From Hipchickmamma: Be careful you never know who might be next! The game is to post 8 random facts and then tag 8 other bloggers--leaving them a comment to let them know.
Here goes:
1. I was never in the same school for two years in a row until I was in 7th grade.
2. I've lived in 13 different cities in 7 different states throughout my life, and for several months lived on the Caribbean island of Aruba. While we lived there, the island was part of the Netherlands and the Dutch Queen visited. We stood along the parade route to see her - my only brush with royalty.
3. I have no known food allergies but there are many foods that I don't like to eat; the strangest and most pervasive of these is vinegar (unless it's balsamic).
4. I've been in my current relationship for 10 years (ceremony almost 8 years ago) - which is longer than I ever thought I'd ever be able to stand being around one person. :)
5. I started college as a vocal music major, and changed degree programs in the middle of my junior year to become a religion major. (I don't recommend waiting that long to change programs.) Ironically, I started singing in jr high school and made it somewhat of a career in the church while I was in high school. I was a cantor for Sunday mass and regularly sang for weddings. Sometimes I miss that aspect of it...
6. I have family members that live in Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Colorado, Germany, Michigan, Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Whew! No wonder I don't see most of them very often...
7. I am the second person in my extended family to receive a Masters degree. First was my cousin Tina.
8. I spent one summer living in Chinatown, San Francisco. It was one of the most unique, educational and wonderful experiences of my life. I lived in a women's residence that existed in the upper 4 floors of the building, and worked at the school/resource center in the bottom 2 floors of the building. My job was to teach summer school to Asian immigrant children 1st-6th grade (music to the 1-4th grades and computers to the older kids who were too cool for music classes).
9. I have a small tatoo on my left ankle of a cross with a treble clef superimposed over it. It represents two of the most important things to my spiritual life and I got it when I came to Kansas City 10 years ago.
10. I am hopelessly addicted to musical theater soundtracks and 80's music. I know that this is sometimes an embarassment to people around me, but come karaoke time (which I enjoy immensely once I get past the initial insecurity) it is very handy!
Whew! Now that that's done, I tag Rachel, Big Unit, Tina, Mary, Donna, Andy, Mark, and Kelly. You can either post it on your blog (which is handy for those that you tag, and we'd like it if you linked to it in a comment) or just put it in comments here. :)
Thursday, June 14, 2007
One down...
On Tuesday afternoon I had my first interview. It was actually for two positions that I applied for thru AmeriCorps, both with the Kansas City office of Habitat for Humanity. I got to meet with the two people who are looking for assistants and the Executive Director and I think it went really well. There were several questions that kind of threw me off guard (about my personal life, previous AmeriCorps experience and thoughts on the separation of church and state) but I think I handled it all pretty well and I felt really good about it. Now I just have to wait to hear back from them....
Today I have another interview for a different AmeriCorps position at a local community college that is trying to start up a service learning program. It sounds like it could be very interesting as well and since I've already done one of these, I'm not feeling quite as keyed up as I was on Tuesday. Still, it probably would have helped if I had remembered to bring the specific directions on where I'm supposed to go to meet the supervisor. :) I know how to get to campus and the right building to go to, but after that I'm going to have to wing it. Wish me luck!
Today I have another interview for a different AmeriCorps position at a local community college that is trying to start up a service learning program. It sounds like it could be very interesting as well and since I've already done one of these, I'm not feeling quite as keyed up as I was on Tuesday. Still, it probably would have helped if I had remembered to bring the specific directions on where I'm supposed to go to meet the supervisor. :) I know how to get to campus and the right building to go to, but after that I'm going to have to wing it. Wish me luck!
Monday, June 11, 2007
The search continues...
I've been out of seminary for a little over 3 weeks and the job search continues... I don't know if it's the non-profit world, just the job market in Kansas City or if my resume is just that bad but I have gotten virtually nothing in response to the 10 or so resumes that I've put out around the area. I don't even get a "thank you for applying, we'll get back to you" or basic acknowledgment that my application was received. Am I doing something wrong??
This whole process has been interesting for a couple of reasons. (1) This is the first time I've ever actually done it - all of my previous jobs have simply required filling out an application (I never made up a resume until this year) and then either taking some kind of test (typing, data entry, etc.) and talking with the manager/supervisor. I'm a good test taker and do fairly well with people, so I've always gotten the jobs I was interested in before. (2) This is the first time I've been without a job when I really wanted to have one. It's really making me look at myself and my life in new ways, some of them not so good. I remember times when my parents were looking for jobs and how hard it was on them personally (hello, self esteem, where are you?!?) as well as financially for the whole family. I'm lucky that right now I'm still getting to work some hours in the seminary library while the new students get trained, but that comes to an end Jun 29th. I have a sugar mamma (love ya, babe!) but we're already starting to dip into our savings and the money I just got for graduation to pay our regular bills and I don't deal well with "not contributing to the benefit of the household." I know, keeping house is work and someone needs to do it but let's be real. I'm not raising any children and even if I were, "housewife" isn't a valued job position you can put on your resume.
