It’s Just Code of Ethics…

As of today I’m officially a REALTOR®, meaning I’m a licensed real estate broker who is a member of the local, state and National Association of REALTORS®.   In order to join the organization, which provides access to the multiple listing service for our area I needed to attend two classes and, of course, pay membership dues and initiation fees.

The first class was training on the multiple listing tool, Paragon.   The second class I wasn’t able to sign up for online and I wasn’t sure when it would be available.   When I checked in for the class yesterday afternoon the lady helping me asked, “are you attending the orientation session tomorrow?”

Tomorrow?  I pull out my phone and check the schedule—it’s my daughter’s birthday celebration slam in the middle of the day—a celebration we’d scheduled with her teachers a while back.    The next opportunity to take the orientation class was December 1st.   What to do?

Things were discussed on the phone with my husband, emails were sent to my daughter’s teachers and I had a conversation with the admin about the possibility of coming a bit late in the morning instead and would that be okay, seeing as it was my daughter’s birthday celebration and I couldn’t miss it.

She said, “well, it’s just code of ethics…”.  That gave me pause.  I was a brand new agent and ethics was a big topic during my pre-licensing class and is considered to be of high importance among the real estate community—and she just told me I was making an ethical decision to miss a portion of the class.

So I fretted, but I didn’t have much of a choice.   My daughter’s birthday celebration was moved to first thing in the morning and I drove straight to class straight away when we finished.    I was fortunate with traffic, ending up only fifteen minutes after class start time.

I sat down to look at the agenda for the day and noted the first half of the day was all dedicated to, “Code of Ethics”.   The day before she hadn’t been criticizing or judging me, she was telling me what topic I’d miss.

The Big Boy Update:  My son asked yesterday, for the first time ever, “can I have a bath?”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We’re always wonder if my daughter is seeing more things or if she’s synthesizing other data to come to what appears to be a vision-based observation.   The other day she said, “I see you in the mirror, Papa” from a distance she normally wouldn’t have been able to see from (we think).