Work and no play, I found myself in ramblings. Assessing the hours with numbers and letters, I feel lost in clutter. There was no answer, simply the notion to keep on going. The minutes go slowly and the hours seem as distant as the city of Portland. This is how I feel about my day job.
I work at an office -- the admission's office -- of College of the Atlantic. I sit in front of a computer, typing away information of prospect students. Looking at all their names, I sit in wonder, how it's possible to have such an interesting last name. There isn't much left to wonder, because there's no face or interaction. It's simply a piece of paper with names and zip code numbers, left to wonder how they got assigned to the category of which I'm labeling them under.
Some may say it's simply a mindless task, but to me it's truly putting some effort into the tasks of daily life. Fighting the urge to want to be curled up in a bed, staring at another computer screen with sounds pouring out of the background of my favorite Netflix show; or the urge to be out in nature simply gazing at the artifacts that have been left behind by our ancestors and those that keep on flourishing with the summer season.
Then there's the phone calls... I rarely seem to answer any, as my co-worker is like speedy Gonzales, answering them at the first ring. I like to let the phone ring, twice at least, just to make sure that the call has gone in. How can one be sure that with one ring the connection has fully gone through? I'm no phone expert, but it seems to me as if waiting just a second for half-a-second ring might allow for some strength within the cellular connections. Yet, it's quintessential to attend to the phone calls as quickly as we possibly can. Some calls are simply transfers, while others are filled with questions. The questions we receive over the phone aren't extravagant, but there are a few that leave you wondering "How in the world am I currently trying to figure out what to do with bear feces?" Those are the kind of questions that make the job a lot more interesting than the A-typical office job.
This job keeps me busy and entertained. There's not as much communicative interaction as I expected but my expectations were minimal. I had seen what the job had to offer in regards of tasks, but experiencing it on hand has been a completely different experience. I get to learn who gets the most mail and how to postage mail, along with all of the other secretarial work that I do. It's a part time job that takes up my entire week. I get to meet students who want to come to College of the Atlantic and see their reaction to the campus -- full with questions and eagerness, or just in plain awe, the tours that I give, make the time pass like a breeze.
It's currently Week 4 of this job and I'm no longer questioning if I made the right decision to come back to Bar Harbor, Maine. What matters is that I'm here and I'm sticking it through.
