'A different direction'

Friday morning came and I was tired of waiting. I had applied weeks earlier for a desk assistant position in the venerable Sooner Housing Center dorms, the place I lovingly called home last academic year.

The interview went well I felt, and based on my previous work experience, I knew my chances of employment were good. So there I was Friday morning with phone in hand, dialing the 325 extension, but I was somewhat troubled.

Thursday, I'd received a call from Mr. Tanner Cook, informing me his application had
paid off, and he'd been hired as a DA at SHC. Additionally, his brother, Hunter, and their friend were hired as DAs too. There are only so many DA jobs available, and thus my worry.

I finished punching the last digits of the OU number that would ultimately connect me with an answer to my question — would Sooner Housing Center be my home next year?

I hung up the phone several short minutes later, my answer intact.

"We're moving in a different direction," I'd been told in justification of my exclusion from the SHC team. I wonder now as I did then, what does this really mean?

I think it's basically a crap-laden term designed to make the author of it feel better about not really telling me why I wasn't hired. But who can really say?

This news left me quite disappointed. In retrospect, I didn't realize how much I really wanted this job until I got the 'thanks but no thanks.' My concentration was sketchy the rest of the morning as I kept rolling back to the no-dorm reality.

I had plans for what I would do in the dorms: meet people, play ping-pong a lot, eat every meal in a bustling community cafeteria, live-up my closing collegiate life to the fullest.

However, these plans will have to be re-drafted, incorporating my off-campus logistics.

I'm pretty much over the initial disappointment now. I know the dorms would have been good. But, there is rhyme and/or reason for this outcome, so I'm optimistic.

And, after carefully evaluating my degree plan, it looks like I'll be around for two more rounds of college. I could finish in one semester and graduate in December, but I would probably never talk to anyone and I would be a stressed wreck. I don't want this my last semester.

Thus, two easier goes will be my stretegy. And, I get to do jazz band and trombone choir again. Good times there for sure. Five-year-plan here I come, ready or not. Just call me 'Super.'

Moral of Story: before they hatcheth from yonder eggs, counteth thy feathered, birdly creatures not.