| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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Yesterday my boss called me at home, offering a position at a store three miles away. It's four miles by bike or two buses. I don't want to do that. Plus it's six to eight miles from everything else that I do, making it more difficult to experience life on a social level outside the store. So in between working and my life, I've been doing some thinking. I'm not the ideal retail type. I've grown tired of the different schedules every week and can barely deal with customers anymore. It was fine my first summer of working and into my first school year, but after three years it grows tiresome and I'm learning little and have no enthusiasm anymore. Then to add to the whole thing, I'm feeling my flat feet again and I think I'm developing carpal tunnel in my right wrist. I use my right hand all the time from running the register to holding totes against my hip to unlocking cases. I'm trying to use my left hand more but my right hand has been aching since roughly 10 this morning. I figure the last three years under the same corporation will look good on my resume, but I have no clue what to do next. Apply with some temp places and read the newspaper I guess. I need to move soon, too. Get some better influences on my lifestyle. I've been talking to my mom about going to school again-- apparently if you're independent you can apply for grants as one before the age of 24-- but the problem with this is that I still can't decide what major would be best for me. I love art, play music, care about the environment and people and want to start a non-profit someday. Where will this take me in the future? How can I best prepare myself to follow my dreams? I think the best plan for now is to talk to my friends and just look for new things. Maybe I'll leave Portland. I don't know. Just something new. I think I really will quit this time. |
Learn how to write/think critically, research exhaustively and translate everything you know into language that is accessible and will make people want to give you money. Find a school with a good humanities/social science departments and a business school that offers classes, or has professors who specialize, in social enterprise. You may be able to find a school with a cultural or american studies program that will let you combine arts/science classes with business classes. At Syracuse we had a combined humanities MBA, but I am not sure that's what you want. If you are serious about starting a non-profit, find a major/school that will let you get credit for internships where you can work at one and look for one in an organization that will teach you the most about non-profits, not about whatever issue they are dealing with. If you can combine the two that's great, but you probably want some hands-on experience with business models and organizational strategies first. Read crap like this. Knowing this stuff is good, particularly if you are only able to find classes and professors that meet your specific needs. I'll try to think of more. If you come to visit, I may be able to hook you up with someone who studies activism as a topic. Or I'll ask her if she knows of any resources that might be helpful to you. |
I have my exit interview tomorrow. I can't wait. |
I'm going to start writing out what I want to do today, I figure I can volunteer at the IPRC and I'm already a volunteer at the community cycling center and they need more office work right now. I think applying to volunteer at one of the camphill villages may be helpful. Just to see non-profits in action and figure out how they work. I think this is my dream. |
This is just an example of something you could do before going to school, if you're not certain what you want to study, or instead of getting an office job. Hmmm...it's also something I could do instead of going to grad school.... |
Decide? Major? I didn't decide what my major was until the first week of my junior year. Even then I picked one that maximized my flexibility and let me study just about anything. Don't decide. Just go somewhere kewl that offers a good education. Specializing is for insects and PhD's. |
quit your retail job. it will take you nowhere. try to go to college. if you can deal with it, go to pcc for two years then transfer. that's cheap. |
http://www.finaid.org/calculators/dependency.phtml You're probably thinking of the requirements for in-state tuition at public schools. In some states, if you're an out-of-state student younger than 24, you can prove financial independence and get the cheap in-state tuition. |
I want to find a major that would be most suitable for my goals, so I have exactly in mind what I need to do and how to go about it. I do want to go back to school and take photography and calculus. |
That was my worst class in math. Correction my second worst. Geometry was the worst. I just had a mental block for the formulas. |
calculus was the first math i enjoyed. |
Pre-Cal I enjoyed, because I had a good and patient teacher. Calculus? Never had to take it. Yay! |
And for once I must say I whole heartedly agree with kazu's advice reguarding your course work lapis. I think a compination of the social, art, and business courses would be the right choice for you. |
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Or am I just weird? In college I was working on my senior thesis there was one day that I woke up and just couldn't stand the sight of the words in my books. They hurt and didn't make any sense. I put them away and did calculus problems for a little while, it was actually kind of fun and relaxing. |
