT family - HA's, Manager, RA's, and one evening my little family came home from a full day of doctors appointments to the breath taking miracle of a beautiful Christmas tree, carols playing on the CD player, lights twinkling a reminder of "peace on earth, good will toward men." I sat in the Christmas glow, nursing my tired, hungry baby, and my heart soared with the spirit of true friendship, the spirit of Christmas, the spirit of Christ. Oh, what a sweet and cherished memory!

And I could site a hundred other memories. When I think of these women, feelings of gratitude still surge inside of me, in spite of the many miles that now lie between most of us.

And as my HA tenure continues, so do the friendships. Old and new.

This year our Wyview team consists of 8 rather than 4 Hall Advisor friends. Already it has been wonderful: RA training, although consuming and tinged with stress, really was great! I have been in awe of the talent cooped up inside my colleagues. It has been a week of dynamic presentations covering topics like Mentoring, Discussion Facilitating, Programming, Mediation, Community Building. One concept, in particular, that we teach our RAs in training is the principle of structural coupling, the idea that we learn from and become like the people we interact with. I truly hope to become more like these capable, delightful co-workers of mine.

So here's to a new year. And here's to friendship, which is better compensation for my working hours than all the money in the world!