The Allens are Moving...

I have a job! It's in... (are you ready for this?)... North Carolina. Someone who knows all the people I worked with at the implant center at UNC wants to hire someone to work in an area where kids with hearing loss aren't getting any services. Everything has just fallen into place and I can't believe it! Dustin found a school in the same area that had his specific program and he just found out that he got accepted!

Here's some more of the story:

I had been looking at the job in North Carolina for awhile, but everything was on hold until Dustin found out if he got into school out there. In the mean time, I had sent my resume into another job in Georgia and was surprised when they wanted to do a phone interview and fly me out to see their center. I was having a hard time deciding which of the two jobs would be better because in NC I would be working all by myself which made me nervous, also I would be working with all children needing early intervention in the area and in Georgia I could specialize in just those children with hearing loss. But, I wanted to live in NC more than at wanted to live in Atlanta. So on Saturday I flew out to Georgia for an interview. From the moment I got there it just didn't feel right.

I got there late Saturday night and then went to church and got a tour of Athens Georgia from some relatives of my cousin that I am living with here in Provo (only 1 1/2 weeks left of my last internship!). Every time they would show me something I would think or say, "Oh we had that in NC." The school out there that Dustin was thinking of applying to is in Athens and while I was there looking at it, he found out that he couldn't get into the school there. But, being the ever-supportive husband, he said he could find a technical school or something like that if he couldn't got to school anywhere else and if I decided I wanted to go there.

On Monday I went to the interview. The center was amazing but I was still not feeling like it was a really good fit for me. I watched some therapy sessions and the therapist that I was really impressed with was one that was trained in NC and had interned at the same center that I had. So everything was pointing towards NC. And then when I was in the airport Dustin told me that he had found out that he had gotten in at Appalachian State University in NC. I was reluctant to give up Atlanta because of the amazing facilities they had and the security of working with a more experienced therapist down the hall. But, the center was not impressive enough to warrant making Dustin put school on hold.

So I emailed the lady from NC to let her know that Dustin had got into school and asked her some of the same questions about the job that I had found out from GA. I was so happy to hear her response and I just felt like she really wanted me to be there, which is not the feeling I got from the other center. Then I talked to her on the phone and we discussed benefits such as an 11 month salary scale so I will have time off to come home, health insurance, retirement, setting my own work schedule, etc. So we set up a tentative start date for July 1st. I still can't believe this is happening!

Now I just have a lot of packing, organizing and planning to do!