...the devil must have his hand in this town...
You would think that the first time that I was writing in here all summer would have been from my computer in my room whilst I had nothing to do. Ironically the first time I have found a chance to actually write is while I am working. Right now I am working the front desk of Atkin/Colby res hall. This is just a small part of my summer job this year. I know I haven’t written in a while so you wouldn’t have known that instead of working a remodeling job all summer with my buddy Jace, I was going to be working here at ISU for University Housing Services. My summer job title is “summer conference assistant.” I am basically an RA who works the front desk. A lot of my job is going to consist of working the front desk here at A/C, pulling duty nights like during the regular school year, and working in the buildings getting them ready for when conferences use our campus to house their guests.
Accepting this position was one of the many tough decisions that I had to make this past semester. It seems like I had a million tough decisions to make this past semester, this one was one of the tougher ones though. Around my winter vacation, I found a couple of days that I could work for Jace to make some extra money and while we were at lunch one day Jace mentioned how this summer might be rough as far as trying to find a ton of hours for me to work. I told him that making tons of money wasn’t an issue - I just needed to make enough to get me through the summer and to give me something to do so I don’t just sit around all summer, but he kind of suggested that I should find maybe something else to make money over the summer.
This all happened and then I went back to school and this job presented itself to me. With this job, I could stay in Normal and they pay me a set salary as well as provide me room and board for the summer. So, until I talked to Jace again, this sounded like gold! The only problem is that as soon as I talked to Jace, he tells me that work is picking up and that he could actually give me plenty of hours. So now I had that option on my plate. One of the things that made this a rough decision was the fact that the summer conference assistant job is great experience for my line of work, it doesn’t pay really well; Jace on the other hand, was pretty much promising about three times what I would make here for the summer, but I am not going to be a plumber for the rest of my life so his job (however is handy to learn handyman tricks) wasn’t going to be much experience on my behalf. There were tons of pros and cons to weigh out. For example; get free room and board and have the chance to live by myself but be in the semi stranded town of normal or live at home (also for free) but with my parents. What made the decision worse was when the Charter North kids asked me to go on a three week tour with them and Sarah asked me to go to Florida with her, Lynn and Ymelda.
I don’t know what I was thinking when I made my decision, but I decided to go with the experience over the money. I kind of look at this at an internship and a decently well paid one as far as internships go. The best part was that after I explained it to Jace, he was all for me staying at school and he even offered that if I have a couple of free days, I could come home and make an extra buck if I needed to. I still miss out on my trip to Florida or my tour with the Charter North boys, but I think this summer will still be tons of fun.
I have a couple friends here who worked with me over in Watterson with me who live within three floors from me, so that really helps. I also have a few friends who are just staying in Normal for the summer who I am excited to hang out with. Plus, Peoria is never that far away, and living here keeps me closer to Chicago which helps when I go to visit Sarah or any of my other Chicagoan friends.
Chicagoan is actually in the dictionary and doesn’t set off the spell check in Word, just in case you were wondering.
So far this summer has been pretty fun so I am not regretting this decision at all. I mean, if I haven’t even found the time to sit and type anything out, I must be busy! Since last time we spoke, I have gone through closing down Watterson Towers, moving across campus, and then going through training. Training just cooled down at the end of last week and now it has pretty much turned into the standard operating procedures around here which means smooth sailing kids. The training for this job was a little excruciating so far but I hear that the training that they have in store for us later this week should be fun. A lot of the time we sat around in a conference room while our boss would just ramble on an on. This guy is definitely a little different too, in University Housing, it’s a semi laid back position where the extent of our verbal regurgitation is about fun housing theories like “learning organization”, this guy however throws every corporate mumbo jumbo phrase he can think of at you. I swear, not one word that came out of his mouth was less than 4 syllables long, nor did they make much sense. Sometimes he would “dumb things down” for us every once and a while, but it would be so ridiculous and pointless.
“Customer service is really just about smiling. Everyone loves to smile. You know what, lets just go around the room and each person just spell smile. Come on, I know you can do it. S - M - I…”
Granted he never actually said this, but it wasn’t too far off.
Other than training, I think I have been doing a good job of keeping myself busy. The staff is really close and we have already gone out to one movie and we have literally gone out to dinner almost every night, minus the two nights we cooked in Mario’s apartment. I guess it doesn’t help that the dinning centers just opened this morning, so we had to fend for ourselves for about a week.
On top of that, the Watterson RA’s that are here over the summer have committed ourselves to a work out plan that we call RHB (Not to be confused with any other acronym with the same letters, this one stands for Rock Hard Bodies) Last night was the first night that I had joined them sub sequentially, but its going to be a lot of fun. I did mostly arms and chest last night, but I can definitely feel some burn this morning, so we can only hope that it’s working!
