New Scenery, New Opportunities

As summer draws to a close, the scenery changes once again.  When I last wrote, I was staying with my parents and desperately hunting for a job.  It felt like I had been applying for position after position, with no end in sight.  And then I had one of those weeks where everything just seems to fall into place.

First, as many of you know, came the birth of my niece, about which I was very excited (I felt like mentioning that again, just to be sure you remembered).  Shortly thereafter, I had a job interview at the bookstore at the university where I will be obtaining my master's in lingtuistics.  By the end of the interview, I was offered a temporary, part-time job in the merchandise department of the bookstore!

Now, a temporary part-time job is clearly not the end to all my job-hunting worries for all of eternity, but considering that it has a chance of continuing on long-term, that it gives me another month or so to find something else either way, and that it gives me that much more experience, I was excited at the opportunity.

So on Monday, July 30th, I began my training.  My job would be to restock the shelves and clothing racks with various merchandise, organize and properly label merchandise on the floor and in the stock room, greet customers and answer their questions, and whatever other tasks may arise.  It was a little bit challenging at first because there were so many details to wrap my head around, but I have since started to get into the flow of things.  And I have plenty of lovely coworkers.  For example, the girl I usually work with is always very friendly and patient when she shows me things I haven't learned yet, and when I didn't have a quarter for the locker, she gave me one. I have used the same quarter ever since, because the locker returns the quarter after I get my things.  My supervisor is also very friendly, and the managers are as well, although I haven't met all of them yet.

When I am working in the back loading up the dolly with merchandise to be stocked or breaking down boxes to be thrown out, I sometimes hear a noise that sounds kind of like Han Solo being frozen in carbonite.  I have yet to figure out what the noise is, unless that door that always stays locked is a secret chamber with a carbonite-freezing machine run by an incognito bounty hunter, but I doubt it.

So I am enjoying my job.  Arranging merchandise is one of those tasks that, from the right perspective, can be enjoyable.  I find if I use my creativity to find a good way to organize things that is visually appealing as well as makes things easy to find, and I think of it as an opportunity for a creative outlet, it can be very enjoyable.  Also, if I think of talking to customers and answering their questions as an opportunity for socialization and making people happy, that it can be very enjoyable as well.

But I was still commuting an hour each way to get to work, so I needed a place to stay closer to campus.  And not too long after I got the job, I got in touch with my first prospective roommate.  It was a good opportunity, but before everything worked out, I found an even better opportunity.  Through a friend of my dad's, I got in touch with a family who was renting out a room in their house.  That meant I could live in a safe residential area with a nice family and be only 15 minutes from work and class.  So, about a week after I got in touch with them, I moved in!

And that's where I am now.  I have a place to stay nearby, and a job that I enjoy, and will start work on my M.A. in a week.  Hopefully I will get to stay on long term at the bookstore, but if not, I have a chance to find something else in the area.  And believe me, job hunting is much easier when you don't live an hour away. 

I have also begun work on an enjoyable project.  My dad's cousin is writing a series of novels, and needs a couple fictional languages for them, so I volunteered to help him, using my linguistic expertise.  And so far, it's a lot of fun!  I have created phoneme inventories for both languages, and I'm working on lexicons now.  It's turning out to be a lot of fun.  Honestly, I think it might make an interesting side-job, doing some creative linguistic consulting for fiction writers and film producers.  What do you think?  Should I create my own business and go into creative linguistic consulting as a side job?  I think it would be fun.  It would be a great way to combine scientific knowledge with creativity, which is, of course, what a dreamer like me would strive for.