Sunday, April 16, 2006

A Little Good and So Much Bad

The last few days have been interesting to say the least. Last Tuesday marked my last day as a graduate assistant at the office I had been working at during the last year and a half. I was able to spend Wednesday, Thursday and Friday working to complete my thesis, which I am happy to say I did! On Friday I was able to make my last batch of corrections, print it out and make an additional copy. It was such a relief to know that I will be able to submit it to my two readers this week. This should provide enough time for them to make any suggestions, for me to make those changes and then to make the final submission by May 12. Having the two copies in hand is a great relief, hopefully the next few steps will go smoothly.

There's the good.

The bad of the weekend was the nasty stomach flu or food poisoning I was hit with Friday night. I have never been so ill. Between 6 pm and 12 am I threw up 8 or 9 times, by the last round there was nothing left in my poor little tummy so I got my first experience with the very painful dry heaving. To top it off I was concurrently experiencing additional stomach problems. I am sure that no more detail need be given. Thank goodness I was at my parents house and not at my apartment. They were awesome about taking care of me, something that a person crawling from their make shift bed in the hall to the bathroom all night can't really do for themselve to well...

On top of feeling totally pathetic and super sore (my back and abs are still killing me!) I was stressed that I would still feel sick on Monday when I start my new job. Fortunately now that it is Sunday evening, I am beginning to feel more like myself again. Hopefully a good nights sleep will leave me well prepared for tomorrow.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Why no one should work alone, Part I

Yesterday was a hectic day at the office. There are only three full time staff members and me. Making it more complicated the administrative person (who is full time) only works here half a day and works across the hall half the day, so sometimes we are stretched pretty thin.

Well, my supervisor called in sick yesterday and long story short I was in the office pretty much alone from 1:30 until 4. All was going well, I had a couple of phone calls but nothing major and then this older white guy walked in. So I got up and went into the main portion of our office to help him. He said he wanted to know about the graduate diversity program - so I handed him the list of grants we give out each year and said that most of the deadlines had passed, but he could try again next year, once he had been accepted into a MA program. Then he very unclearly asked me about the guidelines for getting these awards and I explained that they were mainly ethnic and socio-economic. At this point he asked me something which I totally didn't understand and I told him I didn't know what he was saying. So he asked me "well, does being a felon recently released from prison affect qualifying for these awards?"

WHAT?!?

That's right. A felon. And not just a felon, but one RECENTLY released. It continued to get worse when I told him that I was unsure how that affected his standing, but he could email or call the woman in charge of the program. He said that he didn't have a computer so email wouldn't be possible. I helpfully suggested he go to the library and use a computer there and he said, "but if she isn't here and i send her an email aren't I going to be sitting there for a long time waiting to hear back from her?" To which I suggested he return the next day or the day after that to check his message. "Oh, it will be saved inside the computer?"

Wow. Clearly this guy was away for quite sometime, making me increasingly less comfortable being alone with him. I know that a felony could be a lot of things, some non-violent. But a felony that keeps you in prison so long that you not only don't have email, but you don't even understand how it works??

After the email discussion he finally left, and unfortunately I have to say that this is only one of my examples of why people shouldn't be left in an office alone...

Thursday, April 06, 2006

A Plan!

Finally I have a bit of comfort. I was offered a full-time, benefited position at Sac State which I will start on Monday, April 17. I will be a program representative for the Academic Talent Search office. ATS puts together a summer school program for gifted sixth through ninth graders which takes place on the CSUS campus and includes interesting courses such as Japanese, veterinary medicine and photography. Kind of like really early college prep.

It will definitely be a change to enter the 40 hour work week instead of my usual come to work when it works for me schedule at McNair. Well, I am a little better than that, but the idea of getting up at 6 and driving to Sacramento 5 days a week instead of 3 or 4 is a bit daunting. But I figure, just like going to school, I will get used to my new schedule. It will probably be better since I will be in a regular routine instead of all over the place like I am now.

Still working away on my thesis with hopes of having it completed and submitted by the deadline on May 12. I got the second draft of my paper back from my advisor on Monday and am hoping that between this weekend and some serious attention next week I will be able to submit it to my two readers by Monday, April 24. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

All in all I am happy to say that I now have a plan. I just need to get into gear in order to spit out a rockin final draft of my thesis although I highly doubt that a thesis can really ever be rockin. Well see!

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Adventures in the Car

I am not a very patient person. Yesterday, as I spent nearly 2 hours going approximately 5 miles on the freeway I realized this even more. I have always hated waiting – especially when it came to plays being cast, colleges sending out acceptance letters and, now, job interviews. But waiting in the car is the ultimate agony.

When people ask if I would like to live in LA again, I can answer an emphatic NO. Living in LA during college was fine and I love the great friends I met there and who still live there. But to have a “real” life in Los Angeles? Hell no. The city is way to spread out and has the most heinous traffic virtually 22 hours a day.

Terrible Car Story #1: The last week I was in college I was heading over the house of the boy I was dating at the time. I lived in Playa del Rey and he lived in Long Beach, roughly 17 miles away. I hoped on the freeway around 7:15 (I know, I know, too close to “rush hour” which I am pretty sure last from 2:30-9) and it took me an entire hour to get there. An hour. And there wasn’t an accident, no one had been pulled over by the police. There was nothing that people were stopping to look at. Sitting on the 710 made me so anxious that I literally wanted to get out of the car and run in circles around it. It was the worst car experience of my life.

Until yesterday. At least I got to see a cute boy at the end of that obnoxious hour.

Terrible Car Story #2: But yesterday as I drove from my parent’s house in Stockton to Sac State for a meeting with my thesis advisor I didn’t really have anything that great to look forward to at the end of the waiting. Apparently a big rig truck flipped over and blocked every lane of I-5 North…so, for those with knowledge of this area, I went from the Laguna exit in Elk Grove to the Pocket Road exit in Sacramento in two hours. The entire trip took me three hours when it should have taken one hour max. I felt like my entire day was wasted because after the meeting I still had to drive back to Davis. I stopped to get lunch and by the time I made it home I was completely exhausted. I ate, sat for awhile and then went to an excellent yoga class. Afterwards I had dinner with friends, which was good too.

This experience seriously adds to my desire to live in a city where a car is not necessary for every day travel.