I met with the Dean of our Career Devel­op­ment Office (CDO) last week. That’s not to be con­fused with the Office of Career Devel­op­ment (OCD). She is an extremely friendly per­son who is more than will­ing to go out of her way to help stu­dents; how­ever, there is only so much any­one can help stu­dents — par­tic­u­larly non-traditional students.

I laid out the facts for her and saw her face tighten; I could almost hear her mind shriek­ing in frus­tra­tion. Full-time work; no week­ends avail­able; min­i­mum salary require­ments; IT back­ground… it just kept get­ting bet­ter. At one point I responded to the look of res­ig­na­tion on her face by laugh­ing and com­ment­ing how I’m all over the place.

And then some­thing changed. She straight­ened her shoul­ders, looked me square in the eye and told me that it can work. I men­tioned how I’m rear­rang­ing my work sched­ule this com­ing semes­ter for the medi­a­tion clinic, since there will be day­time medi­a­tions. That was all she needed to work with. I was given sug­ges­tions of paths to fol­low, sug­ges­tions of how to approach peo­ple regard­ing part-time intern­ships and names of judges who enjoy hir­ing evening stu­dents as clerks.

Most impor­tantly, how­ever, was the fact that she was now aware of my sit­u­a­tion and that I am actively look­ing for expe­ri­ence. When she expressed her hopes that she was being help­ful, I hon­estly replied that I hadn’t expected any options to be avail­able to me. She answered that there are always options; but she’s not entirely correct.

There are only options if you open your­self up to the pos­si­bil­ity that options exist and take the first step.