On the road

I have dropped off the face of the earth - AC admissions has swallowed me up! But today I took the day completely off from work (save running in to send some names to another counselor who needs them tomorrow) and, ergo, after sleeping in, spending 4 hours reading in bed, going to the gym, cleaning my apartment, and starting dinner... I am finally sitting down to update Spot.

Sidebar - I changed the name, in a way. Though the only French knowledge I really have is "parlez-vous français? oui, je parle français!" (translation: do you speak French? yes, I speak French! - i.e. the only French I know requires me to tell a lie) from my world languages class in middle school... The Life of La just sounds so much cooler in French - La vie de La!

So this past week was my first real week as a "road warrior" on my own. The week before I had trained with a coworker in Pittsburgh. At the beginning of the week, I was a wreck - just feeling totally overwhelmed and afraid that I definitely do not have the right amount of knowledge still to be going out and sharing the good word of AC. But training helped me see that I do know a lot and can answers questions well enough, so that was good. Pittsburgh is a nutso city tho... I normally have a pretty decent sense of direction, but I got all turned around the Burgh. Example: we left an hour and a half before a college fair, aiming to be there at least 30 minutes early, and ended up so lost that we didn't get there until half an hour into it. Ridiculous.

Fortunately this week I didn't get lost once. It's an interesting thing to go into high schools and talk to students. High schools, in general, have commonalities - they smell the same (I'm not poetic enough to describe the smell, though), they have the same sounds, and the students walking around all give off the same collective vibes. It makes me realize how far from that life I am now, and how I'm okay with that. It's tough though... we email/call students on our mailing list at the high schools we go to, but after tallying things up this week I realized that chances are not high that the ones on our mailing list are the ones who show up. Often, it's students trying to get out of class, which is unfortunate because that's not the type of student who will work at AC. Usually they're at least attentive, though, and at least one school a day will have some fantastic students, and that makes it worth it.

Wednesday was my most interesting day. My second appointment forgot I was coming, so I had lots of time to kill until my next one, and I decided to take a breather in a Dunkin' Donuts... where I was met by a retired man who apparently hangs out there every morning, who used to be sort of a sales rep and likened his career to mine, to tell me lots of stories and give lots of unrequested advice. All good and well, he was nice enough, but he talked to me for a solid hour while all I wanted to do was eat my donut and catch up on last week's Newsweek.

That night I had a college fair so I was staying over, and I stayed in a motel-type hotel. Kind of scary... I awoke about an hour after falling asleep to the sound of knocking, perhaps made-up in my head but perhaps not. And it scared the heck out of me. So now I will only be staying in certain hotels, that particular brand not being one of them, not matter how much money it saves my employer. Safety first! I still haven't worked out in my mind exactly what was going on, but I sure as heck was not moving a muscle out of my bed.

Travel is definitely not my favorite part of the job - not because I dislike traveling, of course, but because of the high school visits. But, I don't hate it, and it's only a few weeks per year... and in many ways, it's very nice to get out and about.

This week I continue local travel, where I leave my apartment in the morning and return in late afternoon. It's a nice way to do things, though I usually have to go back into the office to get other stuff done, which adds more to my plate. In October, I will make a 15-day tour from Meadville to Central PA to Southeastern PA to New Jersey and back to Central PA and back to Meadville. That will be somethin' else. I plan to chronicle my travels if I can... this week I just did not have the energy to take pictures and sum-up my days.

Annnnnd..... scene.