bored+narcissistic=blog: 2006

Ok. So I had to decide whether to take the internship with the Washingtonian, The Hill, or the job with NRF.... I finally decided to give up the opportunity to have a full time permanent salary ( :( ) in order to "follow my dreams." But not follow my dreams so much that I was working totally unpaid. So Washingtonian it is. But that doesn't start til Jan 15th.

So until then, my options were sit around—admittedly, an attractive one, but one I had been doing since my NRF job ended in October, and free time is like that experiment with the Dunkin Donuts Munchkins we did in 12th grade economics (i.e. the first Munchkin is delicious, but the 25th makes you really want to die)–or I could take a temp job.

Don't get me wrong. I know the perils of the latter choice. Last year after my 25th day or so of utter lack of purpose and responsibility...when the initial awesome had completely worn off and I was really starting to get into the "I wanna die" phase...I signed up with "Manpower," the dirty-sounding yet utterly mundane temp agency. I did get to watch a pretty hilarious video about office safety though. Anyway, I am drifting off topic. The point is, I ended up spending a couple months literally doing nothing but scanning random, quasi-organized, generally loose paperwork into a Saratoga real estate mogul's computer. The best thing about the job was I found out Pickle Barrel didn't pay their rent and got to eat there a lot before it was shut down. As I was saying, the point. I did not want this to happen again.

I knew that Kenny had temped at Georgetown and made like $16 an hour (the bastard). So I figured, if he can do it, I can do it. I applied there and in my interview they told me that I was coming in at the perfect time...temps get paid for holidays, and there was a goldmine coming up. Christmas and the day after off, paid, then the next week New Years and the day after off, paid. How could I turn that shit down? Although when they suggested shelving library books at $10 an hour I was like.....mmmm extended Christmas break at home suddenly sounds really necessary. But I got lucky, and two days later, just in time to cash in on all the free money, they offered me a job in Graduate Admissions for $14 an hour–still not quite Kenny quality, but what're you gonna do.

Little did I know, free money would not be the only awesome part about this job though. At first glance, the work seems pretty typically eye-gougingly awful.
My day included:
9:00 - 11:00: open mail
11:00 - 12:00: stick labels on manila folders
12:00-12:30: Lunch! paid!
12:30-to whenever someone was merciful enough to free you: filing "Miscellaneous Credentials" (more on this later)
Ok, so maybe the breaking up the day thing doesn't really work, but basically the rest of my time was divided between matching folders with random transcripts and such, then filing these folders into tons of bins for all the different graduate programs, checking off boxes like "GRE received" online, and, if I was really lucky, answering ridiculous questions from applicants who were literally shitting themselves over getting into Georgetown.

Alright, I know what you're thinking. You were thinking of 10-15 different ways to end your life when I was just explaining that. Trust me, it ruled. ....well, ok, a lot of it blew big nasty goat scrotum, but some of it was definitely really hilarious.

It helped that there were a few of us, all young (relatively), and (mostly) with a similar ironic sense of humor.

Case in point, mail time. We generally got a couple of bins of mail a day, often more. We had to open each envelope, many of which contained several other envelopes which we then also had to open, and stamp everything RECEIVED with the date and sometimes, in bold red ink with delicious relish, UNOFFICIAL. Sounds pretty boring right? Not with the stuff we were getting. Letters without a single correctly crafted English sentence intending to ask that the Test of English as Foreign Language be waived for them because "every day school we talk English very good." Books. Professionally-bound novel-length books expressing how [insert random meaningless suck-up adjective here] he or she is (sometimes complete with pictures of the applicant with various "important" people–including the presidents of other American colleges–and "Free Pigeon." Oh, and not to mention a tribute to Nascar through poetry). Then there were the color-coded applications, just to ensure that the reviewers didn't get confused whilst sifting through the 15 or so letters of recommendation, some dating from before I was born, that the applicant was including (make sure none of these are official). Georgetown requires three, in case you were wondering. And of course, if you have taught before, why not include all your most glowing teacher evaluations, headed of course by the enthusiastic, yet distressingly ineloquent, "HE'S IS AWESOME." What if your test scores aren't quite up to snuff? Why, send us a long letter explaining how the breakfast you had eaten that morning wasn't quite agreeing with you, the room was much too hot, and your lucky Spiderman pencil tip broke, forcing you to write with the horribly pedestrian typical Number 2. If we're still not convinced, you have kindly included your medical records to prove beyond a doubt that you were actually quite unwell on the day of your midterm, and that's the only reason Advanced Calculus dropped your entire average.
Then there were the phone calls and emails—why isn't my transcript showing up as received!! I sent it three hours ago! There was even an e-mail complete with 7 attachments, photo documenting each item she had Fed-Exed because, as we all know, "sometimes, the contents are switched by illegal members"