"The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure."

The title is a quote from Françoise de Motteville, a French courtesan and writer. Oh how appropriate and true these words are.

So, let’s talk about how much I love my job. In fact, let’s talk about how much I love absolutely everything about this place.

To begin –
- The atmosphere at this place is amazing. A college town that is one of the most beautiful campuses I’ve ever seen. ONE of. I can’t deny the beauty of my own alma mater.
- My building is super cute. Maybe cute isn’t exactly the right word, but it’s the only thing I can think of at this time.
- My residents seem to be an eclectic mix of individuals. They come from all over the US (and a few countries) and have lots of different backgrounds. And this is just from the little that I know about them – I haven’t even started really getting to know any of them quite yet.
- My apartment and my office are AMAZING. I was initially horrified by the apartment. I can’t lie that I burst into tears when I saw it and thought I was moving into hell. As I mentioned in the previous post, NOTHING looks good when there are boxes everywhere and you’re sweating so much that you think you might melt. Once I turned it (and my office) into truly livable spaces that feel like ME, I realized how much I love them. This was reinforced when I started seeing other people’s offices and apartments. I am a lucky girl :)
- The department is more than I could ask for. With so many supportive supervisors and colleagues and feeling like I could approach anyone for assistance, this could be the perfect place to cultivate a new professional like myself.
- The community I’m working with is absolutely PERFECT for me, and I’m curious as to how they figured out that this was the best place for me to be. The placement that was done for my position was spot-on, and that goes for others here as well. How they just figure this out from interview questions that don’t even really ASK about these things, I’m not quite sure. Maybe I’ll figure this out during recruiting season this spring.

It’s quite obvious how happy I am when I put it down on paper, but I still can’t really believe it. And when others here about all the work that I’m doing (and how often that I work) they are in shock that I “put up with this” and actually claim to enjoy it. These conversations make me see how great the divide is between us student affairs professionals and the regular working folk. I never really felt a total sense of inclusion with my grad school cohort. It was no fault of the program, but as a group of students we just never really bonded. But now…..now I feel like I am with my people. Working at the place that I’m supposed to be at, doing the work that I was meant to do. Even as I write it seems too new-agey to actually leave as part of this entry, but I’m not sure I can put it any other way.

Other updates include the lack of incidents in my building. I feel like I may have jinxed myself by typing that, but I’m kind of hoping that that’s exactly what this does. Am I insane for hoping that my RAs bust a party or some random residents tonight? Or this coming week? Probably….but I want so badly to show those other residents (you know, the ones who are pretty sure they can get away with things and are just about ready to give it a shot) that they CAN’T do whatever they want and we ARE out there watching things. I’m ready to take on whatever comes at me, whatever it might be.