A Temporary Fix

For the past 7 months I have been a temp at Kaplan. For the first few weeks, I would come home crying because I hated data entry. See blog from October. Data entry made me nuts. My eyes were crossed at the end of the day and my head throbbed. It honestly is really funny how things changed. The work did not change, but everything else surrounding the work did - and I guess I did too. I met friends (holla Matt & Amy), enjoyed "free bagel Fridays", carpooled to Marsh for the salad bar, and lunched with friends at El Rodeo and "the deli."

Things started to be not so bad. I began listening to "This American Life" at work. It kept me entertained for hours and now I have to dig deep into the archives to find one to listen to. I had people to lift my spirits and make me laugh. The Sanjaya picture in my cube that Matt put up created a lot of talk. I almost lost some friends when I started to accuse and become paranoid about who stole my cat post-it notes, only to find out they were just hiding from me. I talked a lot of trash about Purdue. I got reunited with an old Alpha Phi friend. I had many awkward discussions about the many similarities between "Ugly Betty" and me with co-workers. I discussed ANTM (America's Next Top Model for those non-watchers) in great detail with Matt each week. I also found out that Matt likes Raven-Symone and that almost was the demise of our friendship. Amy and I talked about all the details of her upcoming wedding (Congrats Mrs. Kern) and I got to see how everything came together.

All of this made the data entry not so bad. This place was such a stark contrast from my previous work environment, so it took a while for me to adjust to the more comfortable and easy-going surroundings. The job that I thought would be the end of me became a blessing in disguise. I couldn't have a job that required too much out of me and put too much stress on my mind. I also needed flexibility to go to appointments and I didn't have the first problem doing so. My stomach wasn't in knots about not meeting expectations and I felt like I could put in my time at work and come home to what mattered.

Yesterday was my last day at Kaplan. My family and I decided that I should be home right now. I need to spend time with my mom and help out. It was getting too hard to try to balance work and home and time has become too precious to spend away. I spent the whole day yesterday talking to people in my "palace" or "pimp cube." (I have a larger than normal cube space and no one knows why I, as a temp, got such a sweet deal.) I thought I was going to get a lot more work done than I did, but it was nice to have people in my cube and saying bye and talking with me. It was a bittersweet day. I headed out to lunch with a bunch of friends and it was great to look around the table and know I made many new friends. A situation that seemed so bleak back in the Fall, bloomed into a wonderful thing by Spring. Months ago I stopped feeling like a temp, but more like a person who was part of a group. I will miss being the princess of my cube palace which was adorned with funny cat calendar days tear-offs and Sanjaya. I packed up last minute last night because I would be too sad to sit in my naked cube for the day. I said "see you later" to my friends and headed home.

Now I am in a new chapter. A chapter that is filled with sadness, hope, love, anger, tears, helplessness, sorrow, and sometimes peace. I hope I can take what I learned from my experience at Kaplan - not how to report insane amounts of data - but the true lesson of it with me. I had no idea that I would come out of this missing it there. Something that seemed horrible become okay. I have to shake my head when I think about where I was at back in the Fall. I would have done anything to work and do something else. I thought I had it all figured out that my time there would be horrible, but I couldn't have been more wrong about it.