It has been an absolutely crazy stretch of time this summer. As indicated by the tumbleweeds blowing around this site lately.
Since my last posting, our HVAC overhaul is completed (I have photos, I just need to get them on here). I was in a (minor! very minor!) car accident just before starting a week of staycation and got to drive a tricked-out loaner car for 3 weeks while my car was getting repaired, we have traveled to Atlanta, GA for the first time, we went to one of my best and oldest friend's weddings, and I am on week 2 of a new job!
I was fortunate enough to make a dream career move into one of the residential colleges on Princeton's campus. Okay...so how to explain what is, to me, a very weird concept...? I now work at Forbes College, which is not an academic institution by any means. It's in fact just a cluster of underclassmen dormitories at Princeton. Because Princeton can be large and intimidating and imposing to many freshmen (and all class years, actually!), the residential college system was set up to form little communities within the bigger orange bubble.
Students are sorted randomly into any one of six residential colleges on campus for their freshman and sophomore years. Once they are upperclassmen, then can seek other housing arrangements (in short). The residential colleges are home bases that combine students from all backgrounds, different areas of study, and different interests. One res college is not home for all of the music majors, for example. It's a bit of a weird concept, I know--just roll with it.
The story of my journey to Forbes intersects directly with my car accident, and so it kind of becomes a funny story. A friend pointed out to me just before I left for staycation that the secretary position in Forbes has opened up. It had long been a dream of mine to move into one of the res colleges, so having recently taken a resume and interview workshop that was offered by the U's HR department, I felt pretty good about my resume, so I tweaked it a bit, wrote a cover letter, and sent it off on my last day before a week off. That Sunday, John and I were in the accident when I was hit by a car that didn't yield at the sign in the circle. I'm very grateful that no humans were hurt, though both my car and the other driver's car both needed bodywork.
So that was Sunday. Monday I spent the majority of the day doing recon with insurance and all that good stuff. Liberty Mutual was fantastic and set me up with a loaner car, and even dropped it off for me and picked up my poor girl to take her to the shop. Tuesday, I checked my email and saw that I had an invitation to come in for an interview--which was a LIGHTNING FAST reaction, as I had applied like 2 business days before. I wasn't due for my loaner car until Wednesday afternoon, and was planning to go in for a Wednesday morning interview. So I got in my car, which seemed to run just fine, got me there and back safely. I got my loaner car, felt really good about my interview, and all was well.
Fast forward, I think, 6 days, and I got a call with The Offer. Again...just crazy fast! As you can imagine, I had next to no time to really process all of this, and of course it was also intense as far as notifying my then-current job! I didn't expect to hear anything about an interview until I was back from my time off, and so I had to email my office manager from vacation like, "Uhm, yeh, I just had a great interview and you'll probably get a call as a reference..." Total whirlwind.
And now I'm a Forbesian. It's been awesome, and feels both like I'm an idiot all the time because so much is new, to also feeling like I've been here forever. My former position required a lot of close collaboration with the res colleges, so I've known the staff for pretty much my whole time here. It's been a wonderful and comfortable transition.
And that is basically what life has brought us since my last post!
No comments:
Post a Comment