Magic Jewball

Today was my first day of classes but it doesn’t really feel like the first day of school the way last year or even Spring semester last year did. Part of that is because I handed in my last paper of the summer session about twenty days ago and the other part is that I’ve been working on campus for the last two weeks. The window of the office where I work overlooks the area where last year I tweeted pictures of Orientation. This year I watched it from above and I remembered the strangeness and the people I met and ate lunch with because I happened to be sitting next to them. I never saw any of them again.

Every time I walked from one office to another I passed lines of students waiting to be advised, or they were lost, walking three steps one way and then turning around. My school is incredibly confusing. It’s made up of six or seven buildings, all attached to each other, but seemingly unplanned and after the fact. Some paths between buildings land you between floors in other buildings. But I love all the buildings; they are old, from the nineteenth century, and look like a school of the period, with creaky wood-planked floors, vast high ceilings, and mahogany chair-rails. Today, I was in the elevator of the main building with several women who were clearly there for a workshop. They were much more nicely dressed than the students and were older. The conversation went like this:

Woman 1: But it’s so old and boring… the wood and everything…
Woman 2: What did you expect, marble?
Woman 1: [exasperated] Well, I don’t know… it’s [redacted institution]!

I redacted my school because the marketing is very good there and they search on it. I’d rather hide this blog from them, know what I mean? But it is the #1 or 2 school of its kind in the country, the gold standard. I guess we’re supposed to have marble. But of course, inside I laughed and laughed. The school is so beautiful and stately and noble. I bet that lady lives in a new-construction McMansion.

The building where I work has no elevator and I’m on the sixth floor. Soon I will have buns of steel. But I did wonder why this was. There are four secretaries in my department. Two are so unfriendly that I sometimes think my salary is being deducted from theirs. One of these seems to hate her job and the other just appears to not want to communicate with me specifically. One of the others is older and we discuss the weather. The fourth is new and hasn’t had time to realize she’s supposed to treat me like I am wallpaper. Ugly wallpaper. She has been there just a few months but she was the one who told me about the elevator.

Now, I have walked these stairs a million times in my year at my school. All around the wrought-iron hollow cage. I sometimes admire its beauty but it never, ever dawned on me that it’s exactly the right size for… an elevator. She showed me the closed up door areas and the vestigial push-buttons. I will take a picture of these for you at some point, both to reveal its mysterious coolness and to show you what a doofus I am for missing it all this time. Now I just get to wonder why they provided an elevatorectomy to the beautiful shaftway to the sky.

I never really noticed how dead it was all summer until I saw the students flooding the hallways today. I wanted to hug all of them. Until I had to wait on line behind them at the cafeteria. Stupid students. I also waited on line behind them to get my TB test, which I haven’t had since early grade school. It was a bit of an assembly line, sign form, stick out arm, etc. But you are required to do it to get cleared to student teach in a New York City public school, so as you can imagine, a lot of people in ed school need to have this done. But I was rewarded for this and the earlier fingerprinting with a letter of introduction from “It’s Redacted Institution!” to To Whom It May Concern. Here’s Becca, she won’t infect, or commit any felonious acts in, your school. Don’t mind the big bruise on her arm where an alleged “nurse” stuck her with TB syrum. But do check out those buns of steel.

Steely Dan – My Old School

I had a lot of thoughts about my first week at work in a long time but they all sort of dissipated because I was too tired at the end of each day to write anything down. The one thing that I can say is that only one person asked me, “how is your new job?” I wonder what that means. That no one cares? That starting a new job is no longer a big deal in our age of constant moving around? That part-time jobs are not thought of as “real” jobs? That I wasn’t clear to the people in my life that I was starting this week, since I actually got the job in mid-July? I don’t know, but I think that also put a small damper on my thoughts of writing about said new job. And now it’s mostly gone.

I did have a day off on Thursday during which I spent some time at the qualifying round of the US Open. I love the quallies because it’s the US Open without all the irritating parts: the lines, the crowds, the having to wait for the break to enter a match. On the other hand, the stores are mostly closed and there’s a guy wading in the fountain. I kind of want to do this myself on really hot days, but without the boots.