We have a lot of fun plans for this summer. We have to do anything to keep ourselves entertained because as far as we can tell, until the mega conferences come in, or until we have a couple conferences at the same time, our work load will not be as heavy as we thought.
Well, that’s my time at the front desk. I will talk to you later. I will try to find time soon so that we can keep in touch over this summer. Hold me too it - let me know if I am not updating as much as you would want.
Love
your_favorite_acronym
Accepting this position was one of the many tough decisions that I had to make this past semester. It seems like I had a million tough decisions to make this past semester, this one was one of the tougher ones though. Around my winter vacation, I found a couple of days that I could work for Jace to make some extra money and while we were at lunch one day Jace mentioned how this summer might be rough as far as trying to find a ton of hours for me to work. I told him that making tons of money wasn’t an issue - I just needed to make enough to get me through the summer and to give me something to do so I don’t just sit around all summer, but he kind of suggested that I should find maybe something else to make money over the summer.
This all happened and then I went back to school and this job presented itself to me. With this job, I could stay in Normal and they pay me a set salary as well as provide me room and board for the summer. So, until I talked to Jace again, this sounded like gold! The only problem is that as soon as I talked to Jace, he tells me that work is picking up and that he could actually give me plenty of hours. So now I had that option on my plate. One of the things that made this a rough decision was the fact that the summer conference assistant job is great experience for my line of work, it doesn’t pay really well; Jace on the other hand, was pretty much promising about three times what I would make here for the summer, but I am not going to be a plumber for the rest of my life so his job (however is handy to learn handyman tricks) wasn’t going to be much experience on my behalf. There were tons of pros and cons to weigh out. For example; get free room and board and have the chance to live by myself but be in the semi stranded town of normal or live at home (also for free) but with my parents. What made the decision worse was when the Charter North kids asked me to go on a three week tour with them and Sarah asked me to go to Florida with her, Lynn and Ymelda.
I don’t know what I was thinking when I made my decision, but I decided to go with the experience over the money. I kind of look at this at an internship and a decently well paid one as far as internships go. The best part was that after I explained it to Jace, he was all for me staying at school and he even offered that if I have a couple of free days, I could come home and make an extra buck if I needed to. I still miss out on my trip to Florida or my tour with the Charter North boys, but I think this summer will still be tons of fun.
I have a couple friends here who worked with me over in Watterson with me who live within three floors from me, so that really helps. I also have a few friends who are just staying in Normal for the summer who I am excited to hang out with. Plus, Peoria is never that far away, and living here keeps me closer to Chicago which helps when I go to visit Sarah or any of my other Chicagoan friends.
Chicagoan is actually in the dictionary and doesn’t set off the spell check in Word, just in case you were wondering.
So far this summer has been pretty fun so I am not regretting this decision at all. I mean, if I haven’t even found the time to sit and type anything out, I must be busy! Since last time we spoke, I have gone through closing down Watterson Towers, moving across campus, and then going through training. Training just cooled down at the end of last week and now it has pretty much turned into the standard operating procedures around here which means smooth sailing kids. The training for this job was a little excruciating so far but I hear that the training that they have in store for us later this week should be fun. A lot of the time we sat around in a conference room while our boss would just ramble on an on. This guy is definitely a little different too, in University Housing, it’s a semi laid back position where the extent of our verbal regurgitation is about fun housing theories like “learning organization”, this guy however throws every corporate mumbo jumbo phrase he can think of at you. I swear, not one word that came out of his mouth was less than 4 syllables long, nor did they make much sense. Sometimes he would “dumb things down” for us every once and a while, but it would be so ridiculous and pointless.
“Customer service is really just about smiling. Everyone loves to smile. You know what, lets just go around the room and each person just spell smile. Come on, I know you can do it. S - M - I…”
Granted he never actually said this, but it wasn’t too far off.
Other than training, I think I have been doing a good job of keeping myself busy. The staff is really close and we have already gone out to one movie and we have literally gone out to dinner almost every night, minus the two nights we cooked in Mario’s apartment. I guess it doesn’t help that the dinning centers just opened this morning, so we had to fend for ourselves for about a week.
On top of that, the Watterson RA’s that are here over the summer have committed ourselves to a work out plan that we call RHB (Not to be confused with any other acronym with the same letters, this one stands for Rock Hard Bodies) Last night was the first night that I had joined them sub sequentially, but its going to be a lot of fun. I did mostly arms and chest last night, but I can definitely feel some burn this morning, so we can only hope that it’s working!
We have a lot of fun plans for this summer. We have to do anything to keep ourselves entertained because as far as we can tell, until the mega conferences come in, or until we have a couple conferences at the same time, our work load will not be as heavy as we thought.
Well, that’s my time at the front desk. I will talk to you later. I will try to find time soon so that we can keep in touch over this summer. Hold me too it - let me know if I am not updating as much as you would want.
Love
your_favorite_acronym