braveboldbeautiful_One's Xanga

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:44:50 GMT

I hate staff "appreciation" meetings. Gary Jules' song "Mad World" comes to mind whenever I am at one. I hate being a staff member at all.

Only nine-and-a-half more hours of work until January! [yay for one-and-a-half weeks of paid vacation time] Thankfully, the clique will be gone tomorrow. I do have to somehow learn how to set up a conference call, though.

I had a much longer note about how much staff appreciation meetings suck, but it's just complaining. Someday I won't be a staff member any more.

Yesterday one of the professors flipped out at one of my student workers over the phone. I wrote him a very stern email (which David said was much nicer than I thought it was), and he apologized to the student yesterday and myself today. Although this was definitely my victory for the week, it was probably the angriest I have been in a long time. I pace like my dad when I get so angry.

Unfortunately, we have minor crises like this at least twice a week. I just want to sit in a back office somewhere and work with students and ignore everyone else. No more working with spoiled professors or women cliques or unpredictable heads of departments. Is there a job like this anywhere?

On Monday we finally get out of here. I am so ready for a vacation.

*KatieW*

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:42:21 GMT

Steadily, slowly over these past few months, I have grown to hate my new job. The work is not awful--sometimes tedious, but not awful. I like helping students. I like having a little cubicle and two monitors and unlimited office supplies.

I hate working with a little clique of girlfriends. I hate it that when only one of them is around, they will treat me like their best friend and call me over to talk to me all the time, but when one of the other members is around, I am excluded, talked about, and treated like an unwanted student worker.

This is not high school. We are grown-ups.

Two of the three girls in the clique were gone for a month. Thus, when one of them returned today, things changed very fast for me. Today has been awful.

If it was not for Laura, the girl who cleans, I would probably cry a lot. She is very sweet and good and encouraging. We are both outcasts of sorts. She stops in my cubicle to talk to me throughout the day.

So why did I wait another year to apply to graduate schools? Oh, right, because I was lazy and even thought that I might just enjoy working in this office. Girls are terrible. I despise them.

*KatieW*

one thing I like about philosophy departments

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:26:27 GMT

The girl who cleans our building is named Laura. She is about 30 years old, has four children, is Hispanic, and only finished her education through high school. Even though this is a university with lots of money, girls that clean full time make significantly less than any full-time office staff member. On top of that, half of her paycheck goes to paying for health insurance.

So, she does not have very much money. In fact, she makes so little that every paycheck just covers bills and groceries--she has no financial wiggle-room. This makes something like Christmas or buying a coat impossible. She didn't even have enough money to buy any special food for Thanksgiving.

Our department always takes up a collection and just gives her a bunch of cash for Christmas. Today is the first day of our collection and we've already collected over $250--almost all of which is from graduate students. These are people who are very poor themselves.

This is why I work here--for people that do things like this.

*KatieW*

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:34:44 GMT

Once upon a time there was a department that, due to some miscommunication, added two courses to the Spring 2010 schedule that should have not been there, as there was no one to teach them. Unfortunately for this department, they realized this three weeks into registration, which was after registration had closed for seniors. The majority of people who had signed up for these two courses were seniors, as it was a 100-level course and seniors love to fill their final semester with 100-level courses.

When the head of the department discovered the error, he immediately called on his office staff to cancel these two courses. This task, of course, fell to Katie, as she is the only academic person here this week. She had to be the calloused face of the bad news: "even though you need this course to graduate, we are canceling it--ha ha for you!" (at least, this is what she was afraid the students were thinking, while in reality she was extremely anxious for them).

[Those were almost the hardest emails I have ever had to write. I hate making students suffer for a department oversight.]

Thankfully, Katie had by this time made friends with the lady who works in Registration. This lady was able to transfer everyone into one of the other open sections in under 10 minutes.

Moral of the story: if you're going to work in an academic office, make friends with the staff members of other offices. The higher-ups will make all kinds of blunders that you will have to fix, so if you refuse to make friends in other offices, it will make your life hellish.

Also, it helps to make friends with your supervisor, as she will bring you chocolates at key times.

*KatieW*

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:13:10 GMT

We are attending two Thanksgiving dinners tomorrow, which are at about the same time. One of them will be an Indian feast and the other will be a regular Thanksgiving feast. How, you ask, are we going to attend two dinners at nearly the same time? Magic.

Every year at A&M the administration closes the campus at noon and lets the staff leave early on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It is not on the school calendar, though, and does not show up in our time cards before Wednesday. This is because we have to have the campus open a certain number of days to meet all of the state qualifications. So every year at this time, the air is abuzz with rumors and questions, "Will they really let us go this year? They didn't send us an email about it last year until 10:00am. We have a new interim president; perhaps he will be a curmudgeon." But the campus ALWAYS closes at noon on Wednesday.

It is 3:15pm on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and we have received no email yet. If we are not released early tomorrow then I am stuck here all day by myself or, even worse, all day as the only staff member with the head of the department and some confused professors.

This is a very strange tradition. They do this on Dec. 23, too.

I can't wait until I'm a grad student.

*KatieW*

For the myterious coward who sent me a nasty xanga message and then closed their account

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:41:43 GMT

"A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones."
-G.K. Chesterton

"Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern."
-William Blake

"He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own views."
-William Congreve

"It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-Aristotle

The person I am now is much more loving and interesting than the close-minded, fool I was in high school. I am sorry you cannot see that. Perhaps next time you should actually discuss it with me, rather than leaving a kamikaze-style hate-message in my inbox and then closing your account.

*KatieW*

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:20:05 GMT

It's very hard to get out of bed in the morning when your partner is warm and you are cold. Saturdays are the worst. We made it to the coffee shop in the morning, though.

David and I might participate in our first black Friday shopping together: Half-Price Books (2 miles from our house), 7am, first 50 customers get a book bag with a $5 gift certificate inside and one customer will receive a bag with a $100 gift certificate.

I finished Middlemarch this morning. It was very enjoyable, more realistic than Dickens--though not at all funny--and nicely paced. I highly recommend it. If you want a less humorous, more realistic Dickens, I recommend Great Expectations, which I would place slightly above Middlemarch.

That is a very short review, but I'm not going to pretend to be a great reviewer.

*KatieW*

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:23:08 GMT

Last night was Wednesday night, which means it was date night. It was David's night to choose. We did normal things like go out to dinner and visit Starbucks and then browse at Barnes & Noble, but he also did something sweet. David remembered that I've been thinking about how to decorate my cubicle for the holidays, so he took me to a home-goods store to start purchasing decorations (and he stayed in the store the whole time and even encouraged me to purchase more candles). Then he let me interrupt his ESPN-360 (online) basketball-game-watching to talk about the decorating plan.

David does not like shopping, spending money, or home-goods stores. He loves watching basketball.

That is love.

*KatieW*

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:58:12 GMT

I am addicted to the "Missed Connections" and "Strictly Platonic" pages of Craislist. They made me sad. They remind me that there are a lot of lonely people.

I check these pages with great dedication and wish that I could help. This is probably not good for me.

Our local Craigslist has a lot of ads of all types that are very interestingly worded. The best ones are usually found in the "Farm+Garden" page. I highly recommend reading through some craigslist ads to brighten your day.

*KatieW*

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:55:27 GMT

You know what's a really good feeling? Finding your wallet after you've been searching all over the small world you live in for over an hour.

That was my evening. David was in class so I panicked alone.

*KatieW*