My sister texted this afternoon to show us her acceptance letter. She was offered a job at the Lutheran church where her boys go to school. It’s an administrative assistant position 15 hours a week. Just an hour or so prior to this I’d texted them a picture of my new employee badge. This morning we began the first day of the orientation and training process for new hires. We watched a lot of videos.

Tomorrow and Wednesday are for clinical training. You’re not actually on the floor, you’re just getting the more specific ins and outs of your department. I have officially bit off more than I can currently chew at the moment. Yesterday evening I skipped a church meeting (Josh went for me) so I could finish a 5-7 page professional identity paper. Today I had to email my practicum supervisor and let him know I couldn’t be there today because of this training. Tonight I am staying home from one class to write a 5-page Social Identity and Cultural Self-Assessment assignment for another.

This Multicultural class is supposedly the hardest class of the program and it’s the class I am taking with the semester of taking 15 credit hours. So it’s not like I’m being a weenie about this, not that anyone has said that I am. But I am starting to feel the pressure of stressing in regards to getting everything done. There’s Thanksgiving as well where everyone is scheduled to be here over a course of four days.

The Ethnographic Observation essay isn’t due until December. I received a nice note from the host sister filling me in on what they had done for the rest of the weekend. I’m glad the other Rebekah had some personal one-on-one time with her since she was the one who was actually looking into officially joining. The entire process from start to finish takes approximately eight years. During that time you are given multiple opportunities to opt out and decide that the religious life isn’t for you.

She compared the discernment process to the process of courtship. I can’t imagine a courtship taking as long as eight years, but maybe in some other culture it somewhere exists. And it isn’t that other options aren’t religious. They had just finished hosting a vocational retreat where they teach on the four vocations: single life, married life, ordained life (priests), and avowed religious life (monks, brothers, sisters, and nuns).

There’s another girl who was there as part of the nursing staff for training. She had worked in another area long-term care facility and said they treated their employees like s*%#. It can be kind of hit or miss with these places. I won’t be able to fully know what I think until I am able to spend more time in the care units. Today they gave us free lunch so that was nice. Josh is making supper tonight before he has his meeting. We had to cancel piano lessons, but I told the boys I’d be their listener.