this is a rush job . . . before the nyquil kicks in . . . (says she who insisted she would never use cold medicine!)but here’s my thought du jour . . . in my ongoing quest to figure out what I might want to be when (IF?!) I grow up, I went to my alma mater to get the results of yet another career testing instrument, blah blah blah . . .

in the process, we talked about looking for jobs, and she asked me how I got my current job . . . and yes, there was an ad in the paper, or maybe it was on the internet,  that I replied to . . . BUT I also knew someone who worked in the agency I am now working for . . . I shared this information with her with a bit of embarrassment in my voice, but she took it in stride, and made an offhand comment that “that’s how you GET a job, most of the time, is through networking, and who you know.”

A fact of the working world, right? and yet, as someone who is striving to be anti-racist, this doesn’t sit well with me, especially given the atmosphere of my current place of employment . . . where I am reminded of how much of an outsider I really am on a daily basis. And yet, I got this job (at least in part) due to my “connections”, right? I am certainly qualified (at least, on a good day I can tell myself that I am qualified) but I will always have those lingering doubts in my mind about how much of a factor my “connections” were in my obtaining this position.

And is that necessarily a “bad” thing, or is it just the way that the world works?! But if it’s a system in which access is granted or denied based upon arbitrary and obscure factors, then I don’t feel like it’s okay for me to say that “this is just how things are” . . .

okay. this post is a mess. next time, we write BEFORE we take the Nyquil.  and man, do I use a lot of ellipses . . .