2011 A Year in Review

2011 was quite a challenging year for me on pretty much all fronts but held lessons that will most certainly stay with me for the rest of my life. It has also led to some positive changes.

It started on a very low note. On January 3rd, 2011 I left my position at Public Safety feeling rather defeated. I was no longer elligible for a student position and they were unable to hire me permanently. This was certainly not the reward I had been expecting for working so hard to finish my thesis.

On January 4th I started a position as a direct-dialogue fundraiser with Public Outreach Ottawa. Before you ask, yes I was one of "those people" who stood on the street and signed people up to make monthly donations to various charities. I felt very negative about starting the job, particularly since one of my friends had been kind enough to tell me that I would never succeed at the job which has minimum quotas that each employee has to meet every week, and that I should start applying to coffee shops right away. I did in fact manage to sign someone up the first day of work for the Ontario Red Cross and three people the second day. On my second day of work I also had several people share their sorrows with me and received a phone call from Foreign Affairs saying that there would be a position available for me eventually that would initally be casual but should lead to permanent employment.

By the end of January I had passed my evaluation with Public Outreach and became a full-time staff member. While I generally liked the work, there were some elements of working with PO that I really struggled with; I was the only employee with a master's degree and one of my supervisors was only 18 and we butted heads quite frequently. I also found it hard to handle the negativity I encountered from the general public while at work with many people telling me to stop begging or that I should get a real job. I was doing a real job, if people weren't out on the street signing people up for monthly giving I'm fairly convinced that none of the people who do sign up would be giving on a regular basis at all, and the canvassers aren't lying when they indicate that receiving monthly donations is more sustainable than lump sums in times of crisis.

Things weren't looking good on the room mate front either. The early tensions with one of my room mates had cleared up but my super-negative 32 year old room mate continued to provoke me into fights and didn't seem to have a nice word to say and the other one continued to steal my toiletries and food. I probably would have been with it if she had just asked. We decided to part ways at the end of March.

One great thing about January was having the opportunity to visit New Brunswick and speak in Fredericton and St. John about my experience working with the Halifax Refugee Clinic. This was my first opportunity to address a large group as a key note speaker and I certainly got my message across even if I was too nervous to be an engaging speaker. I also got to see part of Canada that I had never visited before. At the beginning of February I was also invited to present the qualitative results of my thesis at a conference at Dalhousie in mid-March which was also pretty exciting.

In February I had a wisdom tooth surgically removed from my jaw (I can't say it was pulled since they had to crack it out of my mouth) and things didn't go quite as well at Public Outreach and I was put on a working notice which I overcame in March.

At the end of March I started my position with Foreign Affairs for which I had very high expectations. I was hired on the basis that I had a strong background on the trafficking of small arms and light weapons and I was meant to contribute both to the administrative and program needs of my division. I found out on my first day of work that the deputy-director who had hired me was leaving her position and that I was going to be managed by two acting-deputy directors. It soon became clear that these acting-deputy directors were more interested in having me fill in for their incompetent administrative assistant than actually let me do any meaningful work. I did everything I was asked to do including hours of photocopying and sending pre-drafted emails. I had also been asked to draft a standard operating procedure for the entire division but had little time to work on it with all of my administrative tasks. I became very disenchanted and found it extremely hard to relate to the older women who I was working with, while this did not reflect in my job performance it certainly reflected in my attitude which was not good.

I burried my disappointment in other activities. I continued to work one day a week with Public Outreach which gave me a little bit of extra money but more importantly made me feel like I was actually doing something to contribute to the thing that I actually cared about which was human rights. My performance improved and so did my relationship with my supervisors and colleagues. I discovered that I much prefered having the opportunity to talk with the general public about human rights and charitable giving than vicariously supporting human security through providing basic office support. This led me to a major change in attitude. I had previously felt embarassed to be working with Public Outreach and that I wasn't living up to my full potential and in the end I concluded that I was much happier in that environment than somewhere where my creativity and intelect were stiffled because I was perceived as young and inexperienced and was just an extra body to compensate for someone else who was incapable of doing their job.

I also volunteered a lot for the NDP. In January I began volunteering both for Megan Leslie on the National Suicide Prevention Strategy and with the All Party Parliamentary Committee on the Prevention of Genocide which I quite enjoyed. When the election was called it put an end to my involvement with the National Suicide Prevention Strategy because the bill was killed as a result of the election and I finished my working with the All Party Parliamentary Committee. I then started to fill my hours with foot and phone canvassing for Paul Dewar the NDP MP for my riding. You can imagine we were ellated when we found out at his victory party that he had won by more than 50% and that the NDP were to make up the official opposition. We were equally heartbroken that the Conservatives won a majority. More heartbreaking still was the death of Jack Layton in late August. I still can't see a picture of him without feeling a great amount of sadness.

At the end of June I found out that Foreign Affairs would not be hiring me permanently because of a complication in the hiring process unrelated to my work performance. I was crushed. I had done everything I was asked to do with, at the very least, a forced smile on my face to no avail. After some hard thinking I concluded that I had given a lot to the job and had gained very little in terms of new skills and experience. So, I sat down with both of my acting deputy-directors and I explained that there were some things that I wanted to accomplish in my remaining month of work and fortunately they agreed. I was still doing more admin work than I would have liked but I was also able to work on some program related work and finish the 52 page long standard operating procedure for the division.

I also started doing a lot of networking and job applications and quickly got an interview for the CIDA internship which I now have. I also made it to the second round of consideration for the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, which is still keeping me updated about opennings and of course I also had that interview with Olivia Chow in September.

I also lived alone from March until August. Although my apartment was infested with mice, it was otherwise a positive experience and I gained the confidence and independence I needed to be a better roommate.

Since October I've been in Uganda which I can't say has been easy but it is most certainly worthwhile and I can say I do like my job. Since you've been reading my blog I won't bore you with the details. I also was blessed with the opportunity to come home for Christmas which has made me incredibly happy and given me a much needed reprieve.

On December 30th I arrived in Ottawa for the New Year's weekend. Upon openning my email I discovered that at approximately the same moment that I stepped out into the cold Ottawa air that I had received an email from a different division within Foreign Affairs indicating that there might be a job available to me with them in the early spring. I have also been preparing applications to do my PhD and a couple of other internships. I'm sure which ever of these opportunities work out, or even if none of them do, I'm in for a pleasant surprise later in the year.

Although I am in a relatively similar position to last year, facing uncertainty about my professional future and equally in the hole in terms of my love life (which remains non-existent) I feel very positive about my prospects which is certainly an improvement on last year. Rather than dreading what comes next I can't wait to start the next chapter!

So here's to 2012! May it be a year of development and happiness for you all!