A few weeks ago, I hosted a giveaway for a book I recently read. I chose the winner right after it ended but realized I never posted who won. Let me remedy that.
The a post about who won the giveaway could easily just read – Congrats to Jenny! But instead, let me enlighten you a little bit about who Jenny is for those of you who don’t know her and why she I’m so incredibly happy that she won the giveaway.
Remember my last job, where I worked at the college? By far my favorite part of that job was the relationship I was able to build with the students. Even though I wasn’t working in a student affairs or teaching position, I had a lot of interaction with students due to a few of my job responsibilities. The best thing about the kind of interaction I had with these students is that I was able to build completely different kind of relationships with them than if I was in charge of disciplining them, enforcing the rules or teaching their classes.
One of my “favorite” students (not that I had favorites……) was Jenny. Jenny was a sophomore when I first met her and worked on the team of students I supervised. I quickly promoted her – which of course was an excellent decision – and she grew into one of the most reliable students I’ve ever had the pleasure to supervise. She also became my go-to person down in Kentucky much of the time, including when I needed someone to cat-sit the girls, needed help fixing my car (she’s now married to a mechanic), and needed to move out of my apartment by myself with a tiny two-door car in 100 degree heat because the movers failed to show up on time. Jenny and her now-husband are some of the warmest people I’ve ever known and I was constantly blessed to call my friends. I was living in a place where I had very few real friends and having people you know you can count on when something is really really wrong is a pretty amazing feeling. Jenny probably doesn’t know this, but I genuinely believe that she’s one of the reasons I made it in Kentucky as long as I did.
Jenny got married not long before I left Kentucky and a part of me felt like that wedding was the end of an era. My first round of kids from that job truly weren’t kids anymore. I’m so glad that I had the pleasure to watch all of them grow up from young college students into (in this case) a remarkable married woman with a grown up job, a dog, and a house.
Now that I’ve left, I definitely miss Jenny (and of course, lots of other people for those of you reading this and getting annoyed right now!). In fact, I’ll be down there next month and I’ve already requested the use of her guest room for a night. I’m so glad to know that wonderful people like this are still following the blog and keeping up with my life. I’m even more glad that I can reward them a little bit for doing so!
So, congrats Jenny for winning a copy of Lost at the Junction. And thanks for everything…