Last Friday, the day of my first tax training, was my deskmate and fellow VISTA Gabrielle's last day as a VISTA. Sadness! She is moving to New Mexico, which is totally exciting, but I will definitely miss having her around.
Because she spent most of her year of service in Toledo doing things related to food stamp outreach and a hungar study, and only started doing site development and counselor trainings (my job) around when I started, we were being trained and learning the ropes together. Even though we were at the same level in that regard, it was nice to have a cohort who'd been there longer to help sort everything out.
We shared a desk and a phone, although we weren't often there at the same time. It was nice to share rides when we both had to go out of town and I enjoyed our long talks about life and religion and boys and cats. Good luck Brie!
While I'm sad to see Brie go, I was excited to meet Maureen, the new VISTA replacing her. She attended one of my trainings last week, fresh on the heels of a bunch of other trainings, and was understandably overwhelmed by everything. But don't worry, Maureen, it will get better!
The difference between my confidence level at the beginning of October when I did my first training and the end of October -- only about 5-6 trainings later -- was huge. It seemed like I'd been doing it way longer than one month.
However, now that I'm finally feeling pretty confident about benefits, I have taxes to trip me up. So no worries, dad, I'm sure I'll still have stupid blunders to write about here...
So, welcome aboard, Maureen! I'm excited to work with you this year!
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