So the past year was quite an interesting roller coaster ride.
I quit my job, moved to Los Banos, worked at IRRI, met some interesting people, quit my job again, and returned to Deltek. It's been a dizzying ride but something that I think, no, feel, will resound for the rest of my life.
I'll probably tell my grandnieces and grandnephews about how P, Gishi and I spent a turbulent year (career-wise), and led a peaceful, bucolic life in Pleasant Village (yes, for real) at the foot of Makiling. I'll also tell them about all the rockstar-scientists of the rice-based agricultural research world and the bittersweet experience with the IRRI Ed team. I might mention that one time that I met Gretchen, the carabao.
I actually thought that I was making progress over at IE, and that I was doing significant work that impacts the whole rice-growing community and getting to be known as THAT person that does amazing instructional design things. But you know what? I knew that staying on would be too taxing mentally and emotionally AND would turn me into someone who's awfully bureaucratic and, well, them. I would've probably gone out of my mind after year 2.
While my return to DU plunges me back into the anonymity of the corporate jungle, I actually think that I'm learning so much more about my craft and I'm able to test out crazy ideas that would've been deemed too far out by the powers-that-be in the agricultural research sphere (ironic, isn't it?).