I have a job!
Actually I've had a job for a couple of weeks, but during the probationary period I didn't want to say anything about it in public.
Anyway, I now work for the Northwest Environmental Training Center as a program assistant. What that means is that I do all kinds things that contribute to the proper running of the courses. It ranges from "help us put 20 sets of course notes together" or "compile some lists of people we should market course X to" to "find experts on Y to approach as potential speakers for a conference" and "figure out ways we could make better use of IT to get things done". You can probably guess which end of that was meant to be the fun end, but what really motivates me is how much I like the place itself. Doing directly equivalent work at a place whose courses were on subjects less close to my heart would not be as interesting, nor at a place whose profits only served a faceless mass of shareholders. Here the courses themselves are things worth supporting, and all the profit gets ploughed directly into the other side of the organisation, so it funds public outreach work and environmental education in Seattle schools. That certainly counts for a lot in terms of how much I care about doing a good job.
Long story short, my goal last year was to find a job that involves getting paid to do things that I would have done as a volunteer if I only had a money tree, and I feel like I've succeeded.
Anyway, I now work for the Northwest Environmental Training Center as a program assistant. What that means is that I do all kinds things that contribute to the proper running of the courses. It ranges from "help us put 20 sets of course notes together" or "compile some lists of people we should market course X to" to "find experts on Y to approach as potential speakers for a conference" and "figure out ways we could make better use of IT to get things done". You can probably guess which end of that was meant to be the fun end, but what really motivates me is how much I like the place itself. Doing directly equivalent work at a place whose courses were on subjects less close to my heart would not be as interesting, nor at a place whose profits only served a faceless mass of shareholders. Here the courses themselves are things worth supporting, and all the profit gets ploughed directly into the other side of the organisation, so it funds public outreach work and environmental education in Seattle schools. That certainly counts for a lot in terms of how much I care about doing a good job.
Long story short, my goal last year was to find a job that involves getting paid to do things that I would have done as a volunteer if I only had a money tree, and I feel like I've succeeded.