I Got the Full Time Job at Harvard After All

They called me Wednesday, two weeks after the interview, and were a little miffed-sounding that I insisted on giving the archive 2 weeks notice. I'm terribly excited about my first professional job, and more so about my first professional paycheck. I currently owe my roommate $500, and I’m more familiar with beans and rice right now than anyone with a grad degree should be.

Of course, the very day that the new job came through for me, that legendary cataloging job in the rare books department went up for grabs on the job board. I thought about it for a while; turned over in my mind how much I’ve enjoyed working with the rare books, how much I love the musty smell of them in my hands. Working in the Medical School archive has been the best job I’ve ever had. But I’m not a cataloger. It’s time to let someone else have a turn with all the cool toys. I’m going to work in Cambridge now, to see what that’s like.

I will start this full time job almost exactly 90 days after I walked out of my last grad school class. It’s only been 90 days, but it feels like school was a year ago. I’m so darn impatient. I should learn to deal better with that kind of waiting.

You are a homeless wanderer.

Ever since that came up as my New Year’s resolution two months ago, the phrase has been rattling around in my brain. By my own count, I have moved 19 times in 25 years. The new full time job is a temporary position that’s up in June, meaning I may still well move to Atlanta at the end of the summer. Maybe I’m just not meant to have continuity in my life just yet. I spent the first few years of my life on the road with my parents, following the pull of my father’s career as a musician. I hate moving, I dislike change in my daily routine – as a child who grew with constant change, I crave stability. But maybe I’m not meant for staying in one place – maybe this seat of my pants kind of living sticks with me because that’s just my nature.

It’s a scary thought, but one worth contemplating as I get ready to end some things, and so put myself right back where I started all over again.

My grandfather, a plumber now retired, sold all his land in Augusta, Georgia this past week. He had a slice of beautiful brown riverbank on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River, down off a dirt road with a houseboat. There were pecan trees and lots of fish and I’ll miss it. He also had some property down off Dean’s Bridge Road, which I won’t miss but was the one of the only places I remember staying the same since I was a baby. The office on Dean’s Bridge Road did not change, even as relatives moved around, got divorced, and my own constantly shifting world slid on by. So yet another place leaves me.

It’s worth turning the wandering hippie child thing back over in my mind as the news is filled with terms like “Shadow Government” and “Official Disinformation”. The president is so confident in his declaration of constant and unending war that we now have a Shadow Government and an official Ministry of Lies. It really got on my nerves, growing up, when my mom wouldn’t let me have a Social Security number, wouldn't let me eat Nutra-Sweet, and my dad would get pissed and go off on rants against “The Military Industrial Complex”. I joined JROTC in High School partly to piss them off.

Later the Gulf War changed my mind about rebelling against my parent’s notion that the government was evil. The rampant blind patriotism scared me then as it scared me now. I studied Sociology as an undergrad and joined protests on my own. I’m alternately afraid of what will happen next in America, and alternately optimistic that these changes cannot stand. There will be a backlash soon. People who weren’t concerned before seem concerned now. Things Change. Every day.

I’m changing. I’m changing jobs. I’m going to learn new things. I’m changing my daily commute, my commitment to staying in Boston, my feeling about the red root vegetable called “beet”. I’m changing my ideas about political philosophies and maybe dyeing my hair. I’m thinking about getting moles removed and getting a spiffy tattoo put on. I’m re-arranging my closet and changing my finances around. Because nothing sits still, everything is moving with me. And maybe all this change doesn’t worry me so much any more.