The next step....

I decided to take the part-time job with my old organization--for now. I'll keep my eyes open for something local, but as I said to a friend during a conversation the other day, there just seems to be a weird difference between how easy it is to find part-time temporary work in Baltimore, where there are a zillion non-profit organizations that are starving for people to help out (paid and unpaid), and how the area I live in now is just lacking that kind of availability. We're close to DC, so there are a lot of non-profits in this county, but they're more like the 'business' non-profits that do the research to prove the necessity of the more 'hands-on' non-profits that make up Baltimore and DC (and thanks to traffic, working in DC is just as out of the way as Baltimore is). So, I'm back in old terriroty again.

I agreed to actually go back into one of the Baltimore high schools on a temporary basis until they find a permanent replacement for that school. Apparently, just as I was sitting down to discuss what projects they needed me to work on, one of their employees up and quit (under what seem to be "suspicious" circumstances, but I really didn't care to ask) and left the school in a pretty big bind, as this is prime college application time. I spent three days in the school this week and you know what? For the first time in well over a year, I felt at home. I was in my element. It was some much-needed validation that my strong desire to finish out this last year of grad school and go back to working in a high school was not just a reason for me to think about leaving my other job--I really am happy in that setting and I think it's really where I belong at this point in my life. Yay for validation!