Bittersweet Symphony

Today is my last day working at The Juilliard School. After four years, tons of crazy phone calls, and lots of laughs, it's all over.

Earlier this week, my coworkers threw me a beautiful send off shindig.

Here I am at my party -

Saying goodbye to coworkers and work study students -

As a gag gift, my boss gave me a gift bag full of boxes of pens. It's a running joke that everyone in my office steals my pens!.....

My real gift was a beautiful fancy pen.

The next day...

My lovely coworkers surprised me with a huge gift. A beautiful red leather professional bag.

This last picture is of the Juilliard Admissions Team who have become my work family. On the far right is my replacement, DJ, who I know will be a fabulous addition to the team.

I'm so excited to begin my new job as Development Associate at Weill Cornell Medical College. And I know I will keep in touch with all of my wonderful coworkers because they're also my friends. I'm blessed to have had such a great experience at Juilliard. My first job out of college was really fantastic. I'm a lucky girl.

Below I have pasted a really lovely blog entry from the Juilliard Admissions Blog written by my coworker Monia:

Today we say goodbye to our much admired Admissions Associate, Toni Rosenbaum, who leaves Juilliard to embark on her next great career adventure. Toni has been the face of Juilliard for literally thousands of applicants (and their parents!) for the past four years and, as happy as we all are for her success, we are also sad for our loss. I wrote a little something for her goodbye party, which I share with you all here.

***
Toni,

Lee* asked us if we’d like to say a few words here today, and I did. But then I had to determine how I’d arrange words that could adequately address what your four years with us have meant to me. And then it hit me – I’ll write a poem! Here’s my first attempt:

Roses are red,
Now I am blue,
We’re losing Toni,
And that really stinks.

You like? No, I didn’t either – too sappy.

Then I pondered what style of poetry would lend itself to a little less sap and realized that a limerick would do the trick! Here’s my second attempt:

Our Toni is pretty terrific
With problems abstract or specific.
She’s charming, she’s sweet,
Wears great shoes on her feet,
And her patience with folks is prolific.

…meh. It’s O.K., but still not quite right.

THEN I remembered that a couple of years ago I challenged my colleagues in Admissions to come up with application related haikus for our blog. I thought maybe the haiku format would work, so here’s that effort:

Just four years ago
You entered our lives, and now
You leave them better.

And with that, I was back to sappy.

So I decided to give up on poetry and simply say – we’ve been so lucky to have you, Toni. Thank you, for everything. And good luck.