Taking the Reigns… A New Path

In May of this year my husband and I moved to Iowa from South Dakota for his job. Prior to that I resigned from my two years of teaching after college to marry the love of my life and move to South Dakota to be with him in our new journey.

Over the past two years of marriage I have given a lot of myself up to help support my husbands career. I have never resented him for this and I certainly don’t think about the “What if’s” because they would surely lead to resentment of some kind.

Instead I have embraced our path in being newly weds and have looked at life as… “Let’s make it work”.  (Inspiring words from non other then Tim Gunn on Project Runway)

I have down graded my pay role to HALF of what I made in Delaware… Yes, life is about doing what you love and not what you make… I had both. I left my life of Happy Hour Friday’s and turned them in for Cuddle Night Sunday’s.

Since moving to Iowa, I have had the opportunity to stay working for the University in Mitchell where we moved from, essentially working from out of the home. At first I was excited that I wouldn’t have to start from scratch again. I had put so much time into my job and to have to give that up was … exhausting to think about… Another new job, new area, new people…. all I wanted was for things to stay simple for a length of time.

May & June went by fairly fast and it wasn’t until mid-July that I started noticing myself … become … obsolete. I hadn’t made friends yet, work was work but I missed seeing colleagues and being on campus with the students, I started to feel … depressed.

I noticed that I didn’t want to do anything, I did my work of course but outside of that I didn’t want to run, get dressed up (who would see me anyway), or try and meet new people but how… where? Which made me fall deeper. Going back to the word… Obsolete…What a sad word but the perfect for my explanation. I have always been a person that strives to be something better whether on a sports field, in the classroom, or in my career. Don’t take this as a competition thing, it’s not. It’s my ability to want to ACHIEVE for myself. Those can often be misinterpreted. When I achieve things it’s like a high. It can be minor every day things like getting my check list done, going grocery shopping, or successfully trying a new dinner recipe. They aren’t necessarily things that I need a Plaque for to hang on my wall. However, at the end of the day… the end of my life even, I want to look back on my career and know… “I made a difference”.

In my current job I started thinking about, what can I achieve from here, I came up with a pretty short list.

That’s when I decided to go out on a limb and search the closest University’s HR to see what they had open, that closest University just happened to be Iowa State University. Already I was thinking, “Yeah right, that’ll never happen”. As I scrolled through the job options I saw a lot of Ag. research positions but they didn’t quite reach out to me, then I saw a position working with middle and high school students and I had to click to find out more.

After researching the position and seeing if I qualified to apply I saw that, yes indeed, I had met ALL of the qualifications!

I applied and anxiously waited 3 weeks… I started to wonder if I had been over looked. I told my husband, “I know this is the job for me… I just know it… all I need is that interview and I know I can show them what I match I would be.” Two days later I got a phone call to interview. I went into my interview confident like always and came out feeling like not only did I give it my best, but I really got to know these people in the department as well and we all seemed to mesh well.

Waiting…. waiting… filled out this form… waiting … fill out this form as well …. waiting … 3 weeks again go by and I get the call on Thursday, September 20th…

“We would love to offer the position to you!”

I still can’t believe it and 4 days have now passed! I will be an employee of Iowa State University.

It’s seriously such a honor to be selected but what I am more so excited about it getting to work within the school districts again. My role is to visit with middle and high school students to help them learn more about college options, financial aid, applying, and scholarships. To be able to work with students again is a blessing. To be able to create relationships and know that you are making a difference in someone’s life is something that cannot be measured by money.

I am so happy that I really evaluated my situation and decided to do something for ME this time…. not for my husband, not for the “title”, not to just have a paycheck… but to know that I am going to finally be doing something that fits who I am again and REALLY utilize my god given talents and those are…

To have patience, listen, mentor, and help students find success within education

I believe that god truly does give each of us talents and I was lucky to find mine my senior year of high school. To work with students in a more connected way will fill my heart with joy once again.