One Immense Jabber

Let me set the scene. This Wednesday, I went to the Jose Gonzalez show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and on our way back, I lost my cell phone on the E line of the Green Train.So like any good investigation, I have been following up on multiple leads. I called the MFA, the MBTA, the Boston police, etc. No lost, cute little flip out cell phone. I put up a lost ad on Craig’s List, etc. Despite my refresh every few minutes between working, nothing. I’ve also been monitoring my minute usage at T-Mobile to see if someone has been using my phone hopefully so I can call whatever numbers this person calls and try to figure it out that way. This morning, I finally started feeling resigned to losing my phone and more importantly, all my phone numbers. I looked on craigslist for a good replacement. I decided to splurge for shits. Maybe if I spend a lot of money on a phone, I won’t lose it as easily. And then, I SAW THIS AD:

That is my phone!!! Someone is trying to sell my phone on craigslist!! Listed two days after it was lost! So this would be called “jumping to conclusions” in any normal investigation. But let’s look at this ad. This person is selling this phone today only. S/he “gotta sell this tonight”? Why is that necessary? And most tellingly, “this is a steal”, Freudian slip? Okay so, to be fair, if it wasn’t pick pocketed, I lost it fair and square. And no one has any obligation to try to find its owner. I called Boston police to figure out if I even had any options considering my suspicions. Don’t they have enough time to set up a sting operation? The answer is no. I’d have to file a police report. Lame.

Instead, I’m setting up my own sting operation. I emailed the person, trying to gather further information about the phone so as to not jump to conclusions. I asked “do you have a charger and are there any scratches on the phone?” Both legitimate questions in order to discover if this is a good buy and to see if it is stolen. I even created another email address (warnergeroge@yahoo.com) to just ask if I could buy the phone. The craiglist person said s/he is going to be around until 5. Time is ticking down and he hasn’t responded to either emails.

Now that I’m just waiting for his email and after having gone through all of this, why do I even care so much? As I was telling one of the other interns about the situation, one of my coworkers began a diatribe against contemporary culture and the materialism of our age. Honestly, I just miss my phone numbers. I will never sink low enough to create a facebook group begging for numbers, but there’s a reason why people do that. Not only does having such a database of numbers come in handy and become annoying to replace, it just makes me feel like I’ve lost some connection, however minimal, to some people that I do like to infrequently catch up with and probably will forget to email or ask another way for their number.

Maya, an Amherst intern who was with me at the Jose Gonzalez show, asked me how I remained so calm when I knew I lost my phone (even as I’m freaking out now). It has to do with the real world vs. Amherst. At Amherst I’ve lost my cell phone in various places all over the campus – the library, the campus center, dorms, etc. I think I can count at least 5 times when I didn’t have my cell phone and I had to hunt it down. Every single time, some gentle Amherst soul turned it in to the right place. Boston, a true representation of the real world, is not so gentle or forgiving.

(Written 2.5 weeks ago on my actual first day of work)

This is my first day of work. 

How many times can you say that? Probably only a handful (if you’re lucky or unlucky, depending on what you want). Even if you eventually forget about them, these “first days” are important and the impressions you make on these days will fuck with you for the rest of your existence in that space. Similarly, the impression that you make on people also directs their overall impression of you. Co-workers will still say, “I don’t remember her being like that on her first day” regardless of how false their first impression of you may have been. Your overall impression adjusts and revolves around that first impression. 

This is only my second real world internship and I still remember the about-to-have-a-freaking-anxiety-attack loss of breath and the dry, clammy palms on my first day of work over a year and a half ago at my first real world job.  Not only had I visited the office the week before to make sure I knew where it was, I had and outfit picked out at least a week before. Dressed to the nines, I arrived 20 minutes early and dramatically walking toward the entrance of the office only to walk away. After a few minutes calming myself down, I walked into the office and things went smoothly.

This summer’s first day was different. I forgot to set an alarm thanks to my Benadryl-induced stupor. I woke up at 9:30 smiling and fully recharged from the weekend, rolled over to squint at the clock, gasped and shot out of bed. Expected in the office at 10:00 for an all staff meeting, I tore clothes out of my dresser. Leaving my house, heels in hand, I hustled to work sweating in the humid Boston heat. Walking up and down Massachusetts Ave, not because I didn’t want to walk into the office but because I was lost, I finally figured out that my office was the largest, ugliest building in sight. Imagining that I would embarrass myself by stumbling into a serious office meeting, I braced myself as I ascended the nine floors. When I entered the office, everyone was quietly working at their desks and the office manager greeted me explaining that the meeting was postponed for an hour. 

On your first day, hopefully, the office manager will greet you too. This is how the first day of work – not to mention the first day of anything – should start. Someone should smile at you and tell you what is what, where the aspirin and the watering hole is, who you call for tech problems. Wouldn’t it have been great if, after you finally left that warm womb, someone had said, “Listen friend, don’t believe everything everyone tells you. Not everyone is good, but not everyone is bad. Don’t fall in love with the first person who has a cute haircut or says something nice about those shoes you fought your parents to buy. Stay away from that Hong Kong restaurant in Chinatown. It will give you the runs.”? What would you want your life manager to have told you? Some life lessons only life experience can drill in, but there are some things like diarrhea which should be avoided at all costs.  I’m excited to see what things in the office I’ll have to figure out for myself.

