Getting Acquainted to Adult Life/Life as a New Professional

It is very incredibly weird not being in school.  From May-September when I didn't have a job, it was okay because it was like a summer break.  I am not a person who had a summer break for a very long time, even during college, but it still seemed acceptable.  In the fall and now again for the spring semester, it was so strange to see posts about people going back to school and not be participating.  I have been able to keep myself pretty busy because I go to the gym 4-5 nights a week and I drive 2 hours a day for my commute, but sometimes it still feels like I'm not really doing anything with my time because I don't have any homework.  I even signed up for a free online class in philosophy starting in March because I want to be learning something.

That's not to say that I'm not learning at all.  I do honestly think that I'm learning a lot every day at work.  Starting in October, I have been working at my first full-time job ever.  It was rocky to begin with; honestly, I thought for a time that I was going to go nuts (and sort of did for a while).  It wasn't what I expected and I didn't have the kind of freedom that I wanted to begin with.  I fell in love with the people that I work with instantly, but since the position wasn't what I expected, I became negative when I didn't make the kind of progress I wanted as quickly as I felt I should.  Over time, I have been able to navigate the position and how to make it my own, but still work within the expectations set forth in my job description.  I have been in my role for just over three months, and have people come to me for ideas and ask me to do additional work on top of my position.  I have been able to push forward some new ideas and start the process of coordinating some events.  My role is to enroll students, so I think that if I am allowed to do so many additional projects, that must mean that I'm doing okay.

Here are some things I'm doing in addition to my basic job requirements that I think are going to be awesome as I move forward in my career:

• Develop our military friendly webpage based on the best practices in serving veterans
• Assist in the assessment of student priorities/engagement and orientation programming and implement changes as necessary
• Coordinate events to draw in new students and retain current students
• Develop marketing materials for events and enrollment
• Blog for our new social media campaign
• Get involved in a young professionals group committee to network (this is also a personal commitment I wanted to make)

I think my main issue was that I needed to realize how slowly things happen.  I am impatient, and have had to really start to work on not being that way.  All-in-all, things are shaping up nicely.  I just can't wait to move somewhere closer so that I don't have to drive so much every day.  I'm really excited to see how things shape up in the coming months!