Saturday, October 1, 2011

Defining the relationship: what exactly am I supposed to do again?

[This stream of consciousness was prompted by an evaluation my area director sent out. It asked "What is your job/what are your duties at work? does it match your expectations for the year? Does the job description match the reality?]

I have a really hard time answering the question "what do you do at Catholic Charities again?" I still am really unsure. I think if I made it my job to officially re-staple all I-94 documents exactly in the upper left-hand corner with a golden ratio of margins then it would take a few months for someone to notice and ask me what the hell I was doing. What I mean to say is that there are so many things that I could be doing that this job is exactly what I make of it week to week. And there is no one tracking what I choose to do. Last week I did parent-teacher conferences, helped kids start their school years, assembled backpacks and filled out after school registration forms (I was a mom-- I would now like to offer a shoutout to all parents out there who had to do this for me and my friends growing up, it is a pain). Next week I am driving refugee families to clothing closets to help them get winter clothes, I am networking with the health department to get carseats and I am filling out 20 student progress questionnares for all of my cases. The week after that I might do an airport pickup or attend a health screening with a nepali family. Right now I am sitting in a library after spending the afternoon helping an iranian girl write a resume. I really felt useful and I think it has been very helpful but it is not something that I probably should be spending my work hours doing (though it is a saturday, so I am technically not working, but I am, so really I just need to get a life outside of the office-or the refugee apartment-or whatever.) I cannot spend an afternoon with every refugee (though I wish I could) that is really more the role of a volunteer. But at the same time I am not a case manager so I have the freedom to do whatever project I wish. The end result is that I just feel a bit confused and I have this constant anxiety that I am not doing what I am supposed to do or that I am not doing enough. But I think that this is par for the course for refugee resettlement--frankly, there is not enough time or money to do the necessities so I figure that anything I may choose to do will help. (okay, maybe not re-stapling the I-94s). What I do know is that I am pretty happy in my work, and pretty damn busy (which are alarmingly synonymous things for me). So I shall continue on in the same haphazard fashion and hopefully do something right for somebody.

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