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also i use numbers to help me feel better nice |
:) Ah, maybe it's just me who never thinks about numbers. I get obsessed with words or nonsensical phrases, but no numbers. |
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I'm fairly good at math but lack patience for most of the teachers I've had for it over the years. My senior year I took pre-calc and I'd spend hours trying to solve matrices on paper but failing desperately. I tested straight into calculus at Mount Hood, but opted for pre-calc because I was a bit shaky on some concepts still. Then I took statistics which was the mistake. I don't even understand the concept of statistics. Why even do the math in the first place if you have to calculate a margin of error? I like to study the letters, not just the words. I've got a book about magical alphabets that I get out every once in a while and take notes out of. It's amazing how people put meaning into the letters themselves rather than just the words. |
I don't know the math anymore, but just as a rough example, say you poll 1,000 people with divorced parents and ask them if they're divorced, too, and you find that 60% of your sample population is also divorced. Now say, you poll 100,000 children of divorced parents and find 60% are divorced. The 60% you got from your second sample has a significantly smaller margin of error because you're closer to having polled the entire population of children with divorced parents than you were when you talked to just 1000 of them. When your margin of error is smaller, your standard deviation is also smaller. |
You need a way of measuring how representative of the entire population your small sample is. |
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:Þ |
. We haven't calculated any margins of error, but we have used calculus. . I took Calculus I and II, but they didn't take. I passed them, but I still don't feel like I know calculus. Fortunately, my calculator knows it fairly well. I just lose a few points here and there for not showing enough of my work. . Even with the handicap of being unable to derive or integrate without a computational aid, I'm doing better than most people in my class. They _do_ know calculus. I've seen them doing it. . I'd like to learn calculus now that I can remember stuff. It's nifty. . My most enjoyable math class was Discrete Math. That had a lot to do with the teacher, but I also liked how things fit together. . . I sometimes do that numbers-in-my-head thing. I also will do similar things with logical concepts and stuff. Sometimes my brain will hog all resources trying to figure out the most concise, yet still accurate way to express a particular complicated idea in English. |
It doesn't help that I've lost words. Occasionally I introduce housemates to new words, the most memorable being "trivet". One of the local newspaper writers is "look at me, I can tap dance". She was at the show last night. There's also the "Sweaters and Scrabble Set" which dabbles in music and letterpress. |
I really didn't grok it until I took discreet structures and logic during my master's degree. Calc is nice and all, but nothing speaks to me like fractals and hypercubes. |
is that anything like..... TIME CUBE???? |
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I thought the fourth dimension was time. |
. While time can be treated as a fourth demension in certain situations, it's not _the_ fourth demension. . I have a hypercube screensaver. . I also have a the book Flatland, but haven't managed to read it yet. |
Have you ever read Time's Arrow by Martin Amis? I don't know why, but that came to mind upon reading your post. It's a pretty good book but kind of a downer. |
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. The copy of Flatland that I have is actually "The Annotated Flatland -- A Romance of Many Dimensions" and there seems to be twice as much text in the margins as in the story itself. |
I just finished Paradise by Toni Morrison for a paper, which I didn't like as much as Song of Solomon, and while it was also pretty brutal at points, was much easier to stomach than Beloved. Anyway, it's good paper writing material which is the most important thing right now. But I ache for some Nabokov. I never finished Ada and that makes me sad. |
I'm not sure if I can quit right now. Hopefully. I'm going to look at a house that I may rent. I haven't seen it yet but it's big, I can paint it all I want, there's a rent discount if I do repairs and I can keep Sylvie and my piano. One of my Zoobomb buddies has the adjoining backyard. I can set up an acoustic music space and wrench in the back. I can stay home and cook and throw dinner parties and all sorts of kitchy pez craziness. Yah. If I get the house. If. |
It also sucks. Much like many "grown up" things. speaking of quitting, the assistant manager quit, and friday was her last day. She was going around hugging everybody. As i sat crouched behind some mops i wondered to myself: is there any shame in hiding in a supply closet for 20 minutes to aviod a big hug and big fake nice goodbye from someone you hate? i sure don't think so. |
