bethanyriethmeier


Embracing Options

I’ve been home from Chicago for about two weeks now, trying to organize my life post-internship and preparing for stepping back into my role as a student after two long months of playing a professional adult role. Its an interesting regression, as I think I was finally getting the hang of adulthood and now I can choose to let go of that persona for another year before the permanence of adulthood kicks in. Although I’ve found some aspects of adulting enjoyable, I’m relieved that I still have some time before I have to adult to that extent again. The beauty of the CAPS fellowship is exactly that. You get a taste of a career path or field and how you need to function within that field, but nothing is permanent. At the end of the summer, you get to say your goodbyes and step away from that experience, and have […]


Compassion Fatigue

One morning on my commute to work, the woman sitting next to me on the train struck up a conversation with me, as we are often on the same train for a portion of our respective commutes. I took two things away from that conversation, the first being that I am fooling no one in my efforts to seem like a seasoned Chicago 9-5er, as she immediately intuited that I am an intern. The second thing I took away was her reminder that I am looking at the next forty years of my life in the workforce. I’m not sure if that piece of sage wisdom was supposed to terrify me (40 years of working seems pretty daunting), and at first it definitely did. With time, however, I’ve come to regard that statement as crucial in my personal journey to find a career or goal to work towards in my […]