First Week at WALES

I have finished my first week at WALES. I have my own desk, phone extension, business email, key to the building, and they gave me an iPad. Feeling pretty official!

We've been understaffed this week. Somebody is on maternity leave, another person got promoted and is no longer in our building, and someone else is on vacation. That leaves four of us in the building. Next week, a team member is returning from vacation and we have a new staff member joining us, so we will be fully staffed.

Training hasn't been too difficult. I know most of the participants already, and many of my responsibilities are the same as when I was a student. Mostly, I help people with their goals and record progress.

Summer Program is officially over. I dropped by on Tuesday after work and helped them out with some feedback forms and I bugged my old supervisor to give me my final evaluation, but I missed out on the team discussion of the year, sorting through photos, and phoning families for reviews. I feel bad about missing the team discussion and the agency-funded lunch, but otherwise, the bits I missed aren't the most exciting parts of Summer Program.

It's weird, throughout my professional life so far, I've only had to deal with coworkers on a peripheral or temporary level. As a Direct Support Worker, I worked one-on-one, as an Independent Facilitator, I obviously worked independently, as a Safe Management Instructor, I was the only instructor ever to not be stationed on Extend-a-Family grounds (which has now changed with my new position), and as a night shift worker at Hatts Off, I belonged to the only shift that didn't have a coworker. Even if you consider the people I've served as consistent influences on my life, I would regularly only see each of them once per week. I really felt like solitude was a major theme in my life. Now, I'm involved with a team of people that I will see day-after-day for the foreseeable future. It's an odd feeling.

The first time I approached WALES after news of my promotion had occurred, I was still with the Summer Program, and we were preparing for Overnight. Traditionally, WALES volunteers its space to store food items for the weekends between Prep Week and Overnight. This time, a number of staff and participants rushed out. Everyone is cheering, somebody points towards WALES and says "This is your building!" Everyone points toward it and starts saying "This is your building!"

I'm overwhelmed with emotion. As I think of a response, the bag I'm carrying, filled with canned goods, tears open and pours across the parking lot. I bend over to pick them up and my shorts tear from waistband to leg seam.

The only solution I can think of is to grab a garbage bag and tuck it into my waistband to cover the part that had torn. For the rest of the day, everyone was congratulating me on my success, and I had to go into the Extend-a-Family main building to sign some forms. No one mentioned the garbage bag, and I was too awkward to bring it up "I don't plan on always wearing a garbage bag, and it isn't a metaphor for me being garbage!"