Back in 2009: Part 4

When I called my recruiter in late July, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that there was an engineering position available in Africa that had no language requirements departing in August of 2010. The registration window would open the morning of the first Monday in August. Late in the day the upcoming Monday I received a call that I had been nominated for one of four slots for that position. That day I sent an email to everyone who had written me a letter of recommendation explaining the post nomination review process.

Not long after being nominated we had a call in at work for my entire department. At the end of the call in it was announced that our department head would be moving to a new position and that the new department head would be assuming his responsibilities soon. This was disappointing. I didn't have any history with the new head. Regardless, now that I was nominated, I scheduled some face time with him on my next visit home.

A short while after being nominated I received my medical and dental packages. I scheduled visits with both my doctor and dentist in Columbia for late September. I had told my doctor I needed some paper work filled out for an overseas program, not realizing the extent of the paper work. He hadn't really scheduled the time the paper work would take but accommodated me anyway. I got a shot, blood test, urine test, other tests, full physical, history review and was set. I left my doctor a stamped envelope to send my paper work to me. The dental exam went off without a hitch. My dental hygienist laughed at all the stuff the package required, saying she hadn't done any of it since school. It felt good to be getting all this done so quickly.

I traveled up to Greenville for a day to meet with my new department head. We didn't know one another and he was new in the job. I never planned on it being that in depth a meeting, just a chance to let him know what I was up to. He was surprised, fun to talk with, a good guy, but with no prior history wasn't going to venture too far into my personal decisions. I was happy with the way the meeting went and soon was headed back to Texas. I did ask that we continue not to publicize my candidacy. Only 50% of nominated persons are actually placed in country, and so I didn't want things to fall apart and then have to explain to everyone when they saw me in a year why I wasn't in Africa. Only a few people at my company knew, and only my closest friends and family in Columbia.

When I arrived back in Texas, I was asked to join a colleague in a conference room upon arriving at work my first morning back. He had been at the site temporarily providing a little oversight as we get started. His function was similar to mine, and even though I was the project "lead," he was much more experienced than myself. He informed he would be staying on the project. He explained that it was not because I couldn't do the job, and that the decision was not intended to reflect poorly on me. His explanation was that he was sticking around because there weren't a lot of jobs in the economy and he needed to be somewhere. As logical as all that was I took it as a clear sign that some people in my company weren't confident I could do the job, and despite intents it did reflect poorly on me. More importantly, it was a sign that there were not going to be real opportunities in my company anytime soon. We were already overstaffed and now I was splitting my job responsibilities with someone who had been with the company 5x as long as I had. I had already believed it, this was just greater confirmation, that the experience I would gain by going to Africa would be more valuable to my company than if I stayed and worked for them.