Fun Work News for Me

So my time at the COB is wrapping up next Tuesday. Wow, NEXT Tuesday. I can't believe it's been a whole year. I thought it would be a little more bittersweet for me, but mostly it's just tasting kind of sweet right now. The intern I replaced last year expressed a lot of excitement about being done with the internship, and I can understand why now.

Although the work is interesting, the people are great, and most everything about it is really satisfying, it's also a big drain on my time and energy. I guess I'm in a different mindset than someone who is looking for a place of employment in which to reside permanently. I still have my program to finish up, and I'm not sure that it's a place I'd like to work at long term.

So with the imminent end of my internship looming, I've been thinking about what additional kinds of work experiences I might be able to get to continue to beef up my resume that might carry me from this year to next. (The life of a student is funny that way. Not a lot of permanence, just kind of whatever gets me from here to there, assuming that there is always a there to be had, and that here is not for long.) I've been considering changing course in my degree program, maybe applying to the MBA program and dropping the PhD, and whatever else out there might be available to me. In doing so, I've been keeping my eyes open to new opportunities.

I just didn't really expect for anything to line up in such a timely manner. I've been on a couple of email lists for a long time. One through university recruiting services and the other through the MBA school. Both of them have not been very fruitful thus far. Judging opportunities by the subject line, I rarely even opened the emails themselves, and when I did, they were rarely worth even the few seconds I took to look at them. Until last week.

Last Monday something came up in Sandy that seemed related to my experience in HR that I thought might be a good fit. Then only a few hours later an internship opportunity came up from a sports consulting firm based out of Chicago. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to apply to both. I updated my resume for the first time in more than a year, and I shot off my one response to the sports consulting opportunity. I didn't bother with the HR one. Less than a day later I got a response telling me that they liked my resume, and that I had to complete an assignment by this upcoming Friday. Doing so would likely get me the job. I can do the job remotely, so I don't even have to worry about a commute. Woo!

The company itself is in the business of helping athletes improve at their sports. Check them out here. They do a lot of research into things like what predicts success in the NHL, what mental traits determine success on the field, understanding the value of ground balls, among other things. Knowing me, it sounds like a perfect fit, right? I can do academic type research into what makes an athlete successful. Sign me up! The only downside is that it's not paid, but it's not a huge commitment in terms of hours per week or duration of internship. We'll see if it works out.

Then in one of my final meetings at the COB today, my boss mentioned bringing me back some time in the future as a consultant for future projects. Cool, right?

I feel so fortunate to have such cool opportunities. It feels funny sharing about it here, but it's what I'm most excited about right now, so there you go.