The Great Fishbowl Quest #22

Campus is completely silent. Students have been gone for weeks and summer classes don't start for a couple more. My wife and I just got back from taking one of our usual evening walks around campus. It was then that I realized we're moving in five weeks and it seems that only now do we "own" the campus we're currently on. We're not going to feel comfortable walking around our new campus at night five weeks from now. We'll be starting from scratch all over again.

I've been thinking a lot about how I want to wrap up this blog. I know that I want to do the traditional "what I've learned" ending, but I don't want it to be anything that makes the search sound too simple or complex.

For example, many people will tell you that "you'll just know" when you find the right place (the same thing you hear when you're looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right), and that's misleading. I know a few individuals who have held onto that idea and haven't found "the place" and are taking jobs that they are treating as temporary (a horrible idea to treat a job as temporary because of the underlying attitude that will play into all taken actions) or are still searching.

I think that you can certainly know the wrong place(s), but falling in love with a place based on first impressions can be dangerous. The institution I have chosen became my number one, but moved up and down the list multiple times.

Started high early in my research (in my top three out of the first ten to fifteen schools I looked at), but then plummeted to the bottom third after I had researched about thirty.

Jumped high again when I interviewed at SPE, but I enjoyed a good number of the interviews I did.

Throughout the rest of my search, it peaked and fell a number of times, but with each phase I got to see more of the complexities associated with the institution, position, and professionals. Eventually, I "knew" it was the right place, but at no point did the skies open and shine a golden light with a chorus of angels singing.

I'll share more of what I learned later on, but that seemed especially important at this time. It seems that too many individuals take things at face value and base some large decisions on feelings and emotions (which provide important pieces of information, but not all the needed pieces).