Day 3: Fullertons

Today my site location was Cal State Fullerton, where my sister is actually enrolled as a freshman. It seems that I'm showing up way too early for these things, because I'm always the first one there. I suppose I anticipate heavy traffic each morning, so I make an effort to leave super early.

I strolled around campus for a bit, observing the college folk and the frats and sororities encouraging new faces to rush. I was even sitting at an empty bench when a young lady with a camera approached me to do a video interview regarding 9/11. I simply told her I wasn't a student. After finding my team, we went through more training and roleplay. Afterwards, we headed to the student union to check in, but the administrator there had the scheduling all messed up. It turns out that we didn't have permission to set up a table today. So after I got all excited about meeting all these college students, we had to switch locations.

Soooo.. we moved to Fullerton College just a few minutes away. After the disappointing past two days, I was ecstatic when I managed to sign up two new members!

But that wasn't the best part. As I was chatting with a student, someone approached me out of nowhere... and it was Reca!!! It's been four years since I've seen her, and even though I was still on the job, I didn't care and just spent a good chunk of time chatting and catching up with her. As we departed, we hugged each other, but I didn't notice my supervisor/team leader looking on. We don't normally hug the people we encounter, so I'm sure he was thinking I was wasting precious time not doing my job.

Despite all my efforts of throwing myself out there, waving people down, hollering for their attention, I didn't meet the quota that all new trainees were supposed to meet by the third day. As disappointing as it should have been, it was a great opportunity to reconsider my skills and how I'm choosing to apply my energies. Because I fell short, I wasn't technically allowed to make it onto the staff. And because we had the scheduling mix-up today, I was granted an extra hour to make up that last part of the requirement on Wednesday.

But deep down inside, I knew that trying so hard to make the staff was only going to make me even more miserable. Even with the job secured, I was only going to complain every day that I came home. So tonight, I had a chat with my team leader, and realizing that canvassing isn't one of my strengths, I'm going to pursue other things within our organization, but I won't find out about what those are until the next general meeting Wednesday night.

In summary, I'm no longer forcing myself to abandon my personality and happiness. I'm still "working" for Greenpeace, but hopefully in a manner wherein I can be of greater service.