So my review boards at Mundelein Seminary had been on Friday June 4th, 2010. Starting on Monday the 7th I waited anxiously for a phone call from the rector at Mundelein Seminary to let me know if I had been accepted or not. Although I was told by numerous people that these boards indeed are mostly formality, I wasn’t counting my chickens before they hatched. As I think I said in my last post the seminary normally lets a guy know through mail if he has been accepted. I had asked to have them call me so that I could give my work as much notice as possible if I was indeed going to leave.
I wanted to give my work as much notice as possible, in the hope that I could help train in my replacement. My job isn’t particularly difficult, but there are a lot of items to juggle and keep straight of what is going on. There are also a lot of issues that seem similar, but need to be handled differently. The last reason that I felt it would be beneficial for me to help train my replacement is the idea that on the Mississippi River there are only two people doing this job specifically north of St. Louis, and the two shops aren’t even run the same… so it would be nice to get a little time turning stuff over to my replacement.
On Monday the 7th I was in and out of my work truck alone all day and waiting on a call from Mundelein… it never came. On Tuesday the 8th I was still in and out of my truck, but my boss was going to join me mid-day. I hoped that the call could come in before he got in the vehicle so that I could answer it and actually talk to Fr. Lyle. It didn’t come, and then I met up with my boss and we started driving to the next site we were going to look at. About 15 minutes after he got in my phone started ringing. I looked at it, and it was the area code that I knew to be the seminary. I couldn’t answer that call since my boss was sitting right next to me, that wouldn’t be a very professional way for him to find out I was leaving, so I had to just let the phone ring.
At our next stop I got out of the truck for a bit, and we got started on our inspection. I made some excuse to go back to the truck and I listened to the message and got the wonderful news that I had been accepted. I was almost walking on air the rest of the day, but I had to keep it under control so that I could tell my boss in a more professional manner.
We headed back to the office on Wednesday the 9th. I had decided that I shouldn’t tell my boss in the vehicle while driving, that didn’t seem very professional to me. We were set to get back to the office in time that I could ask him to take some time to meet with me yet on Wednesday afternoon… but as we drove on my boss received a call that some personal issues had come up at home, so he had to leave right away when we got back… another stumbling block in the process of telling him that I was leaving.
A week or two before this, I had typed up a letter of resignation, and saved it on my computer at work. I took a little bit of the free time to make sure that the letter said what I wanted and that I had updated the dates in it.
On Thursday morning, I requested that my boss take a few minutes to meet with me in the library at our office. When he finally got in I said to him, “I want to thank you for the opportunity to work here, and to say that I do truly enjoy coming to work, the people I work with, and the work that I do. However, I wanted to let you know that I will be quitting in August to begin seminary studies at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary for eventual Ordination to the Priesthood.” He was obviously surprised as I started the statement, and surprised the whole way through it. I then handed him the letter and asked him to read it, and if he had any questions or issues with it.
In the letter I had written that I did have a vacation approved from August 11-17 to go to Montana to see my dad and his wife. Although I was only planning on quitting with three working days after that on the 20th I stated that I hoped I could keep my vacation and he assured me that I could. I also stated that I hoped he knew that I would intend to keep working at the high level he had come to expect and he made a statement along the lines of, “I wouldn’t have ever doubted that.”
The conversation pretty much wrapped up with him asking how I wanted to let the others know. I guess we decided that we’d leave it to him to tell the other supervisors, but that I could tell everyone else.
Most of my really close friends had known that I was applying for seminary, as had most of my family. But there was a few people that I wanted to tell in person still…
I’ll write more about this later
Peace,
Adam
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