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I like the idea of renting a house. I've never lived in an apartment (not that I really want to) and they're so expensive. The house: Two bedrooms and living room carpeted in dark green. Small closets. Claw foot tub with a stand alone curtain rod and plenty of shelves. There's window boxes on the front porch and a fireplace in the living room. The kitchen is bright and cheerful (could be too much when the weather gets nice again, yellow counters and tealish cupboards) but in the basement it's spongepainted brown with pictographs! A cave! Two of my friends just got back to town a couple of days ago from hitching the last couple months and are interested in sharing the house. I can't rent this place alone comfortably. The only problem is that I've been told by another friend that they're not terribly responsible (he also wants to move in, but not with them. I won't live with him because he's made it extremely obvious in the past that he wants to fuck me). Ah, the dilemmas. |
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He was mad about a review he recieved recently in which he was told to stop wasting so much time on stupid projects like worthless Excel spreadsheet macros that he spent a week writing and didn't do anything that we didn't already have better tools for. He wandered around on his last day trying to get people to be impressed that he was going to China (and might not come back!) but generally failed. I chilled out in the bathroom when he approached my area. . We found out he's not coming back. Big surprise. We're not replacing him, because he didn't do anything anyway. |
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after my daughter was born, many things in my life that i was happy to participate in just dont seem important anymore. |
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I don't hide as much as I used to. I can't. Something I've noticed in the last few days is that I'm getting to be extremely quiet. It used to be only when I'm alone, but I went to wrench some bikes with ZooBomb last night and when there wasn't anything for me to help on I'd sit in the corner with a small cat and dog fighting over my lap, constantly watching the action. I can perform (act, dance, sing, read) just fine, no qualms about it, I talk to stangers. There are times though that I get to be invisible. Hiding in open space. |
. I'm good at hiding in plain sight. I can cut through crowds like a warm knife through butter and not be noticed by a single person. I can also cunningly hide things in plain sight if I know who I'm hiding it from. Does that make me Master of the Obvious? |
If I could be any contemporary artist, I would be Jenny Holzer. |
I don't think I have it, but during the holiday season I definately feel the effects at times. I've walked out of places that were too crowded for my liking before. I can dance through crowds without getting one look. It's a fine art, takes practice. Used five hours today volunteering at the Community Cycling Center. I don't volunteer there as much as I like, due to low bike mechanic knowledge and getting volunteering information only from sporadic emails. I did a buch of random office work: envelopes (addressing, stuffing, mailing), phone polls for previous beneficiaries of the create a commuter program, cutting and gluing and copying paper. They gave me a silver star, and I talked to them about volunteering on a regular basis in the office/creative working side. I feel really comfortable volunteering there. One of the mechanics and I discussed writing a short play about two people calling phone lists and their conversations inbetween. |
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Maybe that was it. Ehh. |
I've had it. I've had it with miserably, snippity, snooty, bitter old queens who don't understand the seperation of busines and politics. Bitter old queens who ignore my emails intentionally and respond to my (gay) colleague within minutes I've had it with a particular German partner of ours who finds it necessary to take my words critical of our sister company's service and share them with said sister company's publisher and the president of the entire company. why? i was simply being honest. as your rep, i want to be honest, even at the expense of my company. i dont lie about these kinds of things. your shipment will most likely be late. of course, now that attention has been drawn to the matter said sister company has expedited said shipment post haste and i get a CC-ed email this morning from said German 'Dieter' thanking the sister company for their prompt service and calling them 'angels'. Reality is, they are the furthest thing from angels. They've been dragging the reputation of the company and in particular mine down because of their incompetent and absurd level of service. Moreover, why did he feel the need to send me a copy of that email? Why did I need to see that? Next time i see this German fuck, Im going to kick his ass. Literally and serverely. The reprimand and havoc that im to receive because he couldnt keep his mouth shut is pointless. He gained nothing by it (well, maybe his shipment will be prompt now). This 'Dieter' is already disliked in my office. My boss and VP made him cry (literally) on a trade show floor about 2 years ago. It was hilarious and very very sad at the same time. Maybe this was his methodical retribution. No matter. Im sick of it. Im sick of the bullshit fine line im forced to walk as a mainstream magazine publisher distributor and smut publisher and distributor. |
Find another job, and then quit. If I can go back to office parties for a second... Don't laugh, but I'm part of a knitting group at my office. It's small, maybe 6-7 people if everyone shows up. Last week, a couple of the ladies said they'd like to do something special for me next Friday, as my last day is Dec. 23. I said sure and thanked them. I have no problem with a few of the women I'm friendly with taking me out to lunch or whatever. But this morning, one of those people came to me and told me "we're all" going out to lunch next Friday.....and it dawned on me that it won't be just the knitting ladies, but my whole department, and my stomach dropped. I freeze up and can't eat when I'm surrounded by people I don't know, and if I have to be the center of attention....I'm getting anxious thinking about it. I think it's really nice that people are willing to do something for me, and that they'll miss me when I'm gone. I'm grateful, honestly. I only wish I didn't get so nervous at office social gatherings. Maybe I'll surreptitiously have a glass of wine or two before the lunch. |
