A Few Big Life Changes...All Packed Into One Post!!!!!

I realized it had been awhile since I had done a regular-length post, so here goes. A lot of kind of big and exciting things have been happening in my life recently, so I guess that, since this is a blog about my life as a “real person” (yes, I’m still not sure that I actually qualify as a real person yet, so I’ll keep using quotations), I should fill everyone in!
A few weeks ago, I sensed that I was approaching a crossroads: my job search had, up until that point, been entirely unsuccessful, so, unless I found something by the 7th of August, the date I had to be out of my Georgetown townhouse, I would probably have to go home for awhile, at least until I got a job offer. Now, for those of you who know me well, you know that I have spent MINIMAL time in Longmeadow (granted, a very nice place to grow up but not exactly a hotbed of things to do), especially since coming back from my year abroad, so the prospect of having to go home for any period of time was not exactly a welcome one.

So I decided that, in order to avoid the torturous fate of returning to Longmeadow, I had to step up the job search big time. In a two-week period, I had several interviews (both over the phone and in-person), and had set up several more. Despite being relatively new to the interview process, I came out of each of my interviews feeling confident, so I was really hoping that some of the prospects would pan out for me. Well, one beastly hot morning (really, that could describe any morning in DC) , I went in to interview for a position in the Business School at Georgetown. Not having any background in business, I was skeptical, but from the second I stepped into the office, I got a great vibe from the office environment and all of the people who worked there. I was pleasantly surprised to get an email from them an hour after my interview offering me the job!

I had another interview the next day in another office at Georgetown, and, while I came out of that interview feeling like it had also gone really well, it left me with a dilemma. That office had said that they would probably not be looking to make someone an offer until the end of the following week, and I had already told the office in MSB that I would let them know before Friday (before I left for Georgia). So I thought to myself, ‘Do I decline the MSB offer and potentially not get an offer from this other office and end up back at square one? Or do I take the MSB offer, an offer in a great office that I would love to work in [but an offer that is temporary, with the possibility of it becoming permanent after January]’. Lesson #1 of the job search: learning how to play your cards. In the end, I decided that I didn’t want to potentially end up back where I started, with no job, so, especially since I loved the MSB office so much when I interviewed there, I accepted the offer!!!!!!!

I had also been put in touch with two girls who just graduated from Notre Dame about potential housing by a friend of mine from Georgetown who also knows one of the girls. When I heard that they were looking to live in Friendship Heights, I was initially skeptical, because I was really set on living downtown. But as time went on, I began to think that living there would be a really attractive option. After all, it is right on the Red Line, so you can be in Dupont in around 10 minutes; if you’re going to live outside of the city, I think that living on the Red Line is a must. Through talking with one of the girls, I thought that our personalities would mesh very well, so I ended up deciding to live with them! All of this was decided the same week that I got my job offer, so you can see how, because of the trifecta of a job offer, finding housing and going to Georgia, it was literally my best week ever!!! I went to look at the apartment the week after I got back, and fell in love with the neighborhood (the apartment is just over the Maryland line, by about a block-and-a-half, in a really ritzy part of Chevy Chase…not that there is a non-ritzy part of Chevy Chase, but let’s just say that Tiffany’s, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, JCrew, etc. are some of my neighbors) and the apartment. It’s a really ideal setup, and I’m so glad I decided to live with these girls!
So, two weeks later, my dad and Tim kindly came down and helped me move! It has been so nice to start settling into our little nest egg and fill it with our things. I still don’t have pictures up on my walls, which is a priority; I was saying to someone that, although this sounds really silly, one thing I really wanted was to put my posters (at least, my favorite ones; those of you who know me well are familiar with my EPIC poster collection, and there’s no way I could have fit all of those in my room) in frames, so that my room looks more permanent and less like a college dorm room with posters taped to the walls. So, little by little, it is starting to look like home.

What does my daily life look like now? Well, I wake up at 5 during the week to work out in the gym in my building before work. I know that, if I waited to work out until I got home at work, I wouldn’t work out, because I am, without fail, EXHAUSTED every day after work. So I shower, change, eat breakfast and head for the metro. Life as a commuter has been interesting; rather than take one of the 30 buses, which, while convenient, take FOREVER because someone inevitably wants to get on or off at every stop, I opt for the metro to Dupont and then a GUTS bus. Door-to-door, the commute takes 35-40 minutes, which isn’t too awful. What IS awful is how expensive it is to commute; I die inside a little bit every time I have to add money to my Smart Trip, which is VERY often. Unlike every other major city, which has monthly commuter value passes, DC has shunned any such money-saving plans. So basically, if you’re going at peak hours (or the newly classified peak-of-the-peak hours), you’re going to have to pay through the nose to commute. With the new fare increases (more of which I’m sure will come to help a fledgling WMATA), it sometimes feels like I’m selling my soul to the metro. Gone are the days of spontaneous shopping, because I now have to choose between that cute dress and commuting to work.

Anyway, since we had Orientation for our students during much of my first two weeks of work, I wasn’t getting home until 7:30 or 8, and sometimes even 8:30. When you consider that I am in bed by 10 to start the next day anew at 5, that means that I basically don’t spend much time at home, nor do I have much time for myself during the week. These are two things that I am not at all used to; even during college, when we had class during the day, my roommates and I spent a fair amount of time at home. And while we did have ridiculous amounts of homework, there was almost always time to watch a TV show or read a magazine, if we chose to do so. Now, basically all I want to do is collapse into my bed and watch a movie or an episode of a TV show while I eat dinner (since our dining room tale still hadn’t arrived when I left to go up to the Lake; but, I’m not going to lie, I did enjoy eating dinner in my room, because it meant that I got to stretch out on my comfy bed). I have gone to happy hour a couple of times since starting work, which I hope to do more of once I get into a more normal 9-5 routine at work, but the combination of being exhausted after work and going through a tough time in which I haven’t really felt like myself and have just needed time alone have meant that I really just want to come home after work and veg. But again, I think that that should change the more I adjust to my routine; however, I will still have to keep grandma-like hours during the week so I can get up to work out. I feel like I’m turning into my father more and more every day, since our early-morning, pre-work exercise routines and early-to-bed times are starting to resemble each other!

So I GUESS I should talk about my job now! Like I said, I loved the feel of the office and all of the staff when I interviewed there. It is a really small, all-encompassing office, so there is always a lot of work to be done. My coworkers and our students are what make it worth it to come to work every morning; I’m sure there will come a time when the students will come in asking demanding or annoying questions, but for now, at least the first years are so sweet and unassuming, particularly the international students, who we have gotten to spend even more time getting to know since we had a separate international student orientation before general orientation began. Okay, I’m kind of biased towards the international students, because it is because of them that I get to practice my French and Spanish!!!!! I’m giddy every time I get to speak one of those two languages with them, and they are always pleasantly shocked to find out that I speak them. It’s okay, I’m fine with being a language freak…Adjusting to working 9-to-5 has been interesting; I find that, by the time I get home at the end of the day, I’m totally gassed. Hopefully, once I get into more of a routine, it will be easier. One thing I’ve learned though from my first few weeks of work? Heels are not my friends. I’ve always known that I didn’t need to wear heels- I already have a certain height advantage over most people, especially other women. But you can imagine that, wanting to look cute and professional during my first few weeks at work, I whipped out the heels. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m going to put some lucky podiatrist’s children through college someday (add to this a work injury incurred when I essentially dropped the corner of a heavy wooden table on my toe. Essentially a toe massacre, and, embarrassingly, the only casualty of Orientation Week).

I'll try to churn out a Lake post within the next few days...