I'm Back...Maybe
It's been almost a year since I finally gave up the ghost on my poor LiveJournal. I had a job where I actually had to work, unlike Japan, where it was all I could do not to fall asleep and drool on my desk everyday. What else did I have to do other than busily compose Live Journal posts about the latest goings on in my super exotic Japanese life. It was the perfect excuse to keep in touch with you all.
There's a new job now, that is actually amazingly like the Japanese job. Today I was sitting here at my desk, I'd already looked at Gap, J Crew, DSW, Zappos, Modcloth...I'd already harvested all my trees in Farmville, and I was caught up with my Google Reader feeds...when it suddenly occured to me, "You know, you used to have another time-waster, Heather. What was that thing that Are-You-Alive-Journal or something?"
Turns out you all are still here! I came back every couple weeks for the first few months, after that final fateful post last April, to catch up with my Friends feed. But it got less and less...maybe every two months I would come back think longingly back to the days when I had nothing to do with my time except write elaborate essays about frog deaths. Then I would feel guilty for not keeping up with it myself, but come on! I was in school, and I was working, and who had time to write in LiveJournal when life is so freaking crazy! (Well, Lisa, it turns out. Who is also working and going to school. But we know she's crazy anyway.)
But then I found out that George Washington University loves its employees so much that it pays 97% of their tuition if they have a full-time job. 97%! That's $300 per semester! $300! I sat down with my little pen and paper (okay, fine, my little Windows Calculator) and figured out that I would save myself $35,000 in the next two years. $35,000!! So, I made the tough call to leave the American Indian Museum. Not that I liked the people (remind me to tell you how much I did NOT like the people), not that I liked the work, not that I even really liked the museum, but leaving a cush job at the Smithsonian Institution when you want to work in museums? It's like giving up a gig at Carnegie Hall when you're an aspiring musician.
$35,000 is a lot of money, though. I could buy a house with that money someday! I couldn't if I didn't quit my job at the NMAI, though. Because I would be paying back god damn Sallie fucking Mae until I was 45. When I told my boss, David, at the NMAI, he laughed and looked at me like I was crazy and said "Why are you still here??"
So two months, two interviews, and hours and hours of fretful impatient nail-biting anxiety (I am not a good job-hunter), I am the newest receptionist at the George Washington University Graduate Education Center Arlington. The entirety of my duties, as I understand them two weeks into the job, appear to be the following:
- open the classroom doors in the morning
- check the mail and deliver it to staff mailboxes
- eating amazing catered food left over from conferences held in the center
- answer the phone 2-3 times per day for people who usually meant to call the main campus
- keeping my (perhaps possibly slightly neurotic) boss sane and focused
I think I can do this. And I think, even with that workload, I think I can start back up my LiveJournal...maybe.
There's a new job now, that is actually amazingly like the Japanese job. Today I was sitting here at my desk, I'd already looked at Gap, J Crew, DSW, Zappos, Modcloth...I'd already harvested all my trees in Farmville, and I was caught up with my Google Reader feeds...when it suddenly occured to me, "You know, you used to have another time-waster, Heather. What was that thing that Are-You-Alive-Journal or something?"
Turns out you all are still here! I came back every couple weeks for the first few months, after that final fateful post last April, to catch up with my Friends feed. But it got less and less...maybe every two months I would come back think longingly back to the days when I had nothing to do with my time except write elaborate essays about frog deaths. Then I would feel guilty for not keeping up with it myself, but come on! I was in school, and I was working, and who had time to write in LiveJournal when life is so freaking crazy! (Well, Lisa, it turns out. Who is also working and going to school. But we know she's crazy anyway.)
But then I found out that George Washington University loves its employees so much that it pays 97% of their tuition if they have a full-time job. 97%! That's $300 per semester! $300! I sat down with my little pen and paper (okay, fine, my little Windows Calculator) and figured out that I would save myself $35,000 in the next two years. $35,000!! So, I made the tough call to leave the American Indian Museum. Not that I liked the people (remind me to tell you how much I did NOT like the people), not that I liked the work, not that I even really liked the museum, but leaving a cush job at the Smithsonian Institution when you want to work in museums? It's like giving up a gig at Carnegie Hall when you're an aspiring musician.
$35,000 is a lot of money, though. I could buy a house with that money someday! I couldn't if I didn't quit my job at the NMAI, though. Because I would be paying back god damn Sallie fucking Mae until I was 45. When I told my boss, David, at the NMAI, he laughed and looked at me like I was crazy and said "Why are you still here??"
So two months, two interviews, and hours and hours of fretful impatient nail-biting anxiety (I am not a good job-hunter), I am the newest receptionist at the George Washington University Graduate Education Center Arlington. The entirety of my duties, as I understand them two weeks into the job, appear to be the following:
- open the classroom doors in the morning
- check the mail and deliver it to staff mailboxes
- eating amazing catered food left over from conferences held in the center
- answer the phone 2-3 times per day for people who usually meant to call the main campus
- keeping my (perhaps possibly slightly neurotic) boss sane and focused
I think I can do this. And I think, even with that workload, I think I can start back up my LiveJournal...maybe.