first week

I love my new job. My official title is operations associate. I'm being trained by the current operations associate - she is moving to the public outreach section of PP. I encourage you all to check out polarisproject.org and educate yourself and others about human trafficking. It is extremely energizing to be a part of this organization, cause, and office! Speaking of the office, we are located in a great 3 story house in the Adams Morgan section of DC. Soon we'll be moving closer to Dupont Circle into a larger 4 story house. It is simply beautiful, and as operations associate, I'm going to be planning and designing the new office space, ordering furniture, etc.

For the time being, I'm also responsible for a lot of bookkeeping. I don't really like this part, but hopefully will only have to do it for a few months because we are hiring a part-time bookkeeper to take on all of those duties. I think my favorite part of my job will be working with the fellowship program. PP (I'm using PP because if I use the actual words, this blog will be picked up as PP in the news/online by the public outreach office) has a competitive fellowship program. It arose out of the need for more bodies over which to spread responsibilities. We have fellows year round, split up into Spring, Summer, and Fall sessions. They are unpaid as of now, and the average number is about 10 per session. I'll be sorting through potential fellows' resumes, cover letters, and references and deciding whom to call in for an interview. Tomorrow I'll be conducting my first interview of a potential fellow (with Johanna).

Yesterday I had a meeting with the executive director, Mark. He told me what he'd like to see from me in terms of input. I'm going to have a good amount of flexibility in almost all aspects of my job. I've decided to take on the task of "greening" the office. It's fairly environmentally-friendly now, but there is lots of room for improvement. Since I'm in charge of ordering all office supplies, I'm only going to order 100% recycled and unbleached paper products. I'm also going to start a more organized recycling system (as of now, we don't recycle paper!). For the new office space, I'm going to try to make sure the new furniture is as "green" as possible, and will install several motion detecting light fixtures in bathrooms/hallways. I'm pumped.

I've come to realize that my vast wardrobe of jeans, shorts, flip flops, and t-shirts is now pretty obsolete. I have to dress up (business casual) to go to work. Since I'll be working year-round, my good old casual clothes will only be worn on the few vacations I'll have. I feel like I'm kind of leaving my childhood behind. But of course, that won't happen. I hope to always have my exuberance, curiosity, and blunt honesty that I attribute to my "childhood." I'll post soon about an incredible/horrible dream I had about my mom. I haven't posted in a while because I've been so tired - I don't get home until about 7pm, and have to leave at 7:30am. And I value my 8+ hours of sleep...