"I've Never Been To Spain"

Said goodbye to the Hot Spanish Golfer Chick today. She seems genuinely sad to see me go, but I did get her email address and promised to keep her up-to-date on my whereabouts and activities.

It's starting to occur to me just how much I'm going to miss this job. I've never had a job that was this flexible in terms of schedule, what it allowed me to do (both in terms of working on my own papers and piddling around with Gameboy and reading and comics and whatnot), and the people I got to work with.

Really, I'll miss the people most of all, I think. Folks like Ev and Amy and Gretchen and Lindsay and Vicki, people I've come to love in a lot of ways over the past three years. They've become part of my extended family, with all the benefits and quirkiness that entails. Gretchen was as understanding and helpful a boss as one could ask for, and my coworkers were always kind, congenial, and genuinely willing to help one another and the students out as much as possible. It's been a great work environment, even if the student-athletes sometimes made us want to pull all our hair out or the NCAA made us want to pull someone else's hair out.

I only have two more days of work. I've got a morning shift Friday, and then the Sunday shift. That's it. Three years of my life have been spent in this office, really, and I think they've been three years well-spent. I know it goes against the trend in workplace humor, but I have liked it here. I'll genuinely miss this job.

And the Writing Center will never be the same. I'm not the only one leaving--Ev is taking off for parts unknown a couple of weeks after I leave, Amy is going to start teaching up in Moore, Brooke is headed for Massachusetts for grad school. Of the people who were working here when I came in, only Gretchen and Vicki (who had worked there before I arrived, left for awhile, and then returned about a year into my stint with the Center) will remain. The turnover rate isn't that bad when you consider this is a student job, really, but it's tough when five of us (six if you count John, who left a couple of weeks ago) are leaving all within a month of each other.

So yes, I will miss the Writing Center. Norman, for all the hatred and bile I had for it when I arrived, has become something of a home. Part of me will be sad to leave. The apartment has been my lair for three years. That is, as my father pointed out the other day, equal to the time I spent in the dorm room in MacLean with Chris and JP at Ozarks. When your life is as transient and changeable as a student's life is, that's a long time in one place. Most everyone else I know has moved at least once a year in the past four or five years.

But it's all good. After all, I got the Hot Spanish Golfer Chick's email address and two hugs. That's as nice a parting gift as one could ask for.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Son Volt, "Jet Pilot"