Exhibit A: I have always, always, been grateful for my job. I can't think of another job where I could have survived 9 months of morning sickness, several state-to-state moves, and one (so far) country-to-country move, and kept the same job, provided health insurance to our family through my husband's job-search slog, and worked with the same talented and wonderful people. Despite many things in life not going the way we would have planned, I see this job, being able to work from home and take my job wherever we go, as a true God-given blessing.
Exhibit B: I have always, always felt my job is worth doing. What I produce goes to train front-line public health workers and epidemiologists. I have received, on rare occasions, face-to-face praise the work of our Center and for projects that I gave my heart and soul to - expressions of how much our content has helped or how far our content has reached across the globe. Awesome.
The surprise: I'm the effective room mom for my kid's class. I didn't even know this until yesterday, when someone from the parent-teacher fellowship (our school's PTA) contacted me about teacher appreciation week. Now that I think about it, I'm the one who shows up, on occasion at least. I only have the one kid. I can build flexibility into my schedule and it's a 5 minute walk from my front door to the classroom. I don't do it often - after all I do work full time.
The other moms? Keeping in mind there are only 11 kids in the class...of the ones I've met, one is stay-at-home for now, has multiple kids, and is extensively involved in everything school already. Several others have save-the-world jobs. And here, I mean, really, seriously, they are out there saving the world. As in Save the Children, World Vision, and UN Somalia program.
Me? I work on PowerPoint about 80% of my day. I fuss about the best verb to use for learning objectives and capitalization for bullet points. I explain how to use epidemiology. I could almost do it in my sleep by now.
I think I'm going to step up the room mom effort.
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Oh - I wish I could talk to you about your job!I work for a department of public health so it sounds like you are the type of person I look to constantly to explain to me why data and epidemiology matter. I also do a lot of PowerPoints and could use your eyes looking at my learning objectives and bullet points. I know what it's like to live in an expat community where you end up being "the one" - I read your "about" and thought ...that was me when we first moved to Pakistan so many years ago - all those moves in a couple of short years. When I'm asked where I'm from I'm also stumped and like your husband's answer - I've often used "Home is where my suitcase is" I so look forward to reading more! Great meeting you.
ReplyDeleteThe suitcase is an apt description! I've really enjoyed reading your blog and have referred several people over. We have a mutual friend who started sending along several of your posts once we became officially foreign service. I'd be happy to chat epi and trainings! I'll beg an email intro from my friend.
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