New Job #1

Here are some interesting things about my new job #1, which is working at the Cabot Science Library at Harvard. (These interesting things are brought to you at this point because I am avoiding doing more work on my new job #2, which is online writing tutoring.)

1. The other day I was shelf-reading, which is when you look at all the call numbers of the books on a shelf to make sure they are in order, and I found a book that was not. So, I was bringing it to its spot, and I saw that it was called Order Out of Chaos. This was so pleasing that I wrote it down.

2. I found a book for Charlotte called Newton's Darkness, which was actually two plays about Isaac Newton! But it was not good, so I brought it back.

3. My boss, before leaving to get a battery for her watch, which is two silver wildcats facing each other, came over and said, "Here. You can read about Polish Jews," and handed me a newsletter called "Gazeta" about Polish Jews.

4. My boss is a Polish Jew.

5. Directly after I wrote #4, a man came up and checked out a book called The Nazi War on Cancer.

6. Downstairs, there is a locked room, and inside there are lots and lots of old to very old books, mostly about engineering. When I first came, I thought that ENG stood for English, but not in a science library, it seems.

7. Also downstairs, there are the kind of bookshelves that all squish together until you press a button, at which time they move very slowly and mechanically to open where you want to go, and I am always a bit concerned that they will suddenly move swiftly and autonomously to squish me while I am walking between them to put back a bound volume of periodicals.

8. My boss has announced that she is going to lose 5 pounds "as if her life depended on it," using some newly approved diet pills. I said I doubt her life could depend on 5 pounds, and she said no, but her clothes could. I conceeded the point.

9. My boss has also said that she might go to NYC for some kind of crazy Japanese hair-straightening treatment that costs $500.

10. Another person who works here is a slight, graceful, quiet Hispanic man who kind of sways when he walks, but subtly. And whenever he uses the computer he brings up all kinds of tango websites and leaves them up when he goes.

11. My boss is named Lidia.

12. Lidia and another boss, named Allen, are having a conflict about how many hours I should work, which is confusing for me.

13. The man who just checked out a book was named Claudiu, which strikes me as highly unusual.

14. Somehow when I was closing up yesterday, I ended up trying to help this young Korean woman understand her registration instructions for whatever program she was doing here, but since she did not grasp all the English and I had no idea what her program might be about or require, we did not get very far.

15. I think Lidia thinks that I'm sleeping with Rachel, because she keeps commenting on my necklace, and when I told her it was my roommate she asked all these questions like how long have we lived together and did I get along with her family and kept saying how GREAT it was, and in other contexts kept talking about gay people, even though it was not really appropriate to the conversation.

16. Even though all these interesting things happen here, I am ready to go home now. But it is only 2:28. I guess I will do my other job.

Unrelated Observation

I just received an email about a job that is a "4/5" position. It is apparently "80%" of a full time position. What the heck? That seems to be just getting ridiculous. Are you going to take a "1/5" position to go with it? I know there are advantages to not having people work full time exactly... I guess when I was answering phones at the Merriam I had about "70%" of a full time position. But it just sounds silly.

Wow... I don't want to finish this paper, do I?

Questions from Harvard

So, before I got sick forever and ever, I made a list of questions that Harvard asked me, on just one side of a little poster posting post. I thought it would clarify why this place is both fascinating and overwhelming:

Need some wheels?
Do I like her... or just admire her?
Does God exist?
How can God allow pain?
Why is religion full of hypocrites?
What is HPV?
What is democratic socialism?
Christianity: Boring, untrue, irrelevant?
Why did Jesus die?
How and why should I pray?
Are you interested in applying your analytical, financial, and programming expertise to a challenging and rewarding career as a Quantitative Equity Analyst?

Pretend it's a survey if you want... maybe I will try to answer one of these questions at a time. I'll start with the last one. The answer to the last one is no.