{"id":9243,"date":"2011-07-02T17:45:17","date_gmt":"2011-07-03T00:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=9243"},"modified":"2019-12-23T15:45:37","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T23:45:37","slug":"life-in-ellensburg-all-graduated-and-employed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2011\/07\/02\/life-in-ellensburg-all-graduated-and-employed\/","title":{"rendered":"Life in Ellensburg: All Graduated and Employed!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:2997,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.cwu.edu\\\/~lajhome&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20120411141803\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.cwu.edu:80\\\/~lajhome\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-06 09:05:11&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-06 09:05:11&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:2998,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.cwu.edu\\\/~mathcenter&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.cwu.edu\\\/~mathcenter&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:2999,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.cwu.edu\\\/~writingcenter&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20120607032408\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.cwu.edu:80\\\/~writingcenter\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-06 09:05:18&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-13 08:57:19&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-13 08:57:19&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:3000,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.cwu.edu\\\/~acadadv&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.cwu.edu\\\/~acadadv&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>I know it&#8217;s been a long time since I&#8217;ve done much in the way of &#8220;real&#8221; blogging. Believe me, I <em>know<\/em> &#8212; it&#8217;s been bugging me. However, the reason for the delay has been for two very interconnected reasons: I don&#8217;t like blogging about things that are happening until they&#8217;ve actually happened, and I&#8217;ve been a lot busier here than I expected to be. It&#8217;s all for good reasons, though &#8212; Ellensburg has been treating me very well, as it turns out.<\/p>\n<p>So. <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2011\/04\/02\/ellensburg-update\/\" title=\"eclecticism: Ellensburg Update\">Last time I wrote much of anything<\/a>, I&#8217;d just joined Prairie at our little apartment here in Ellensburg, had technically\/officially graduated from CWU, and had picked up a temporary part-time job reworking the website for the CWU <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cwu.edu\/~lajhome\/\" title=\"CWU: Department of Law and Justice\">Department of Law and Justice<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Not long after starting that part-time position, the secretary for CWU&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cwu.edu\/~mathcenter\/\" title=\"CWU: Math Center\">Math<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cwu.edu\/~writingcenter\/\" title=\"CWU: Writing Center\">Writing<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cwu.edu\/~acadadv\/\" title=\"CWU: Academic Advising\">Academic Advising<\/a> centers left for a new job. Prairie put in a good word for me, and since working on the LAJ website had already put me into CWU&#8217;s system, hiring me was easy, so I added a second temporary part-time position covering the secretarial position for those three departments.<\/p>\n<p>Right about the time I was wrapping up my work on the LAJ website, the LAJ secretary put in notice that she&#8217;d also accepted a different position. Once again, I happened to present the right combination of availability and ease of hiring &#8212; with the added bonus of already having started getting to know the Ellensburg LAJ staff and faculty &#8212; so I did a sort of sideways slide from the website work into filling in as the temporary secretary for the LAJ department.<\/p>\n<p>So, for the past couple months, I&#8217;ve been working nearly full time in two temporary positions; part-time as the LAJ secretary for half the day, and part-time as the UMC\/UWC\/AA secretary for the other half of the day. It wasn&#8217;t what I was expecting &#8212; Prairie and I had both figured that I&#8217;d be spending this summer relaxing, goofing off, and generally bumming around Ellensburg &#8212; but it&#8217;s also felt good to be <em>doing<\/em> something. Plus, it seemed like both of these positions were great ways to get a foot or two in the door at CWU to see where that might lead.<\/p>\n<p>June was in many ways all about graduation. Early in the month, Prairie and I drove over to the CWU-Kent campus for the annual end-of-year banquet for the Westside Law and Justice students, at which I was awarded Outstanding Graduating Westside Law and Justice Student honors. Then, in mid-June, Prairie and I took a week off of work for the formal graduation ceremonies.<\/p>\n<p>My parents drove down from Alaska, and we started the festivities with the formal Honors Convocation here in Ellensburg, where I was recognized for achieving Dean&#8217;s Scholar status. Then we all drove over to the Westside so I could march in the Westside graduation ceremonies with all the classmates with whom I&#8217;d actually gone to school. I got my special silver tassel for graduating Magna Cum Laude, marched across the stage, and got my moment on the Jumbotron. Back to Ellensburg for a few days with my parents, a day in Olympia to meet Prairie&#8217;s newest niece, and then back to Ellensburg and back to work.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of weeks ago, as soon as the position formally opened, I put in an application for the LAJ secretarial spot that I was filling. Just over a week ago I interviewed, and early this week, I was notified that I was the chosen candidate! Right now, I&#8217;m in the midst of my two-weeks notice for my UMC\/UWC\/AA position as the paperwork goes through for the LAJ spot, then as of mid-July, I&#8217;ll officially be the Secretary Senior for the CWU Department of Law and Justice. Not bad at all!<\/p>\n<p>(<em>And<\/em> as a congratulatory prize, I ordered myself an iPad 2. It hasn&#8217;t shipped from Apple yet, but I should have it in another week or two. Yay, new techy geeky toys!)<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Prairie continues to do well running the Writing Center. At this point, we&#8217;re sure we&#8217;re set to be here in Ellensburg for at least the next year. Though we toyed with the idea of moving up to renting one of the houses nearby, we&#8217;ve decided to stay in our little apartment. It&#8217;s cute, we have it arranged so that it&#8217;s working quite well for both of us, and with both of us working good solid jobs, staying here will allow us to save a <em>ton<\/em> of money over the next year. At that point, we&#8217;ll reassess, decide what we&#8217;re going to do and where (if anywhere) we&#8217;re going to go, and our next move should be into a home of our own.<\/p>\n<p>So, that&#8217;s where things stand at the moment &#8212; all in all, pretty darn good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know it&#8217;s been a long time since I&#8217;ve done much in the way of &#8216;real&#8217; blogging. Believe me, I _know_ &#8212; it&#8217;s been bugging me. However, the reason for the delay has been for two very interconnected reasons: I don&#8217;t like blogging about things that are happening until they&#8217;ve actually happened, and I&#8217;ve been a lot busier here than I expected to be. It&#8217;s all for good reasons, though &#8212; Ellensburg has been treating me very well, as it turns out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-9243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}