The exciting this is that I do have a couple of appointments to talk with people this week - including KC Habitat for Humanity, which would be a phenomenal group to work for. The downside is that all of these positions for which I'm know interviewing are actually volunteer jobs through AmeriCorps. They pay a living stipend (which is more than I've been making working part time in the seminary library), most offer some type of health insurance, and my student loans will go into forbearance so that I won't have to worry about tacking on another monthly payment for a little while. The positions I'm looking at are all right here in the KC area and seem to be year long positions so that when I get done, I'll have a year of real experience and connections to people in the KC non-profit world that will hopefully both help me to get "a real job" afterwards.
It's not that I don't think these AmeriCorps jobs are "real" but the program was put together to encourage people to serve their communities and make it financially possible for them to do so. I was talking with a woman earlier today who recently retired and thought it was something she'd enjoy doing herself. But part of me feels like I'm just buying time, delaying the inevitable, using my fall back plan when I haven't really tried as hard as I could elsewhere. Is this just a cop out? An easy option? I'll have to see how the interviews go later this week and do some more soul searching about what all of this means....
This whole process has been interesting for a couple of reasons. (1) This is the first time I've ever actually done it - all of my previous jobs have simply required filling out an application (I never made up a resume until this year) and then either taking some kind of test (typing, data entry, etc.) and talking with the manager/supervisor. I'm a good test taker and do fairly well with people, so I've always gotten the jobs I was interested in before. (2) This is the first time I've been without a job when I really wanted to have one. It's really making me look at myself and my life in new ways, some of them not so good. I remember times when my parents were looking for jobs and how hard it was on them personally (hello, self esteem, where are you?!?) as well as financially for the whole family. I'm lucky that right now I'm still getting to work some hours in the seminary library while the new students get trained, but that comes to an end Jun 29th. I have a sugar mamma (love ya, babe!) but we're already starting to dip into our savings and the money I just got for graduation to pay our regular bills and I don't deal well with "not contributing to the benefit of the household." I know, keeping house is work and someone needs to do it but let's be real. I'm not raising any children and even if I were, "housewife" isn't a valued job position you can put on your resume.
The exciting this is that I do have a couple of appointments to talk with people this week - including KC Habitat for Humanity, which would be a phenomenal group to work for. The downside is that all of these positions for which I'm know interviewing are actually volunteer jobs through AmeriCorps. They pay a living stipend (which is more than I've been making working part time in the seminary library), most offer some type of health insurance, and my student loans will go into forbearance so that I won't have to worry about tacking on another monthly payment for a little while. The positions I'm looking at are all right here in the KC area and seem to be year long positions so that when I get done, I'll have a year of real experience and connections to people in the KC non-profit world that will hopefully both help me to get "a real job" afterwards.
It's not that I don't think these AmeriCorps jobs are "real" but the program was put together to encourage people to serve their communities and make it financially possible for them to do so. I was talking with a woman earlier today who recently retired and thought it was something she'd enjoy doing herself. But part of me feels like I'm just buying time, delaying the inevitable, using my fall back plan when I haven't really tried as hard as I could elsewhere. Is this just a cop out? An easy option? I'll have to see how the interviews go later this week and do some more soul searching about what all of this means....
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Reflections on Annual Conference
It's been a couple of days home now, so I feel like it's safe for me to talk about it. I didn't want to write from my gut level emotional reactions to annual conference, as there were a great many of those and I needed time to process...
My first observation is that Annual Conference is basically like a really long Administrative Council meeting - but with a lot more people. Ad Council is the governing body of a congregation (at least in the United Methodist Church) and this is the governing body of the conference (which in this case is the state of MO). Annual Conference, as the name suggests, happens once a year, so all of the business, all of the committee reports, all of the petitions, etc. have to get done there and then - which makes for long days.
Actually, this year there was a special session called in March so some of the business of conference reorganization had been dealt with already - but much of it is an ongoing process that seems to mainly be under the control of a small group of people known as "pathways." I wasn't involved in the conference last year so i don't know who these people are and where they came from or why they were formed, but that's who has been making a lot of big decisions. We're restructuring the whole conference, making two new offices and supposedly streamlining operations so that congregations can better focus on "making disciples for Jesus Christ." Don't get me started on this whole new mission statement thing - that's a whole different blog entry.
