Letting go

Tuesday I had my job interview and it went well, so I have a second interview with the person who makes the hiring decision on Friday. If all goes well I should have an answer by the middle of next week, so I'm crossing my fingers.

Yesterday afternoon I spent some time with the students who are continuing the alum network project for my Masters that I worked on last year. I explained what we did, what went well, what went wrong, and passed them the files. They explained what they plan on working on this year and then I did my best to convince them to continue some of our work from last year. I showed them that there was a profile created on Viadeo, the French professional networking site like LinkedIn, and explained that we'd gone about it the wrong way creating a profile when we should have created a hub or group.

Then this morning I get an invite to become friends with the Facebook person "Alum Network Master Communication". So what I said about creating a personal profile being inefficient and groups being good fell on deaf ears.

I put a lot of time into the project last year, as well as after it was graded (and when I no longer had an responsibility), so I'm rather attached to it. I was even willing to continue working for the alum network in some way: creating a non-profit association, moderate a group on Viadeo or Facebook, help organize a cocktail...

But I think I have to accept that the alum network will probably not be what I want/expect it to be and will not be run like I think it should be. That's due to a number of reasons: the professor running the project this year thinks the most important thing is creating a phone book with everyone's contact info; the students weren't there last year and don't have a feeling for what we did; French students in general don't get the Alumni Association idea.

So I have to let go of the project, accept that it's no longer under my influence, and that I'll probably be disappointed by what's organized in the future.