Of Emotion

No matter how I feel at the beginning of a work day, I normally feel differently by the end of the day. I'm finding that a phone job is way more of a roller coaster than I expected. In no particular order, my week:

• Bitch from Oklahoma. She answers, I tell her who it is, she hangs up. I call back, she picks up and hangs up. I call back, same. Repeat two more times. I call, she answers, I say "I guess this means you're not interested?" She snaps, "Well, I don't hang up for nothin'!" and hangs up. This was during a really slow morning. I wanted to fight. My biggest regret is that I actually removed her from the database. I should not be rewarding that kind of behavior. (To the Bitch from Oklahoma, this is how it should have gone: "I don't know you got my information, but I'm not interested. Can you take me off your list? I feel slightly inconvenienced, but I understand that you're just trying to do your job. And I understand that throwing a tantrum like a three-year-old is counter-productive, because obviously I'm intelligent enough to realize that you can't actually remove me from the system without me saying so. By the way, you sound like a very nice person. I wish I were nice, but I suffered emotionally from my parent's divorce and my sister's dalliance with prescription medications, so I tend to take it out on other people. I don't have a lot of stable relationships.") ...okay, clearly I'm still really resentful about the Bitch from Oklahoma. I might reactivate her in the system.
  
• Application number two! A really great woman (who is roughly 1.5 years older than me, but no matter) who basically called the school because she wanted to enroll. We talked, we apped. She was totally fine with starting classes in a week. One more form left, and she'll be good to go!
  
• I may or may not but definitely did ask my supervisor if I could go in today to get my students ready for Monday. But since I haven't graduated from the pod I'm not allowed to get overtime. Instead all of my coworkers are at the office and I'm checking my work email constantly to make sure my students didn't get in touch with me and don't need anything.
  
• A student answers the phone, "Yeah... I read some reviews of your school online and I changed my mind." I google said reviews. Yikes. The thing is, the reviews were not bad because our school specifically sucks. The reviews were mostly individuals who had bad experiences with transfer of credit or finding a job (yeah, whatever, I've heard pretty passionate complaints about my alma mater, too... and even more complaints from the world in general about finding a job...). But hearing people call everyone in the company a crook? That was rough. For-profit schools have been controversial since their creation. I know this. I had reservations going into this job because I couldn't resign myself to the idea of schools as a company. So reading this I'm feeling awful and blah blah blah... existential stuff... etc...
• The next day, a bunch of people from my pod class were discussing the web site as well as a lawsuit our company is involved in right now. Everyone is upset about it. Sometimes it's nice to reinforce that we're all in this job because we like helping people make life-changing decisions. Regardless of what we may think about the decision. The fact is, in any business people can get corrupted. That doesn't mean everyone and everything about it is bad. (Seriously, I could go on and on, but this is definitely not a soapbox for or against the industry.)
  
• Applicant number 3. Monday I take my test. Hopefully I pass so I can graduate from the pod.
  

It's harder to explain in retrospect, but even though I feel like I've hit my stride at work, I've been thinking a lot about what I'll do when I leave this job. This is my first real post-collegiate job, but at what point do I start transitioning into my career? At what point do I know what career I want? The roommate made a suggestion I'm trying out. More on that later.