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Posted: November 5th, 2007 at 12:22am By: Rev. Kristi Denham
After a year of graduate school at Dominican College and completing most of my course work for a master's in English Literature, I went to work for a publishing company.
D.C. Heath was a textbook publisher. I worked in an office as a telephone solicitor, calling professors in five Western states and asking them to read the free copy of our latest book in hopes that they might order it for their classes.
Within a year I had the honor of being the first woman in the history of the company to be promoted to district representative. I was given a company car and a Southern California territory with 180 colleges and universities to visit. I moved to Echo Park in downtown Los Angeles.
Professors tend to be somewhat detached from the "real world." They see textbook salespeople as distasteful conmen mostly. When I would recommend a book, saying I had read it and loved it (the truth), they would roll their eyes and dismiss me as a liar. They all received free copies of our books. There seemed to be no correlation between my calling on them and their likelihood of ordering the book. The lack of positive feedback was debilitating.
I plunged once more into depression. I read St. John of the Cross and identified with his "dark night of the soul." I struggled to get up and go to work and often failed to do so. My territory sold more books that year than ever before. Go figure.
I attended a large Catholic Church in L.A. I completed adult catechism classes and went to my first confession. It was horrible. Every sin I confessed, the priest restated as bigger and worse than I had imagined. I thought I was my own worst enemy. Now I discovered a priest who could be even harder on me than I was on myself. I crawled back under the covers.
My boyfriend, Rodger, had moved south with me. He took care of me when I could hardly move. We went to a lot of movies. It was a very long year. I was so ready to move back home.
Dominican College contacted me and asked if I would be interested in teaching a couple of classes that fall — Remedial English and Journalism. It would give me a chance to finish my master's. It would get me out of Southern California. How could I say no?
(To be continued.)
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Rev. Kristi Denham is pastor of the Congregational Church of Belmont, California (United Church of Christ). Her email address is {email RevKristi@aol.com}RevKristi@aol.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Kristi Denham.
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After a year of graduate school at Dominican College and completing most of my course work for a master's in English Literature, I went to work for a publishing company.
D.C. Heath was a textbook publisher. I worked in an office as a telephone solicitor, calling professors in five Western states and asking them to read the free copy of our latest book in hopes that they might order it for their classes.
Within a year I had the honor of being the first woman in the history of the company to be promoted to district representative. I was given a company car and a Southern California territory with 180 colleges and universities to visit. I moved to Echo Park in downtown Los Angeles.
Professors tend to be somewhat detached from the "real world." They see textbook salespeople as distasteful conmen mostly. When I would recommend a book, saying I had read it and loved it (the truth), they would roll their eyes and dismiss me as a liar. They all received free copies of our books. There seemed to be no correlation between my calling on them and their likelihood of ordering the book. The lack of positive feedback was debilitating.
I plunged once more into depression. I read St. John of the Cross and identified with his "dark night of the soul." I struggled to get up and go to work and often failed to do so. My territory sold more books that year than ever before. Go figure.
I attended a large Catholic Church in L.A. I completed adult catechism classes and went to my first confession. It was horrible. Every sin I confessed, the priest restated as bigger and worse than I had imagined. I thought I was my own worst enemy. Now I discovered a priest who could be even harder on me than I was on myself. I crawled back under the covers.
My boyfriend, Rodger, had moved south with me. He took care of me when I could hardly move. We went to a lot of movies. It was a very long year. I was so ready to move back home.
Dominican College contacted me and asked if I would be interested in teaching a couple of classes that fall — Remedial English and Journalism. It would give me a chance to finish my master's. It would get me out of Southern California. How could I say no?
(To be continued.)
— — —
Rev. Kristi Denham is pastor of the Congregational Church of Belmont, California (United Church of Christ). Her email address is {email RevKristi@aol.com}RevKristi@aol.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Kristi Denham.
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