Time to go

I've been horrible at blogging. I love when I'm able to update frequently and keep on top. It stresses me when I'm behind and takes time that I haven't had lately. We've had a big enough life changing event that I just need to catch up later and focus on this for a little bit.

So, back in February, Marc had a contact in Utah ask him for his resume so he could forward it on to a university that he knew was hiring. Marc had known that he was going to start job searching once he had finished his Master's Degree in March. He hadn't planned on starting the search yet, but figured what the heck, it's worth a shot! He updated his resume and sent it in. He didn't hear anything back for weeks and figured they weren't interested. So he continued to focus all of his attention on finishing school.

Marc's contact reached out again and said the company was very interested in his resume and would Marc fill out an application online? We moved forward with that, but once again, didn't hear anything back from the university. It was a little weird. Even though they had a recruiter, all of the communication was happening with one of the upper management of the university and Marc's contact. 

Marc officially finished his Master's degree on March 21. Somewhere around there he was contacted by the actual recruiter. He did a phone interview with them, took an assessment, wrote an essay and then set up a time to go down to interview in person during Spring Break. His parents came into town to celebrate completing the Master's and they watched our kids while Marc and I drove down to Utah for a couple of days. 

On the morning of his interview with Independence University, Marc found out that his old boss, and mentor, Vaughn, at BYU was retiring and they had posted his job. Oh man, what a way to rock the boat. For years, Marc has wanted to work for BYU. This job was one of his "dream jobs". He tried not to think about it too much and he drove off for the interview while I stayed at the hotel. He said the interview was the most grueling experience of his life. They just drilled him over and over again about why would he want to leave Broadview, was he prepared to move his family to Utah, how did his experience relate to this, and that. It was like being interrogated under a spotlight. After the interview, we felt like we should go down to BYU, congratulate Vaughn on retiring and test the waters there a little bit to see what the climate was like as far as the job position. I love BYU campus in the springtime. The flowers, trees, and new life everywhere is just gorgeous! We missed Vaughn initially, but he tracked us down once we left the creamery (mint brownies in hand, yum!) and we were able to visit with him for awhile. He's an amazing man! It was so nice to see him again. 

So, we didn't hear back from Independence right away. It was weird. The timing also allowed us to entertain the idea of BYU some more, and Marc applied for the job. I think we finally heard back from Independence at the end of the week (the interview was on Monday) and they offered Marc the job. We were already planning on asking for a few days to consider, to kind of see if this BYU thing would play out a little bit. When the recruiter offered the job, without prompting from us, she also said to take our time, she was going on vacation and when she got back, we could give her the answer then. We had no idea what to do. We had felt really confident about Independence and we were ready to move forward with them, but this whole distraction of BYU as a possibility made things so confusing. We waited for a few days. It was grueling and stressful. After a little bit, Marc heard from his contact friend who was asking us why we hadn't accepted the job yet! When Marc explained that the recruiter said she didn't need to know a decision for a week and a half, the contact friend said, "what?!" apparently there was a bit of miscommunication. The upper management had NEVER had anyone wait so long to accept an offer and they couldn't figure out why after all this time and all the steps Marc had to go through that they wouldn't know whether they were going to accept the offer or not. That kind of expedited the decision a bit. 

We had to have some "REAL" conversations that were hard, and felt like we were having an internal battle. Ultimately, we had a real offer from Independence, and nothing from BYU yet, but knew we were qualified for the position and had the best chance of getting a job there than we'd ever had, nor ever will probably. After praying about and a lot of deliberation, we decided that we needed to accept the position at Independence and start moving forward with them. 

It was time to go.