Synchros as Confirmation

This evening, I was thinking  that I haven’t experienced any synchros in the last week, then realized I heard a good one this morning – from Megan.

A little background. Our daughter, Megan, graduated from college last May with a degree in art and a minor in animal psychology.  She moved back home and eventually found a part-time, minimum wage job at an indoor playground facility for young kids. It’s an upscale place with a café and lunch menu that also has special art, dance, and movie events for kids. Non-stressful. Megan usually works in the café and has learned to make great cappuccino.

During these months, she’s been applying for internships and jobs at zoos, in animal training facilities, at Sea World, Disney,  you name it, she has put in applications.  She has the credentials for this. She spent two weeks at a wildlife refuge in Ecuador, had a month-long internship at Dolphins Plus in Key Largo, working with dolphins. She has also worked with lemur monkeys, manatees, birds. Her art thesis was on the fragmented perceptions we have humans have of dolphins. We posted some of the paintings she did for this thesis.

She has had several interviews – with Ringling Brothers (nope), Palm Beach Zoo (offered, no pay, she didn’t take it), Sea World (nope), and Disney.

She was offered the Disney internship and apparently beat out 600 applicants.  For the next six months, she’ll be working with manatees and dolphins – she has experience with both – and her hope is that at the end of the internship, she’ll be hired from within Disney for an actual job.  The pay isn’t great, but the work is exactly what she wants at this point in her life.

Here’s the synchro: last night she went to a local birthday party a few blocks from where we live. She got to talking with a young woman who works with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service , a bureau within the Department of the Interior. When Megan told the woman she was headed for the Disney internship, the woman was astounded.

It turned out she had taken a semester off from college last year because  she’d been hired for a Disney internship in their conservation program.  Because it’s Disney, the internship is prestigious – i.e., it looks good on your resume.   She loved it. She even lived in the housing that Disney provides for their interns – which Megan isn’t doing – and said that was the only thing she would change about her experience. However, she suggested that Megan attend the orientation for interns, so she can get to know them. She was surprised that Megan, as an art major, had gotten the internship.

“These internships are so competitive. It’s rare for them to hire someone that doesn’t have a major in animal psychology, marine biology, and or one of the sciences. It means your hands-on experiences really counted with them.”

The synchro confirmed the path she’s taking and she recognized it. She also recognized the fact that the woman isn’t just doing what she enjoys, but is getting paid well for it.