Straight Ahead

Like a tumbleweed atop a spinning vortex in the middle of Kansas on an early spring morning– life progresses. Biding its time and darkly lit, summer came.  But alas, once it did…

The final weeks of May faded out like the aforementioned twister, each day like the morning I cranked out 10 pages on entrepreneurship in Poland during eras of crisis and then literally ran cross-campus to a meeting that started the same time the paper was due.

It was all like that, except doubly intense because of its speed and content.

A dozen quick decisions and lots of goodbyes later– I was back in Fort Wayne.

A curious location, given that I left three years ago with no real intention of coming back.  With high school blazing behind me and an east coast liberal arts education glittering in my eye, I let “oh” and “mmhmm” get me through year one.

I’m a proud Cardinal and if CSS isn’t the best thing that ever hit me, I don’t know what is, but.  But, it is Wesleyan and for all its prickly points, pain, and talk, it’s a long way from home.  And yet, it was.  It had to be.  What else would be if it wasn’t there?  Remember, I wasn’t coming back.

Fast forward, DC and bigger dreams than this nineteen-year-old could handle.  The city stopped being just a bureacuracy as soon as I was there and learned how it worked– where name-dropping and plastic niceties met actual work.   So  I ran, flying back and forth to every intern event possible and collecting lunch dates and business cards like it was my job.  But isn’t that the point?

I left with my Jimmy Stewart/Jefferson Smith loving heart beating clear out of my chest, ready to “fight for the lost causes harder than for any other.”  My pre-arranged internship for the next summer was put on hold when opportunity in New York rapped on my door.  After all, who doesn’t want to spend a summer in the Big Apple?

A second detour through Spain and a perfect day in Paris radically changed my trajectory again when “shoot, I really only have one summer left.” shot straight from my heart to my head.

With Chris Malagisi’s “Field of Dreams” networking lecture firmly engrained in my head, I took advantage of my month at home at Christmas.  I met, talked to, emailed, phoned, follow-uped my way through 14 informational interviews.  And would you believe it?  I’m here, minus the whole I-don’t-actually-know-many-folks-in-Indiana-and-that’s-kinda-annoying thing, it’s phenomenal.  I’m here.

Here. I ran to Connecticut, DC, New York, Spain, Portugal, France, and Morocco, but I find myself here, back in good-ole Fort Wayne.  And you know what?  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Not because I’m so timid that I can’t make a home at Wes or any other place or because I couldn’t cut something different or because I have family here.  Not at all.  Quite simply, it’s just because.

How’s that for running in circles?

Training for Someone Else’s Marathon

Because internships are only three months: My experience putting a system in place for someone ELSE to manage…

So I realized last night that I have exactly three weeks left in New York.  Three weeks to write every document I planned on having done by the end of the summer.  Three weeks to complete the mammoth database.  Three weeks to follow up with everyone I spoke with at General Conference and implement a contact system that is easy enough for Jeff to manage it once I’m gone (I ❤ and miss Raiser’s Edge).  Three weeks to put my masterful and mildly obsessive and detailed planning skills to work for someone else.

At this point, it still feels like I’ve done nothing, but I’m banking on it being the feeling you get before a test when all you can think about is everything you don’t know, instead of everything you do.

Up to this point its been all prep work, but now I’m to the point that I’m actually using the skills I’ve spent the last year and half studying and testing out on small scales .  Now, I’m actually doing development work, which is cool.  I think.  This is the first time I’ve used these skills for something that actually really counted for something with a long term goal in mind.