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I am in the process of importing some entries from older iterations of this blog into the...current...iteration? Basically, whenever I changed templates or CMS engines I would pretty much just delete everything in embarrassment. Reading through some of my older entries here, however, I've realized how much I value being able to look at these snapshots of myself. Y'know, like a journal. Unfortunately, I appear to have made it rather hard on myself, so it may be some time before I'm able to fully restore what was lost.
Anyway, those of you who read this via RSS (Hi, Jon!) may see all of these older entries appear as though they are new, which may lead to some wacky anachronisms. Heads up!
Posted at: 22:00
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I have never experienced time dilation to such a degree as I have this summer. While I can sort of remember the specific events of the days and weeks of June and July, everything seems to have blended together into this instantaneous amalgam event that stretches out for years worth of memories. At any rate, this hellish summer is finally over. I managed an A in my calculus class. This is a testament to how excellent a teacher my GTA was this summer, because this class is technically more difficult than Math 115, which is the only class that I have ever failed. I really hope that my GTA for Math 122 is on par with Tim, because I hear that the class is a total mindfuck.
I quit Garmin at the end of July. I hope this can mark the end of my life in shitty, generic customer service positions, for good. Now I'm working as an undergraduate research assistant in a lab in Haworth. I'm assisting with a study of fruit flies, both in terms of behavior and molecular genetics. Some of my tasks are kind of tedious, and a bit gross, like making fly food and fly husbandry, but most of what I'm doing is amazingly interesting and engaging. I'm sure that I'll look back at this and marvel at how naive it sounds, but the fact that my job involves collecting, amplifying, and genotyping sections of DNA, really blows me away.
It's funny, when I interviewed for the job, my boss-to-be warned me several times that the job involved repetitive, tedious tasks. Each time, I just kind of smirked and replied, "I work in a call center." As I said, I hope that my days of allowing anonymous assholes to abuse my intelligence and good will are over. I mean, I understand that in any job there's bound to be some asshole who is going to try to bring me down...I guess what I mean to say is that I hope that I never have to work in a position where my job description involves allowing anonymous assholes to abuse me. Looking back, I can't understand why I kept putting myself in that position year after year, job after job. I guess that's one of the primary realizations that drove me back to school, I realized that the only thing for which I was qualified was letting people abuse me. In October, I had a vision of myself in 30 years, some middle management type for some horrible retail chain, doing the same shit I'd been doing for my whole life so far. I hope that the revulsion and determination that I found then will carry me through all of the very hard work that I'm going to have to put in to see this thing through.
So, I love my new job. This is the first time in my life that I'm able to tell people what I do and not feel embarrassed. That is really powerful.
Posted at: 18:43
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