more work (in a good way).

the last few weeks have been some of the most stressful of my life (besides maybe the few weeks before our wedding!).

one of the realities of working for a non-profit agency is that there is never enough money to do what needs to be done. there is never enough money to pay people as much as they deserve and never enough money to buy everything that you need to run programs. this has become super clear to me since i started working at a non-profit last may.

at first i was just hired for a summer position funded by the government. i knew that the job would only last 14 weeks and then i’d have to move onto something else. at the end of the summer, however, they liked me and still had work for me to do so they kept me on for 20 hours a week while i was in school. i was totally thrilled because it was my first job doing something relevant to what i’m learning in school and i LOVED it! the contract was only till the end of the fiscal year though, which happened to end on march 31^st.

throughout the fall we’ve been working on a huge proposal that would give us enough money to run the program i’m working on for three years. we thought the funding would have come through by the time my contract ended but it hasn’t, and it won’t come until september at the earliest. so all of the sudden we were faced with the reality that the agency did not have enough money to keep me on, as well as some of my co-workers.

so, to make a veeerrrrryy long story short: there was a good chance that i’d be out of work at the end of march. and then they decided to extend my contract for one month while they figured out if they had enough money to keep me. so then i was probably going to be out of work at the end of april. but today we got good news! we got an grant from the government that is giving us enough money to hire me for full time work all summer!

i am so relieved. i was panicking at the thought of having to look for another job. there’s not a lot of criminology-related work out there, especially for someone who hasn’t finished their degree yet! the thought of having to search for a new job, interview, get hired, meet tons of new people and learn lots of new things did not sound appealing.

so. best case scenario: i work all summer and then we get the funding we are applying for and then i get to work for three years doing amazing things and helping run an amazing program.

worst case scenario: i work for the summer and then look for something else while i finish school.

either way, i don’t have to look for a new job now! and that makes me very, very happy.