"So take this broken offering and make me whole,
Set my feet upon the road that leads me home,
let me walk as one fixed upon the goal,
even though I've got a thousand miles to go..."

Monday, August 27, 2007

So anxious

No word yet. I don't do well with the unknown, even though all signs point to an eventual offer from Dart. They don't tell you to call them if you get an offer from another company before hearing back from them if they don't want you; they don't review benefits with you if they don't want you - but if they want Mitch, they should just call him!

I'm struggling so hard to be patient. Sometimes I want to break down and just rage with frustration that things are taking so long. Then I hear that little voice that says, Trust, and the urge recedes...until the next time I think about it and get anxious all over again. I seem to pray equally hard for progress and patience.

Changing the subject: Saturday was move-in for all the freshmen! For the first time, Admissions was a formal part of the check-in process, providing students with a decal for their cars and a card with some pertinent information (like where their first advisor meeting was taking place). And there was one priceless moment: standing in Newberry lobby and hearing the first strains of Tenacious D's "F*** Her Gently" blare from the iPod. I hopped over and skipped past that one very quickly!

I also went waterskiing this weekend for the first time all summer. Yes, pathetic, given the amount of time I've spent at the lake, but the water has never been nice enough for my spoiled tastes. I lucked out this time, though: after dinner, when the lake was clear and flat, my dad took me for a pull behind his Chris-Craft, an old wooden boat he reconstructed. I think it was really cool for him to drive the boat he resurrected from a rotting pile of wood, pulling the daughter he taught to ski so long ago. At least, that's how I interpreted the huge grin he was sporting each time he turned around!

Now it's Monday and I'm back at work (sore from biking and skiing) but less stressed than last week. Well, there seems to be less work-related stress, anyway. Here's some background and then an explanation of what has been waking me up in the middle of the night:

This year, we started planning our Admissions publications very early. We always seem to run behind on them and then scramble at the last minute, and we were committed to not letting that happen this year. Because we wanted to revamp everything, we decided to hire a copywriter to give our pieces a new voice: something a little spunky that would appeal to our students while still accurately getting the important information across. I was pretty pumped about this, because I wrote the copy for our viewbook last year (in 24 hours!) and I didn't really want to get roped into it again, especially as the deadline approached and I was neck-deep in other projects. So we got this guy from Massachusetts, and he made some phone calls to interview people, and he sent over some copy...and it was terrible. Literally awful. And the clock was ticking. And we were fed up. So the project ended up on my desk, and though I really want to be modest about it, I think I turned out some of the best copy we've had in a long time. (I think it could have been even better, though, if I had more than a couple of days in which to do it.) The piece on which I worked is the one all us reps will be taking on the road with us and handing out at college fairs and high school visits. Now we've moved on to our viewbook, and because the copywriter really just took a lot of our old text (written by me last year) and tweaked it, I only had a couple sections to rewrite. Actually, I'm supposed to be working on that right now. Shoot. I'm currently fresh out of inspiration.

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