There were only 3 petitions for vote this year, which was very surprising to me. In other conferences there would never be less than 20 to consider. This is especially surprising given that this is the last session before General Conference (which is the once every 4 years meeting that determines the Book of Discipline, or operating rules, for the entire denomination) so anything that we wanted to bring to GC 2008 had to be voted on this annual conference. The debate over the three petitions was quite intense - all three of them dealt with matters of LGBT persons, so of course there was controversy and high emotion - and for me it felt personal. I'll have to write another entry about the petitions themselves and the debate (there were some pretty intelligent comments made - and others that weren't so much) around them, but in general I think where the conference voted says a lot. The first petition dealt with the Global AIDS fund that General Conference 2004 established. We were supposed to have raised $1 per church member to put into that fund in the quadrennium and up to this point the MO Conference hasn't so they tried to establish the first Sunday in December as a day for a special offering but the wording was changed so that it was a recommended action (so as not to overburden the beginning of Advent or something) and I highly doubt many churches will choose to participate but at least it's encouraged. The 2nd petition was split into two parts and that was very confusing for many people to deal with. It dealt with Judicial Council decision #1032 (see previous blog posts, including my first ever) and stated (1) affirmation of the Council of Bishops letter and (2) a petition to General Conference 2008 to add language that persons are not exempt from membership in the UMC based on sexual orientation or gender identity. There was a lot of discussion, but we passed the language to take to General Conference which is GREAT NEWS!! I was very proud to see that come about. The bishops' letter however, appeared to be too much for many folks to understand and it was postponed indefinitely. More on that another time. The third petition was regarding marriage - affirming the definition already in the Social Principles that says marriage is "one man and one woman" and encouraging state laws and General Conference policies that affirm that stance. This was by far the most confusing part of the whole session. After much debate around parliamentary procedure, attempts to split the questions and arguments about what the presenting committee had done and what it meant, the question was called before the petition itself was ever debated. It passed, which makes me a little sad, but it was expected.
I left Sunday evening, when there was still more business in a Monday morning session, but all in all I got a good taste for the Missouri Annual Conference and it's workings. I got to put a lot of faces and names together, hear and see more about how things work, and learn things to do for next year. I will definitely be brushing up on parliamentary procedure and am hoping to get involved with a conference team at some point (social justice team most likely). I was a voting member this year as a young adult at-large district representative. Next year I should be commissioned as a Deaconess which makes me an at-large voting member of the conference. More in another entry later...
My first observation is that Annual Conference is basically like a really long Administrative Council meeting - but with a lot more people. Ad Council is the governing body of a congregation (at least in the United Methodist Church) and this is the governing body of the conference (which in this case is the state of MO). Annual Conference, as the name suggests, happens once a year, so all of the business, all of the committee reports, all of the petitions, etc. have to get done there and then - which makes for long days.
Actually, this year there was a special session called in March so some of the business of conference reorganization had been dealt with already - but much of it is an ongoing process that seems to mainly be under the control of a small group of people known as "pathways." I wasn't involved in the conference last year so i don't know who these people are and where they came from or why they were formed, but that's who has been making a lot of big decisions. We're restructuring the whole conference, making two new offices and supposedly streamlining operations so that congregations can better focus on "making disciples for Jesus Christ." Don't get me started on this whole new mission statement thing - that's a whole different blog entry.
There were only 3 petitions for vote this year, which was very surprising to me. In other conferences there would never be less than 20 to consider. This is especially surprising given that this is the last session before General Conference (which is the once every 4 years meeting that determines the Book of Discipline, or operating rules, for the entire denomination) so anything that we wanted to bring to GC 2008 had to be voted on this annual conference. The debate over the three petitions was quite intense - all three of them dealt with matters of LGBT persons, so of course there was controversy and high emotion - and for me it felt personal. I'll have to write another entry about the petitions themselves and the debate (there were some pretty intelligent comments made - and others that weren't so much) around them, but in general I think where the conference voted says a lot. The first petition dealt with the Global AIDS fund that General Conference 2004 established. We were supposed to have raised $1 per church member to put into that fund in the quadrennium and up to this point the MO Conference hasn't so they tried to establish the first Sunday in December as a day for a special offering but the wording was changed so that it was a recommended action (so as not to overburden the beginning of Advent or something) and I highly doubt many churches will choose to participate but at least it's encouraged. The 2nd petition was split into two parts and that was very confusing for many people to deal with. It dealt with Judicial Council decision #1032 (see previous blog posts, including my first ever) and stated (1) affirmation of the Council of Bishops letter and (2) a petition to General Conference 2008 to add language that persons are not exempt from membership in the UMC based on sexual orientation or gender identity. There was a lot of discussion, but we passed the language to take to General Conference which is GREAT NEWS!! I was very proud to see that come about. The bishops' letter however, appeared to be too much for many folks to understand and it was postponed indefinitely. More on that another time. The third petition was regarding marriage - affirming the definition already in the Social Principles that says marriage is "one man and one woman" and encouraging state laws and General Conference policies that affirm that stance. This was by far the most confusing part of the whole session. After much debate around parliamentary procedure, attempts to split the questions and arguments about what the presenting committee had done and what it meant, the question was called before the petition itself was ever debated. It passed, which makes me a little sad, but it was expected.
I left Sunday evening, when there was still more business in a Monday morning session, but all in all I got a good taste for the Missouri Annual Conference and it's workings. I got to put a lot of faces and names together, hear and see more about how things work, and learn things to do for next year. I will definitely be brushing up on parliamentary procedure and am hoping to get involved with a conference team at some point (social justice team most likely). I was a voting member this year as a young adult at-large district representative. Next year I should be commissioned as a Deaconess which makes me an at-large voting member of the conference. More in another entry later...
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