(If this is HUGE to you, I apologize; the font I'm using (Kidprint) is really small and doesn't show up on most computers.) Today I had NEO with Ty and another girl who also just got hired. It was very flustering, as I'm sure the first few days I work there will be as we all try to understand each other.

What's ironic is the other new girl and I are both bookish types, very quiet, very serious. Ty is this huge jokester. I have to get used to that... He pokes fun at people a lot, and being new employees, Kelly and I will get the brunt of it, I'm sure. Kelly will probably make less waves about it, though; she just graduated from high school. At NNU, surrounded by Christians who'll always love me and support me no matter what I say, I learned to speak my mind more. That's good in a way; I'm less afraid to joke around if I think of something funny. That'll come in handy later. But if Ty says something that really flusters me or upsets me, I'm also more likely to say something about it, and if you know me, I get VERY flustered in new situations. So like I said, these first few days are going to be something else... :S I just hope I don't get fired right away and I hope Ty learns to understand me very quickly. As it is, it seems like we're complete opposites in every way.

Kelly, I think, may take things better than I do. (Or maybe I'm just focusing too much on myself.) Even though we just met today, she offered several comforting comments when I confessed about how nervous/scared I was. I'm glad I'm not new alone, but boy, do I wish I was easier-going!

But, as I told myself today, and as I am going to have to keep telling myself, being perfect in the eyes of my beholders is not my biggest concern. My biggest concern is to be a light. While Ty was talking to us, he mentioned his boss and said what a nice guy he was and stuff. For some reason, it made me think of something I once heard my grandpa say: "To outsiders, Christians are usually just 'nice people'--nothing more." I want to be more. I want to go out of my way to be kind. I want them to see something different in me. I don't want to be just "a nice person." I want to be MORE.

So I am going to thank Ty the next time I see him for not yelling at me when I mentioned my sister's graduation today. :S I am also going to apologize for not mentioning it earlier, and that will be clothed with true humiliation! Er... humility. LOL. But I REALLY felt bad about that, 'cause I could tell it irked him. Oh dear, oh dear... Am I going to survive in this big, different world they call the working world? I don't know a thing!

Oh, I was going to say, on being a light: I want to be a light, and I know this is a dark place to shine in, because most of the employees there smoke or drink or both. Ty himself drinks and chews tobacco. He told us that right off the bat. That blew me away, to say the least! That is real honesty. And he was more honest than that! I already mentioned, I think, that he said, "I do cuss when I yell, though I try to hold back." He said a couple other things, too. I'm telling you, in the world I live in, you don't meet someone every day who immediately just tells you all his or her faults like that! It was amazing. I don't know how to treat it, though... Somehow and somewhere I'm going to have to learn the particulars of being a light when you know exactly what people's faults are.

And I've rambled enough, I think... Please, please pray for forgiveness in Ty's heart about Saturday and my sister's graduation. And pray that I'm smart and don't schedule anything else overlapping the hours I work!! (One of those things being getting crowns sometime this summer. Yes, on my teeth. Yes, I'm only 19. My teeth are lousy...)

That's all for now. Later everyone!

-Stephanie

P.S. I can't help but laugh at how public this diary has become to me... Oh well! Such is life, I suppose. Bye!

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