Monday, the real US Open starts but so does my semester so it’s going to be hard to focus on either thing. But no matter what, there will be no wading in the fountain for me.

Have a good weekend, all!

Title comes from:
Depeche Mode – If You Want

Or, how I spent my five day summer vacation, written during the pouring rain.

It’s been a long time since I felt what the last day of summer felt like. When I was a kid, I loathed school, so much so that I ran away from Kindergarten and regularly played hooky from middle school to either hide in the woods or in the bathroom of my private school’s lower school building. In high school, I would go to the public library or to work at the record store (they never asked questions). Summer was the sweetest, most wonderful time of year. Not only did I have no school but I had my summer camp, where I had some of the best experiences of my life.

Nowadays, I love school. And, as I’ve said, I consider it a vacation from the real world, i.e. Monday through Friday, 9-5 work. The ability to stay up till the wee hours, get up late, handle the day exactly as I wish, and have no one to report to but myself has been like a dream. And well, at some point you have to wake up. I decided to stay in school another year partially because I couldn’t bear for that to end but in doing so, I knew that I’d need additional funding which meant work which means that in order to have that lifestyle, I have to not have that lifestyle. I know, it seems pointless. But there were other reasons I did it too, like getting more education and being better prepared for my new career. So here’s what this year will involve:

a. Part-time job, 3 days a week.
b. Fieldwork 1 day a week.
c. Special project 1 day a week.
d. Classes 2 evenings a week.
e. Thesis in any spare moment.

Yes, it’s going to be a challenge and the hardest part will certainly be the first one, which begins in a mere twelve hours (yikes). I am not good with bosses. I am terrible at doing things that other people tell me to do. Naturally, I did not bring this up in the interview. But I’m going to try my best because for a part-time job, it’s well-compensated. I know. I’m the first person ever to put up with a boss telling me what to do so I can pay my bills, right? But beyond that, I think I’m just going to miss my leisurely student life of getting up, puttering around making a hot breakfast, spending time playing on the Internet, reading for school in the quiet mid-afternoon, and then going off to class. Now I’ll have to fit those readings in when I can and go back to jumping out of bed via cranky alarm, scarfing something down, and running for the train, still half-asleep. I can hear you all playing tiny violins for me right now. I have a Facebook friend who works at a university and is off every summer. All summer long she posts about fun things she and her family are doing at their vacation home in the mountains. Then, in late August, she posts status messages whining about the end of her three-month vacation and I always roll my eyes. So I feel you if you’re rolling your eyes. But it’s been a lovely year, it really has.

Speaking of people complaining about lifestyles others envy, I’ve now had about five days without either school or work (kind of the vacation from my vacation) and finally had time to read the Agassi book (I’m not quite done… and I only have 12 hours left!). I remember when it came out last year there was lots of talk about the revelations: that he wore a hairpiece, that he never really loved Brooke Shields, that he used crystal meth and lied to the ATP about it. But for me, the biggest disillusionment was that he hated tennis. That was really hard for me to deal with. He says that he could never understand people who loved the beauty of the game. I suppose I am one of those people and watching the US Open series on TV these past few weeks has been wonderful. But now I kind of watch people play in a different way. Do they love the game as much as I do or did they feel it was the only thing they knew how to do?

It may be hard to believe, but I only became a tennis fan in the mid-90′s when my then-company gave me tickets to the US Open and I fell in love with both tennis and the story that a tournament is. The first match I ever saw Agassi play live is described in the book; it was during his comeback and the other player, Karol Kucera, was acting like a moron. I remember laughing when Agassi sarcastically reacted and in the book, Agassi mentions that the crowd laughed. This is just to tell you, hey, I’m in the Agassi book! But don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing read and hard to put down. I suppose they’d frown on me reading at my desk at work, huh?