Now the Store Manager says that I might Go To Hollywood (district, that is) which Would Not Be So Bad. When he overheard me Telling Another Employee he Made A Point of saying that "Maybe" would be a better word than "Might". Bewildering. You'd think a person could talk about where they might be transferred to, particularly when everyone is being transferred out within the next six weeks. My department is running into some difficulties, being small and specialized. Out of eight of us, two are seasonal and are to be laid off after Christmas, two are being placed by corporate and one is starting at her new store on Sunday. This leaves three of us to worry about our respective destinies. With less than a month before the store closes any news whatsoever is exciting. "Do you know where you're going?" is regular lunchroom talk and I was much more confident about it all a month and a half ago. Too bad it fell through. I need to begin doing important things, like Making Lists for my future and to Stop Worrying about everything. Or maybe not. I do need to stop worrying but just trying to quit isn't really the way (I think). I've got to learn that some things are out of my hands and to be okay with that. I need to decide what I want and how to go about getting it. Blah blah. Girl Power bullshit. I'm having one of those weeks when I'm alternately jubilant and pessimistic, one of those months or even seasons. Or years. I want to: * play music more. * learn to wrench bikes well and to get more comfortable with fixing flats. * throw dinner parties. * begin organizing the minibike ballet. * celebrate my birthday this year (the last time there was a party was when I turned seventeen). * learn to show my appriciation for things. * start a lounge act. I could just sit here and wait for some stupid male to call instead (which hasn't been happening and thus rumors have been flying around about my intention to move, supposedly it already happened and I live in Scapoose now) but that just isn't as much fun as getting things done. </introspective mode> |
. Willingness to accept what you can't change, wisdom to know the difference kinda stuff. However that goes. . I second the motion on worrying less. Worry can mess you up. . You list of things is cool. You should do them all. When is your birthday? . Starting rumors about moving is fun. A few years ago, Apparissus and I up and moved without telling anyone. We had a month of overlap, so we left the webcams behind for the month to stare at the empty rooms. I think Hal left some sort of panicky message on here. We put a cryptic message on our website with a picture of the house we moved to. Some of our friends surfed neighborhoods looking for it. |
or you could ask for more money. seeing as how you are loyal and dependable, you might get what you ask for. |
it will cost you more to work there. they should pay you more....thats what i meant. |
I was originally going to transfer downtown (that's when I first mentioned moving to anyone) so that might be where the rumor stems from. Only two people have mentioned it so far (which happen to be two boys I've kissed but that's another story altogether). Can't ask for more money without taking a management position (lame and unwanted). Glass ceiling has been hit. This is jointly controlled by Kroger and my union contract. Quitting is a good idea, but I'm a little frightened by the idea. If I don't get another job within two months or so it would mean moving back in with my parents (maybe) and I don't want that at all. As much as they mean well. |
welcome to the big world. get over this. the experience is tantamount to being successful at whatever you do. how scared do you think my wife was when she left her job? when we quit our jobs and moved to another city all together? you have to do these things. once you do, you'll think yourself pussy for not. you can find work doing what you do or something like it within 10 days dear pez. fear not. be brave. leave. find something new. it will give you new life. |
Yes, quitting is scary. I know! But when your job leeches your soul of all light and joy, you have to leave. You just have to. Especially if you're working in freaking retail. Lapis! Don't do that to yourself! You are so much better than a retail job -- you are creative and smart and passionate. You need a job where you can flex all those muscles...a job that will make the most of those qualities. |
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spider said psycho hosebeast hee hee |
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I did the same thing last Thursday. I know what I want to do now and working for Fred Kroger isn't going to get me there. It's useless for me to cling to a job that, for lack of anything else, "keeps me out of my parents' house". Confidence. I need confidence. |
Best thing I ever did. The only drawback to the new job is the pay isn't is shit hot but I am far happier. |
I'd rather be able to stay where I am, but that isn't an option, with the teardown and everything. Maybe I'll join the ranks of the freefloating people with tons of spare time. I'll be a plankton person! |