Here I Am Again.

I have begun the very unfun part of moving to Germany: a job search.

You see, the reason Paul and I are moving to Germany is to serve at Mosaik Church which is to say that we don’t want to be a burden to them. No one at Mosaik Church is full time paid staff and as we integrate ourselves into their culture we understand this means one big thing for us, we need jobs.

Last week I found a job which intriqued me. It is a two year paid Fellow program to work with inner-city kids at their schools. It is blend between being a teachers assistant and camp counselor. I am very excited about this opportunity.

What I am not excited about is the application.

I read through the application and became dismayed when they started asking to know things like why I wanted to be a part of their program and how my recent volunteer work has been important to my personal development. Something inside my gut tightened at reading their questions.

You see, it isn’t that I don’t have the experience they are looking for. In fact, I have lots of volunteer experience, I did my fair share of running around with the pipeline kids and I have the credentials they want. I just don’t want to have to explain that to them. 

This week as I have been slowly chipping away at the application I realized this sort of stressed-out-afriad-of-institution-rejection-“I won’t do it and you can’t make me”-feeling was very familiar. I realized it was the same feeling I had my senior year of high school when faced with the daunting task of writing college essays. Once again, it wasn’t that I didn’t have the credentials, I just didn’t want to have to stare down that blinking cursor and try to come up with a hook to explain my life. So I did what any rational thinking 18 year old would do.

I applied to one school, as an undeclared major where I knew I would get in and I didn’t have to write an essay.

Go Beach.

It isn’t that I regret going to Cal State Long Beach, I actually really loved that school and met some amazing people there. It is just that because I am nostalgic for the feeling of limitless potential that I wonder what would have happened if I would have dared just a little. 

So here I am again, staring the blinking cursor down. This time I am not giving up the fight. 

Jessica