Also during my five days off from everything, I saw Tears For Fears. It was great to see a band I have loved for a long time and never experienced live, but the show failed my two criteria for excellent concerthood: decent view and good song selection. Being that it was at the Hammerstein Ballroom and I am not the tallest of women, I could occasionally glimpse bits of either member’s head but not often. Also, not enough from their two good albums and, naturally, no hint of my favorite song by them, since it wasn’t a hit. This is the sorry state of concerts today: other people hold up their cameras so that you can see even less and then you have to go to YouTube to watch shaky videos of the concert for which you paid.

Lastly, I got fingerprinted by the Department of Education, so that I could do my fieldwork, even though I don’t yet know if it will be in a public school. But my school makes you anyway, just in case. Everything you ever experienced with government bureaucracy (think of your last trip to the DMV) existed here: long lines, people who went on break just as they were about to take you, requirements sprung on you (duh, don’t you know that you get your school ID when you get fingerprinted and thus need your picture taken?) which lead to yet more lines with no one being taken, and lots of words spoken to you in a tone of voice which makes sure you understand that it is the thousandth time they have been spoken by that person this week. WelcometotheDOEpleasefollowthosearrowstooffice17takeanumberandsitdown.

Then I left and went to Ikea where I bought $40 worth of things I didn’t know I needed in the marketplace. Because once you’re at Borough Hall in Brooklyn, what else are you supposed to do? It was one of the last days I could just go to an office in the middle of the day and then go shopping. I will miss you, sweet unemployment.

Onward and upward.

Title comes from my second favorite Tears For Fears song, which they did, thankfully, play.
Tears For Fears – Pale Shelter

Without making light of the tragic loss of life at the University of Alabama last week, I’d just like to highlight this piece of the story I heard on 1010 WINS this morning. They quoted a student who found the professor to be “disorganized and prone to rambling.” As well, she often went off topic and her exams had little to do with what had been lectured about in class.

I would just like to say that if this is a warning sign of a higher education instructor going nuts and shooting a bunch of people, the world is in HUGE trouble.

*with apologies to all my friends who are professors! xoxo

Led Zeppelin – Ramble On

Can you tell the semester has really started? Because I have no time and nothing to say that’s not in the form of a paper. But I can update my “undone on vacation” list by saying that I have started my thesis. The great thing about my thesis is that every time I tell professors and advisors what I’m planning to do professionally and then what my thesis topic is, they get this confused and concerned look on their faces. But I say, in what interview do they ask the subject of your thesis and so why not pursue something in which I’ve been interested for ages? It’s not like I’ll ever have a chance to do this again unless I end up in academia and I don’t think I’m cut out for that life (on a side note, I now count via Facebook that seven of my friends from high school and college have become college professors… wow).

So, drumroll please, my thesis will be an ethnography of an online community forum. If you happen to know me from an online community forum, you will know which one I am using. So I may be studying you. Don’t be scared, it won’t hurt, and no one will be mentioned by name. Also, it’s not a dissertation so it’s not going to be on any bookshelf. And how many dissertations have you read lately anyway? Thought so.

Soon, I will need to turn in my proposal and thus I am curious to hear from people (from any community forum or no community forum), what “problem” you think should be studied. Because that’s how ethnographies work. I have lots of ideas (mostly about social interaction and cultural norms) so this is really more an intellectual exercise. This is a good place to segue and say, my last post got zero official comments but received the most private e-mails of any post I’ve ever done. I understand why and if you feel like e-mailing me your response to this one, that’s OK too. If you do choose to comment here, try not to mention any forum specifically by name. TIA!

Speaking of my last post, that is, about my other sites, if you like my taste in videos on Are Everything (link in sidebar), then you may also like Radio Nigel. I have been fiddling with Pandora for what I realize is now two years and still cannot get a station I like. I love technology but I really believe a human radio programmer will beat an algorithm every time. I can personally vouch for the fact that this station is super for accompanying the writing of a thesis proposal and I know that’s just what you’re looking for.

As well, there are new items at Cinnagirl (link in the sidebar too) just in time for the Purim holiday, specifically Hamantaschen and giant chocolate chunk cookies made with Guittard chocolate, so support your local thesis writer and sweeten your life simultaneously. It’s like a miracle of physics.

Title is a play on the fabulous:
XTC – Making Plans For Nigel