Ambivalence

I only have five days left at my temp job, and there's no one way to feel about it. It was originally intended to be a three month project. As those three months were wrapping up, I began to feel a bit empty. I had never before had an office job. I learned a new set of skills and abilities I didn't know I had. I developed a previously unparalleled work ethic and an obsessive attention to detail and accuracy. I was proud of what I had accomplished, and for it to end so soon after it began made me feel like I was missing out on a much grander part of who I was capable of becoming.

Then the job got extended and, nineteen months later, I'm the last one left. At the end of the first three months, a sixty person staff was cut to thirty. A year later, thirty people became seven. Of the seven, everyone but me has been hired on – or transferred to another project – by the company we’re temping for; so my last week on the job will be spent all by my lonesome. I was there on day one, October 10 2007, and now I'm Last Man Standing. It's an odd, lonely feeling.

I'm thrilled it lasted as long as it did. Compared to the service industry, it was such a low stress position it was virtually a dream. Creative problem solving was the order of nearly every day. The face and nature of the workload changed from one month to the next so I never felt locked into the same routine as I once had been, repeating monotonous patterns of drink specials and showcasing the salad bar and singing Happy Birthday a dozen times a day or more. I rose up a few ranks, worked lots and lots of overtime, and paid off FIVE credit cards. I became a manager, then a supervisor, and then the supervisor, all the while earning the trust and respect of the professionals who made this company their life's work. And this coming Friday, when I put my back to that building for the last time, I'll feel a well rounded sense of fulfillment and the swell of pride from a job well done, many times over.

But then what?

School is the next step. It was five years ago that I first made the decision to move on with my life, my dream, my career. After several rejections and a severe false start, it's finally happening. People keep asking me if I'm excited, but I don't know how to be, because I don't know what to expect. I know it will challenge me to a depth I've never experienced. I'm (most likely) getting a work study position that will utilize the skills and talents I acquired from my temp job. I'm going to be plunged into an environment I've not known in eight years with a group of people I've never met. I'm moving out of my home into a new one, most likely into a new neighborhood.

I don’t know what these classes are going to expect from me. I don't know these 10 other people to whom I'll be attached for the next three years, or if I'll have the opportunity to meet anyone else. I don't know where I'm going to live, and I don’t know what sort of lifestyle will be within my financial reach.

Yes, I’m excited. But I’m also terrified.