Some personal reflections

First, apologies for the lack of posts. I've been busy and jet-lagged.

I'm graduating in April, and I'm trying to find a job. Right now, my dream job is at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle. As a vice president in a student housing cooperative, the co-op model is very appealing to me. I find some of my current fellow co-oppers to be severely lacking in social skills, but that won't be the case at GHC. They've done a lot of innovative stuff in chronic care improvement, and I want to be a part of that. The problem is that my degree is more policy focused as opposed to hospital management focused. I will not be GHC's first choice.

If I were to do things over, and if I could keep the values and the ability to perceive injustice I acquired in undergraduate, I would either do a Bachelor of Business Admin degree followed by the policy MPH, or I would do social science in undergrad, and the management MPH.

Nonetheless, I believe I have competencies that will appeal to them, and I can make a very good case for myself. I am also applying to two health policy jobs, one based in DC, and one based in Austin, TX. I would be an excellent fit for either position.

As a side note, the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, which contains Austin, is on the approved list, as opposed to, say, Fort Worth. Austin is a great city to live in, but Texas is a very red state, and I might not feel very comfortable as a Texan. That said, there are Asians in Texas, and I would probably like Austin.

As a side note, cycling is a hobby of mine. I love road bikes. I prefer old style steel road bikes to the newer carbon bikes these days. There are a number of one person artisan steel manufacturers in the US, and I recently bought a bike from one. Most carbon bikes are mass manufactured. However, Nick Crumpton is a one-person carbon bicycle manufacturer, and he is based in Austin. Richard Sachs, probably the premier steel builder, has recommended Crumpton among a bunch of other highly skilled steel builders.

Prayers would be appreciated for my job search. I do want to work in the US, as opposed to Singapore, because a) there is much work to be done, and b) on balance, Americans value innovation more than simply doing things by the book, which appeals to my personality and my training.

My church's vestry had a retreat yesterday at the Emrich Retreat Center in Bloomington, Michigan. The grounds are beautiful and peaceful. Our seminary intern led us off with a Celtic prayer service, whose enunciation of creation theology went well with the surroundings. I've always been attracted to the Celtic theme on some level, despite not knowing much about it; in some ways, I have always been attracted to Native American theology as well, again without being Native American or knowing them in depth.

One thought came out of our retreat: our church is doing a tremendous amount of good work.

One other desultory thought: we did an assessment of spiritual gifts, based on Paul's teachings. There are supporting gifts, like administration, mercy, and helping. There are equipping gifts, like leadership (more the vision as opposed to the administration, although one could have both), exhortation, and teaching. And there are "other" gifts, like healing and discernment. The questions used to determine if we had gifts of discernment included things like, do you like to discern the difference between good and evil? Can you sense if something is in God's plan, or not? Do you like to thwart Satan in some way?

As Episcopalians, we don't mention the Devil much, and we don't often divide the universe sharply into good and evil. However, Evangelicals often do, and I was raised Evangelical. And I boldly acknowledge that there is evil in the world (but homosexuality is NOT included). I scored very high on discernment, much to the amusement of the rest of my fellow Vestry members. I was not surprised at all; my sermon on Kamehameha and Emma was practically an archetypal example of discernment in the context of spiritual gifts: discerning what is light, dark and gray. However, I do think my church is much better at discernment than they think.

Incidentally, as a psychology major, the categories overlapped significantly. From the point of view of factor analysis (think the Big 5 traits), the inventory was very poorly designed; the traits were not orthogonal to each other. Of course, Christians find it valid. And if you don't know what I was talking about, it doesn't matter.