“You can just move into that cubicle back there,” my boss/preceptor told me after she’d finished proofing a letter I was preparing to send off to one of the area priests regarding our 5-4-3-2-1-GO! program. “You can run this program.”
I didn’t know quite how to respond. ‘Cause my first thought is to jump on it–“Absolutely! There’s nothing I’d like better.” I’m excited about this project. I think it has a great concept. I like the experience that I’m getting while working on this project. The project appears to allow me to perfectly blend my visionary giftings with my administrative giftings. I love this project. And there’s nothing I’d like better than to see it to completion.
At the same time, I’m currently working for free. I’ve read a bit of this grant and I’m pretty sure they didn’t write in for an extra employee. I’m not going to work for free forever. ‘Cause my bills have to be paid, my tuition taken care of, and I need a little left over to save for a house. That I know of, the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department doesn’t have the funds to pay me what I need.
Besides which, I have a graduate assistantship for this fall that is covering tuition and paying me a stipend. I’ve already agreed to that. And that means I’ve agreed to work no more than twenty hours a week at all jobs (including my assistantship, a 20 hour position). Even if Charlotte could pay me, she probably couldn’t pay me what tuition remission comes to.
So I said nothing.
And now I’m second guessing myself.
What if she took my silence as “I don’t want to work for you”? What if she took it as “I hate this project”? What if instead of being the “I don’t know how to respond” that I meant, she took my silence as a “I don’t know how to say it without being rude, but NO WAY!”
Words come to me after the moment in which to say them has passed: “I’d love to stay with this project, but I’ve already committed to a graduate assistantship for the fall. But if you ever find yourself wanting to hire on a community dietitian, keep me in mind.”
Ah, well. Such is life. So I missed that opportunity; there’ll be more. For now, I’m practicing that response so that it’ll flow off my tongue the next time an opportunity arises. Because I’d really LOVE to work for Charlotte in community health.