Long Overdue
I was going to call this entry "The State of the Robynne." Two weeks ago, when I really started thinking that I needed to post something, I thought that would be a good title. Kind of fun, kind of ironically overstating my importance.
It turns out I had completely forgotten when the actual State of the Union address is. So when, today, I set out to start writing this post, I realized that if I still called it "The State of the Robynne" everyone would assume that I was going to comment on the State of the Union address, or at least that I had it on my mind and was naming my post in conjunction with the President's speech last night. And a part of me thought, "Hey, that's even better!" But another part of me thought, "Well, that's kind of irreverent, considering that I'm not going to do anything remotely related to the State of the Union address." And you know what, I chickened out. I just wasn't brave enough to give this entry a topical title.
So without any pretense of this subject mattering to more than a handful of my friends, I'll proceed to tell you about recent developments in my life.
The big, really exciting news is that I GOT A JOB!
I'm now working part-time in the Physics stockroom on campus. There are two stockrooms, actually, and I work in both of them, but on different days. There's the Upper-Division stockroom and the Lower-Division stockroom, but those names tell you nothing about the actual difference between them. The Upper-Division stockroom is where the equipment for demonstrations is kept. When a professor wants a demo, they put a note in the stockroom, and the people working there (such as me) go and find all the things for the demo and put them all on a cart and test them so that everything is working in time for the professor to show it to their class. The Lower-Division stockroom is where lab equipment is kept. When students are doing a lab experiment they check out sets from the stockroom and return it when they're done. The Lower-Division stockroom is much more relaxed than the Upper-Division stockroom. In the Upper-Division stockroom, there's always something new to work on. If you're not testing equipment, you're setting something up, and you can never work too far ahead. In the Lower-Division stockroom, I'm only working during a part of the day when people are returning their lab equipment, so all I do is check the sets to make sure they're complete. Sometimes I even have time to get some reading done.
That's the most exciting thing I have to report. Now on to less interesting stuff.
Starting the new quarter, and the new year, was really stressful and hectic. I don't want to go into details, but I'll just say that I was in the middle of reading Franz Kafka's The Castle, and I haven't been able to read any more of it because I've had enough of real-life impenetrable bureaucracy where you can never seem to get through to the help you need. I did eventually get in touch with some helpful people, but it was still frustrating enough that it put me off the book.
On Friday of that first week I was talking to my not-uncle Steve, and that's when I learned about the opening in the physics stockroom. Steve was saying that the physics stockroom is a good place to get a student job, and the person in the stockroom mentioned that they were hiring right then, and handed me an application. I filled it out and brought it back later that day. I was interviewed on Monday and they called to say I was hired on Tuesday. I started work on Thursday.
What's crazy about this story, to me, is that it's exactly the way I've always wanted to get a job. I've been trying to find a confluence of events that would easily plunk me into an open position somewhere. But four and a half years out of high school, that didn't look like it would happen. All my tentative inquiries had received no responses, and every time I sent in an application that didn't get me anywhere, I got a little more discouraged. I doubted that I would ever find any sort of employment.
But as the new quarter started, I was determined to find something. As soon as I had taken care of all the important things that needed to be done, I was going to start looking for jobs, sending out hundreds of copies of my resume, and get some sort of part-time job I could do while in school.
Before I got a chance to start that process, I got the job in the physics stockroom.
And I can't shake this feeling that that's not the way this is supposed to happen. I'm not supposed to get a job in the same way that I'd always imagined I would. I'm supposed to work hard and do things that I'm uncomfortable with and force myself into friendships with managers in order to get a crappy job in a retail outlet and be miserable while gaining EXP enough that I'll be able to qualify for a decent job once I have my degree.
Basically, once I stopped believing in my dream of easily being hired for a perfect job, I easily got hired for a perfect job.
So that worked out pretty well.
In other news, I'm extremely proud that we Internet users defeated SOPA and PIPA last week. There's not much I can say that hasn't been said better elsewhere, but I want to make a note of it here: We proved that the voice of the people still has weight in this country.
