At the beginning of this summer, I was quite optimistic about finding something meaningful to do with the little ground I had to stand on, job and research-wise. Considering…I didn’t start looking for a job until after Chapter Focus. Bad Melissa. Merciful God. Anyway, long story short, my plans to stay on campus in my apartment to work at some job fell through and I stayed at home in Westerville and became better friends with my parents. Basically, my parents like me [more], my parents’ friends like me…and then I started work at a good friend’s acupuncture office. Actually, Jason and I were in their wedding. Ha ha…that was a strange story that we’ll save for later!
Completely mindless work. Good hours, so that eased the terribleness. Unhappy –> grouchy –> I hate everything. Woooooooooooooooo…how silly of me. When I look back on all that fuming anger I feel very silly. And very thankful it didn’t stay that way.
Something I’m learning to do is giving praise to God right away. Usually I don’t give a second thought to attributing good things that happen to me to God right away, usually I just bask in the moment and think of ways to keep the good stuff coming.
I learned a lot of things at my boring desk job this summer…well…not many things if you’re counting, but valuable things! My boss’ schedule book is extremely unorganized, like to the max. I was in charge of it…so much power 
because he is pretty flexible -cough people pleaser.- so I schedule patients whenever is best for them…with a few guidelines of course. I’m teaching my boss to say no. Badly, because I am so bad at it! I tell patients “no” they can’t get 6 AM or 9 PM, and all is almost well. Until my boss catches a patient he particularly wants to keep, he’ll chime in and go like, “OOOH 6 IN THE MORNING IS FINE!” Okay, so not exactly 6 in the morning, but definitely not a logical schedule. He’s constantly rushing around between his 3 offices seeing patients at pretty random times. Sigghghghghhh. I hope he becomes better friends with my ba. And that he’ll actually have time to do it. So the life lesson learned in today’s blog post is that saying no is essential to the meaning of life. I’m getting a little tired =P I’ve been writing this post in bits and pieces because…I am at work right now! Doing a little more than just mindless desk work for a change.
The most most mostest thing I’m thankful for through my summer job is the patients. I met so many interesting, helpful, and encouraging people. I want to be like them when I’m old and in pain and need acupuncture. So I think one of the reasons why my job was so unbearable at the beginning was the lack of livelyness. I did not know that most of the patients were regulars, so I didn’t bother to learn their names and such. Not knowing their names was kind of hard, because this clinic is pretty personal and everyone knows everyone and their mother except me. So I decided to learn their names to make my job easier, and in turn, people would take an interest in me…which is nice when you’re stuck at a desk alone all day. I’ve never been asked my name, school, an major so much since freshman year. heh. But we would move on from that of course. My favorite lady is Carmen, she is so old and just retired from OSU where she was the Hispanic Student Adviser. The first time i met her she was in a lot of pain and I didn’t really want to talk to her because she is so old and seemed hard to communicate with. When we finally got to know one another and she found out I went to OSU, her eyes LIT up and I had never seen so alive…it was startling! She could not stop talking and as we carried on I told her of my job and research un-findings at OSU. I’m still convinced I didn’t try hard enough, but she encouraged me greatly and made me (yes, MADE me) contact her son who is a PhD MD student and has been doing research since middle school o.O He didn’t know of any research openings or anything…but he wrote me a long email encouraging me to keep trying and he sounds like a very happy person.
Wow…the more I think about this the more I’m in awe of God’s timing.
SO here’s the punch line: I have a research position interview tomorrow at 11:00! And the day after tomorrow is my last day of work here! And for this research position, I didn’t find it, or even know about it…haha. My parents again. They simply gave a new friend they recently made my contact info and that was it. And I know, I’ll probably be the test tube washer most of the time, and I also feel like getting a research position is no big deal for the rest of my Asian American friends, but this is something I want to treasure and treat well. And no, I do not have the position yet, it’s an interview, but I’m so thankful I have even that.
but nothing works the way you want it all the time. I think I’m gonna have to get used to this…failure and disappointment thing, and also get used to the giving thanks thing even though I don’t feel good about anything at the moment. Usually I can tell when I’m feeling thankful, because there’s just this happy feeling in my gut. My gut is not feeling happy. It is feeling hungry. There’s a recurring theme of food here…I feel ridiculous. Delirious. Frrrazzled from a long week….I was dropping important things left and right today and my brain was missing.
