Week the First

Whenever I get a substantial amount of hair cut off, a strange sort of phantom hair syndrome happens for the next few days. I go to wash or brush my hair, and my hands and fingers and arms are used to a certain motion. After all, they have been brushing hair that has imperceptibly gotten longer for several months. I get ready to brush that same length of hair, but after the haircut, several inches are gone, and the brush slips into nothingness. For me, moving and starting a new job has been a little like that sensation: I try to do something, and I get started as I usually would, but then nothing is there. Instead of a direct relationship between needing yogurt and beer and going to Sunflower Market to get it, now when I need groceries, I have to do a Google search for a grocery store and write down directions. When asked to mail something at work, I go to do it, then realize I do not know where envelopes are. There is a disconnect between what I want to do, and the knowledge I have for doing it.

The offer for the Assistant Acquisitions Editor position at the University of Illinois Press came almost a year to the day I completed graduate school. The year in between was filled with an impossible work schedule with approximately three jobs at any given time, feelings of failure, and the adamant support of friends and family I have now left to come and pursue my publishing career. The Press is fantastic, but because I have never had a job I have so sincerely thought was a perfect fit for my skills and pursuits, it comes with a massive feeling of pressure. My first day was a total high: I met new people who were beyond welcoming and I was put to work. I could barely believe that on my first day I got to conduct research on peer reviewers, attend a meeting, do some filing-type tasks, and begin organizing my very own office. It was a pleasant surprise to feel utterly comfortable on the first day of a new job in a new environment. On my second and third days I was put to even more work and the first day high diminished. It is hard to feel successful or productive when every task takes several times longer than it should as I learn my way around a new building, new procedures, and a new copier (I swear, no two are ever the same). However, as I left messages with prospective peer reviewers, was shown how to prepare packets for the bi-weekly meetings, snatched my favorite pens from the supply area, sent rejection emails, and drafted descriptions for manuscripts, I knew I had found a place I will soon feel is my professional home.

After my first week, I woke up Saturday morning with a great deal of anxiety of all the things I could have done better over my first three days. I was worried I should know things already and not have to ask questions, and I had convinced myself I made a terrible blunder during a confused phone call. Then I walked to the Urbana farmer’s market, and I did it without getting lost. Image that! Last weekend I had never been to Urbana, and this weekend I navigated it. Contemplating that progress led me to this conclusion: I got embarrassingly lost my first few days in Urbana, and I will get lost and make mistakes at work. It may take time to navigate my new position at UIP, but it will happen eventually, and I reassure myself that, just as my hair always seems to grow back, surely but gradually, my confidence, efficiency, and knowledge in my work will grow as well.