Well done, nerds.
It turns out I had completely forgotten when the actual State of the Union address is. So when, today, I set out to start writing this post, I realized that if I still called it "The State of the Robynne" everyone would assume that I was going to comment on the State of the Union address, or at least that I had it on my mind and was naming my post in conjunction with the President's speech last night. And a part of me thought, "Hey, that's even better!" But another part of me thought, "Well, that's kind of irreverent, considering that I'm not going to do anything remotely related to the State of the Union address." And you know what, I chickened out. I just wasn't brave enough to give this entry a topical title.
So without any pretense of this subject mattering to more than a handful of my friends, I'll proceed to tell you about recent developments in my life.
The big, really exciting news is that I GOT A JOB!
I'm now working part-time in the Physics stockroom on campus. There are two stockrooms, actually, and I work in both of them, but on different days. There's the Upper-Division stockroom and the Lower-Division stockroom, but those names tell you nothing about the actual difference between them. The Upper-Division stockroom is where the equipment for demonstrations is kept. When a professor wants a demo, they put a note in the stockroom, and the people working there (such as me) go and find all the things for the demo and put them all on a cart and test them so that everything is working in time for the professor to show it to their class. The Lower-Division stockroom is where lab equipment is kept. When students are doing a lab experiment they check out sets from the stockroom and return it when they're done. The Lower-Division stockroom is much more relaxed than the Upper-Division stockroom. In the Upper-Division stockroom, there's always something new to work on. If you're not testing equipment, you're setting something up, and you can never work too far ahead. In the Lower-Division stockroom, I'm only working during a part of the day when people are returning their lab equipment, so all I do is check the sets to make sure they're complete. Sometimes I even have time to get some reading done.
That's the most exciting thing I have to report. Now on to less interesting stuff.
Starting the new quarter, and the new year, was really stressful and hectic. I don't want to go into details, but I'll just say that I was in the middle of reading Franz Kafka's The Castle, and I haven't been able to read any more of it because I've had enough of real-life impenetrable bureaucracy where you can never seem to get through to the help you need. I did eventually get in touch with some helpful people, but it was still frustrating enough that it put me off the book.
On Friday of that first week I was talking to my not-uncle Steve, and that's when I learned about the opening in the physics stockroom. Steve was saying that the physics stockroom is a good place to get a student job, and the person in the stockroom mentioned that they were hiring right then, and handed me an application. I filled it out and brought it back later that day. I was interviewed on Monday and they called to say I was hired on Tuesday. I started work on Thursday.
What's crazy about this story, to me, is that it's exactly the way I've always wanted to get a job. I've been trying to find a confluence of events that would easily plunk me into an open position somewhere. But four and a half years out of high school, that didn't look like it would happen. All my tentative inquiries had received no responses, and every time I sent in an application that didn't get me anywhere, I got a little more discouraged. I doubted that I would ever find any sort of employment.
But as the new quarter started, I was determined to find something. As soon as I had taken care of all the important things that needed to be done, I was going to start looking for jobs, sending out hundreds of copies of my resume, and get some sort of part-time job I could do while in school.
Before I got a chance to start that process, I got the job in the physics stockroom.
And I can't shake this feeling that that's not the way this is supposed to happen. I'm not supposed to get a job in the same way that I'd always imagined I would. I'm supposed to work hard and do things that I'm uncomfortable with and force myself into friendships with managers in order to get a crappy job in a retail outlet and be miserable while gaining EXP enough that I'll be able to qualify for a decent job once I have my degree.
Basically, once I stopped believing in my dream of easily being hired for a perfect job, I easily got hired for a perfect job.
So that worked out pretty well.
In other news, I'm extremely proud that we Internet users defeated SOPA and PIPA last week. There's not much I can say that hasn't been said better elsewhere, but I want to make a note of it here: We proved that the voice of the people still has weight in this country.
Well done, nerds.