Three Month Review

I recently had my probationary review at WALES, which is a performance assessment that is required to be done after three months holding your position. Prior to the assessment, you  can be fired without cause. After, you're safe for nine months until your contract is up for revision. I felt pretty safe in that I would keep my position. Three months had already passed, so if he wanted to fire me, it would have been in his best interest to act sooner. Still, I was worried I would get a laundry list of "areas to improve".

Everybody's up for review at this time of year. For some reason, I decided to volunteer first. Everybody wanted to hear how it went, especially the other new employee, as she had never had a review done.

It wound up being fairly quick. He essentially said, "Fairly straightforward. I've recommended you for everything. There were a few hickups at the beginning, but that's to be expected and everything has smoothed out. I have no concerns moving forward. You do well keeping participants focused, and they all love you. Keep up the good work."

Then he said that the other part of the review was feedback and asked me how I felt about everything so far. I asked some exploratory questions, but didn't get too wild. Don't want to ruin a good thing.

We recently had our WALES Christmas party. Last party I spoke on was staff only, while this one was participant-focussed and happened during work hours.

Day started off with a gift exchange. Each participant had drawn the name of someone else, for whom they would be a "Secret Santa". We had a price limit of $10 each. Then we all went to Swiss Chalet for lunch.

I have received quite the number of gifts from office members this year. One was wine decanter, which didn't make any sense to me until I looked up what they're used for. Conveniently enough, someone else gifted me a bottle of wine, which gave me the opportunity to decant it.

Every year, I've wondered why egg nog is only a seasonal  thing. I've also wondered why it's specified s "egg" nog. If it's the only  kind of nog, why not just call it "Nog"? Why preface that this is the egg variant?

Well, this year has been pretty satisfying in that the first flavour of nog out was "Pumpkin spice egg nog". This is probably due to Christmas beginning its advertisements before Halloween is through, causing some hybrid products to be created. I recently noticed there is "Almond nog", following the theme of nuts trying to replace animal-based dairy for people who are lactose intollerant.  In addition, I saw a coconut-bsed egg nog, brnaded "Coconog".

So even if there were practical reasons behind the selections of each new brand of "nog", I'm still grateful that we have eventually branched out.

Right now I'm in Guelph for a week. WALES doesn't shut down on Christmas week because we don't prioritize holidays with a religious background, to respect the diversity of beliefs among the student population. That being said, most of the people we serve celebrate Christmas and choose to take a week off. So we leave only two staff to take care  of the few residents in the house. Because I am stationed in Guelph,I can't even offer to be backup, although it looks like they found the culprit.