Finally...... a job..... deuxième partie!

     Well friends, I have been waiting for some time to write this next post.  And man, I am so happy to finally share!

     It is with surprising regret to announce that my time at the Red Hen will be coming to a close at the end of this week.  I have come to enjoy this job SO much more than I ever thought I would, and I can honestly now say that I'm going to miss working at the Red Hen, at least a little.  Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to be moving on to a new position at a new job, but I'm really going to miss the people I work with and who have really become my friends.  The free coffee, pastries, and bread are also going to be sorely missed....... because I have really taken advantage of those benefits!  But I'm going to miss my Red Hen friends so much more.  I believe I can walk away from my time at the Red Hen with a lot of valuable experience and new learned life lessons.  This barista job was given to me in a time that I could not have needed it more, and for that I will be forever grateful!

     And now after that little tid-bit, I'm sure many of you are in ardent anticipation to hear where I will be moving onto!  Starting on the 24th of this month, I will be starting my new role of being a laboratory technician at the Illinois Eye Bank!

     God has certainly been testing me with the road leading up to this position, and it is certainly a story worth telling.  Especially for my personal blog.......

     As many of you know, and I'm sure the rest of you have speculated, receiving this barista position at the Red Hen was nothing short of a God send, but I wasn't satisfied with stoping there for a job.  So I haven't stopped the endless process of seeking out and applying to other jobs around the Chicagoland area.  And so a couple of months ago this position at the eye bank popped up while searching.  While home in Winona over Christmas I had the elation of finding out I was being offered an interview!  Finally, after the innumerable fruitless applications I have completed, someone was actually willing to give me a chance!  And so I had a one-on-one interview with the manager of laboratory services at the eye bank and was invited back a week later to have a second interview that was set up to be a group interview with a few of the other laboratory technicians.  After both of the interviews were all done I felt I had done a great job and was extremely hopeful of receiving the position.

     But to my dismay, I was not chosen.....

   I was, to say the least, devastated!  I was really starting to like the Red Hen, but the thrill of the chase for this new exciting job really got my hopes up and really made me realize how ready I was to be moving on to the sort of job I was hoping to get when I first moved down to Chicago.  So to hear that I wasn't selected really hit me hard.

     I really tried to trick myself into feeling that it was alright that I wasn't selected.  I at least attempted to put on a happy face up front, but deep down, it really sucked to not be selected!

     Roughly two weeks after I had heard I didn't get the job at the eye bank I was listening to a podcast and walking to work when I realized I was not even listening to the podcast but instead just fuming over my misfortunes yet again.  And I just remember somewhere in that walk I said a quick little prayer that was something along the lines of 'ok fine God!  Clearly if you wanted me to be done at the Red Hen I would have gotten this other job, so evidently I'm not done here yet.  So I guess I'll be fine with it too for the time being.  But I really wish I knew what the heck you have in store for me!'  And man does God work in mysterious ways......

     During my break at work that same day I happened to pick up my phone and saw that I had a missed call...... from the manager at the eye bank......
     Clearly I was baffled to see that they would be calling me so recently after they told me I wasn't hired.  I remember that night Hannah came to pick me up after work and we gave one of my coworkers a ride home, and as soon as we dropper her off I told Hannah about this mysterious phone call.  I remember the look on Hannah's face and her saying that she had a feeling that I wasn't done with them yet!  So when we got home I gave them a call and was greeted by the manager who I had interviewed with.

     She told me that first of all she was very sorry for not hiring me.  As you can imagine, this took me quite by surprise because how does one who has been bitterly brooding for two weeks respond to this apology?!  "Ummm..... well yeah you should be!", or "well thanks for the call but I don't forgive you", or "I was hoping for an apology", or "....... well yeah you should be!"  But anyway, I honestly can't remember how I responded, but I can only assume from what followed that I responded respectively.
     She then continued that I interviewed extremely well and that everyone liked me but that they were in the end unable to hire me because I had aspirations of getting accepted into dental school which would already start this fall and they didn't want to hire someone in this position for such a short amount of time when they knew other applicants were willing to stay longer.  But she did have a new proposal for me.  One of their current lab techs is leaving on maternity leave and since everyone wanted to hire me before anyway, they were willing to create a paid internship for me to fill in while their other employee was absent!

     I was speechless!  I didn't know what to say!........... but I managed to squeak out "yes"!  And so here I am!  I have yet to have the exact hard details of what I'll be doing, but I do know it will be along the lines of the job I had applied for.  Some of those tasks included calling optometrists and other physicians to review donor patient charts, reviewing donor medical history, analyzing eye tissue cell counts, dissecting the corneas and other harvestable eye tissues, packaging and sending out tissues, and I just found out recently that I will at times be assisting in eye extractions!  I am extremely excited to begin and will absolutely be sharing my experiences!

     I feel exceeding blessed for this opportunity!  It is going to feel incredible to be back in an occupation working in the realms of medicine again.  This internship is going to offer me invaluable experience in not only reviewing patient history's but also reviewing anatomy, medical terminology, pathology, microbiology, etc.  This job is also going to help support Hannah and me finically a little bit more for the time being.  I also feel blessed that this job is in fact an internship because if not I would not have the chance to be assisting with eye extractions.  I also feel that my hours are going to be much more flexible this way.  And to be truthful, being in an internship works out the absolute best for the eye bank and for me looking down the road.  All in all, this seems at the moment to be a win-win scenario, and has clearly shown itself to be a case in which God knows better than I do and will make it work.

     Well if you've actually made it this far, thank you for reading and I will be sure to post again after I begin at the eye bank!

     Cheers!