When Life Gives you Lemonade

In response to my last post, many of you kind readers mentioned that I was good at bouncing back from adversity, landing on my feet, making lemonade, etc. While I like to take credit for emotional strength whenever possible, I would like to posit another possible scenario.

At the beginning of 2007, my work was not making me happy. I took pride in it, and I loved my students, but I did not enjoy supervising other people, and my dean had made it clear she wanted change, but every change I suggested was shot down. I just did not feel I was getting the support I needed.

And so, two days (TWO DAYS, dear readers) before my meeting with the dean, I went to a large box-shaped book store and purchased these two books.

Did I know that the dean was going to let me go? Perhaps. I wasn't exactly surprised when she told me.

But, as the result of many conversations with Susan, I have come up with some alternatives to that line of thought.

Because I was unhappy, because I was thinking about different jobs, because I wanted to be more creative,

the universe gave me what I asked for. An opportunity to think about what I really wanted to do and to claim it.

It is true that I was offered teaching jobs just DAYS after deciding that I wanted to remain a teacher.

So perhaps that is reality. Perhaps I asked for what I wanted, and I got it.

Of course, that doesn't mean that I didn't feel rejected, sad, angry, and bitter for much of the rest of the semester, but the idea that I had something to do with the changes did help me to weather them.