Welcome to Team USA

Welcome to Team USA....

Okay, the e-mail I got from the USEF didn't say exactly that but close enough. After making a phone call over winter break and being told who to e-mail about internship inquiries, I put together a cover letter (I am way better at this now than I was a year ago), sent it to the HR person at the USEF and waited.

Literally the day I decided "I'm going to follow up on the letter since I haven't heard from anyone in nine days" an e-mail came in. There were some scary moments when I was asked about living situations and given the worst case scenario of what may happen with the internship but the main person said she really liked what my resume showed and she wanted to work with me and that she'd forward the internship on to the communications department.

Another waiting period was in the cards but thankfully it was my first weekend back in Canyon so I had more than enough to keep me occupied. Then on Wednesday, the best case scenario showed up in my e-mail with an offer that I never would have dreamed of. After a nerve wracking day of trying to call my mom to talk to her about the offer (and finally getting a hold of her at 8pm my time [where she urged me to take it] followed by calls to my dads) I needed to make sure that I could get enough time in to do a ton of driving.

Side note: I graduate in mid-May and with my horse down here and the car I want to take to Kentucky up in Washington, I needed to do a switch. So instead of going straight to Kentucky (because what smart person would think "hey, let's just drive to KY from TX"?) after I step off the graduation stage, I will be loading up Vegas, driving the 20 some odd hours it is to Washington (barring any incidents like the trip down here), spending a week or so getting stuff settled at home, then loading up Eddie (the famous traveling fish as my friends like to call him) for our second long drive in less than a month. Overall, I am guessing that I'll be driving 4,100 miles in that time frame.

Thankfully, the June starting date was approved so I can book the mileage and go to Kentucky. This is extremely exciting since I'll be working in the Communications department helping to continue building all the new stuff the USEF has put out over the past yearish (USEF Network, etc) and even developing some new things they have in mind. Plus, I'm in the middle of the Bluegrass at the Kentucky Horse Park, it can't get much better than that.

While this is just a summer gig (we haven't worked out exactly how long it will last yet, though), I'm having mixed feelings about what comes after the internship. I'd love to get a job at the USEF since my main goal is to work for Team USA and being in racing country is amazing (if you haven't realized it, I'm a bit of a horse racing nut) but, I also want to go to Europe for grad school. I'm still going to work on my Fulbright and actually have a meeting with Elly this week to discuss our next step since my personal statement questions are answered and edited, we just need to work on developing them more. Since I can't control what happens in the coming months (something that has been pounded into my head over the past year), other than doing my best work, I'm just throwing all the cards on the table and hoping something sticks.

While all of those thoughts are also going through my head, I'm just going to sit back and continue freaking out about my summer. I've often gone from completely calm to completely excited to completely freaked out this week. I'm interested to see what emotion I finally settle on.

Until next time,

Mel