"Mom, I have bad news ... I got the job."

Editor's note: This post was actually written a couple weeks ago, but I didn't have the blog active at that point.

On Tuesday, August 12, I receieved perhaps the most exciting phone call of my young life. After a summer spent quite contentedly minimally-employed (though I often referred to myself as unemployed because it felt that way after I'd grown accustomed to 70-hour work weeks, I was still working part-time at The Record), I received a phone call from Journalists for Human Rights.

While visiting with my friend Trish, I noticed a message on my old cell phone, the Cord one that should have been defunct months previous, and I anxiously dialed JHR's Toronto office. In my continued quest not to get my hopes up, even as I dialed, I worried about my poor friend and how awkward it would be for her to be the only one present when I received the crushing rejection that would end my first attempt to land a job on the African continent.

Furthering the anticipation, I was promptly put on hold, presumably while my file was found and the voice on the other end of the line prepared her consolatory or congratulatory tone accordingly.

"Hi Mike, thanks for holding. We were calling to offer you the position of radio trainer in Sierra Leone ..."

Never mind that it wasn't the position I applied for and my radio experience was a whopping one year with Laurier's less than stellar, online-only campus radio station. I accepted immediately. And then smiled a lot. I rejoiced with Trish and called the friends I knew would be most eager to hear the news. And then I prepared for a more solemn encounter, as I heard the door open and my mom arrive home.

"Mom, I have bad news ... I got the job."

To her credit, my mother - she of the perpetual worry - took the news very well. She doesn't want me to go. I know this. In fact, I'm beginning to think I've noticed her making all my favourite meals, and can't help but wonder if it's a subtle reminder of all the good things I'll miss. But my mom also knows that I really want to do this and that she can't really stop me anyway, and she's trying really hard to be happy for me.

And so, one month from tomorrow, I board a British Airways flight that will, after 24 hours (factoring in time changes), drop me in my temporary home of Freetown. I leave Canada for more than 10 days for the first time in my life. I take my first real job removed from the university bubble, and turn my attention to a small West African nation that just a decade ago was in the throes of one of the most brutal civil wars in modern history.

And I couldn't be happier.