The Waiting Game

After months of work on my grad school application for the Masters in Public Health at the University of Washington Dept. of Epidemiology, all material has been submitted and now I wait. I wait for a response from the department, waiting to know if they value personal merit over a higher GPA, waiting to know what August 2011 will look like for me, just waiting...and patience is one of my weaker virtues.

For example, after graduating with my BS in 2009 I moved back home to Fresno to look for a solid job until I started grad school. I had a top-notch education, solid work experience and excellent recommendations and I am bilingual, so needless to say I felt confident I would secure something relevant to my career interests in public health. After a year of fruitless interviews, on-call substitute teaching and happy-peppy aerobics instructing,(and living with my parents, AGH!) I had had enough. I was wasting away in a city that defines "brain drain" like no other place in the world. Others would have kept waiting and applying for jobs, hoping to get into the company their uncle works for or getting hooked up with a retail job from a friend, but frankly, I didn't bust my behind to get my bachelors degree in genetics so that I could work at Starbucks or Forever 21. I was impatient and didn't want to waste any more of my youth and energy in a place where my talents weren't appreciated. My lack of patience brought me to a thriving city with many opportunities in my chosen profession, score!

Granted, this move came at some personal expense since I left behind everything and everyone I knew. I took a leap of faith that so far has been working out really great but could have easily gone sour. Not everyone has the audacity (or recklessness, stupidity, imprudence) that I had to move 1000 miles away to pursue my dream of saving the world one vaccine and aspirin at a time, but when I speak to friends who are in the same place I was last year, I tell them to get the heck out of Fresno. If our education and skills are of no good to the industries and economy of California's Central Valley, pack your bags, make the sign of the cross and find your success elsewhere. The job market in the Central Valley isn't just magically going to improve overnight and success in times of crisis comes to those who are willing to go after it.

Americorps presented me with an opportunity that was just perfect for me, a career of service in public health, and while I may whine a lot about the economy or how little our stipend may be, this is exactly what I wanted. I wanted to be in Seattle and I want to go to grad school at UW, so at this point all my ducks are in a row and all I can do is wait...and I hate that.