After the all staff meeting, my boss and I met to discuss what she wanted me to do. She gave me some reading and had to leave. I asked her if I could leave too and “work from home.” Mainly, I couldn’t stop thinking about how disorganized my life was and how I’d like to unpack and relax. And thus, my first day of work ended at noon and I walked home. 

After fully unpacking, Ben showed me around Harvard Square and his old high school haunts.  It’s always interesting to see what people grew up around.  After a few hours of milling around and feeling like a high schooler again, I remembered that I had bought a ticket to go see M83 at the Middle East that night. That’s something I wish my life manager would have advised me about, “don’t buy that ticket, Selena. It’s your first day of work; you’re going to be exhausted.” Although the show was great, I fell asleep. I was standing in the back on this bench so I could see and then I was sitting and then I was sleeping.  After the show, I walked home and fell asleep without taking off my clothes.

Any other good/bad first day experiences?

This will be my sixth blog and counting. When I was a lovesick pre-teen, I had a Diaryland diary, and when an angsty teenager, I ferociously kept up a Livejournal. In college, I moved on to more specific blogs like my Campus Word study abroad blog about Dublin. I think Planworld still has one ridiculously disgusting entry about my horrific first leg of an adventure to Bristol. Finally, this charming venue, AmhPub, has hosted my AAS Senate blog. My goal here is simply to document the adventures of living in a new city as a scum-of-the-East-Coast summer intern.

So friends, what exactly am I doing? I’m working at a non-profit consulting firm in Boston. More specifically, I’m working on one of their initiatives that does research on the non-profit sector. We look at ways to measure the social impact of non-profits. Working on this initiative is my wonderful boss and… me. Sometimes, another research associate does some work for us, but mainly it’s us. Because it’s such a new initiative, flexibility and responsibility has been our fortune and curse. Although I’m only two weeks in, I’ve been chastised, confused, late, asleep in meetings, and suffered long delays on the T (don’t worry, a lot of good things have happened too). The train wreck of my internship so far was foreshadowed by my nightmarish adventure just trying to get from Amherst to Boston. Let’s tell that story first:

During reunion weekend, as a class assistant, I bartended until Sunday morning (the same day I was to move to Boston). I didn’t sleep much Saturday night because someone left a cell phone in his backpack in my room while he was out sleeping in Narnia. The cell phone graciously decided to vibrate all night long at 10 minute intervals for 30 seconds each time. Between that and then another cell phone that kept beeping to remind me of its low battery, I got little sleep anticipating the syncopation between these two entities in opposite corners of my room. I made breakfast plans with Jake Maguire so finally at 7, I got out of bed. Breakfast despite my sluggishness was great. We discussed our lives from our two very different viewpoints – one year out (him) and one year left (me). Things ain’t easy on either side of the fence, we soon found out. The anxiety of graduating is rewarded only by the anxiety of being graduated. After walking slowly around a bit (apparently you don’t walk slowly in New York according to Jake), we went back to Amherst so I could finish my class assisting duties.

While packing my new friends Jim Bean, Dewers, and Amstel Light in order to return them to Dining Services, I realized that I hadn’t packed my own things even though I was leaving for Boston in a few hours. Back in the Zu, I absentmindedly threw my shit together (I still can’t find most things) and loaded my tv and 4 bags of stuff into Rachel’s already completely packed van. Finally after a trip to Amherst Coffee and a visit with some other young alums, Rachel and I finally pulled ourselves out of the time trap that is Amherst College. Still in a daze, neither of us really paid attention to the mess of back roads we decided to take to the Pike. Our casual and almost regretful feelings about leaving the college were punished by: 1. In Palmer, the police are super active and pulled us over for driving 33 in a 30 waylaying us for half an hour. 2. Confused by the podunk roads, somehow we missed the Masspike and accidentally passed a “Welcome to Connecticut!” sign. 3. After finally making our way North again so close to the Pike (3 miles away! I mean, we could actually see the road leading to the Beantown), Rachel’s prickly van decided it had had enough and broke down. Just died. That was fun. We rolled into a large driveway and slunk around until the creepy owner of the house came to greet us. He was nice enough and said we could lounge around his property. Rachel and I put out a blanket, pillows, and our cell phones to figure out what we would do. Rachel did some research. She found that: towing without Triple A is expensive and Sunday is a magical day where no one expects cars to die. On this miraculous day, all garages and rental car places are closed. Our last resort solution was to call her dad in Philadelphia who does have Triple A and Steve in Boston to pick me up. In the interim, my allergies decided to go nuts and I could hardly breathe or stop coughing and our host generously gave me some Benadryl and a cup of water. I was talking to my mom about my allergies as the guy came up and gave me the Benadryl and a cup of water and I swear he could hear her scream, “DON’T DRINK THAT WATER OR TAKE ANY PILLS. POISON.” Steve graciously drove from Boston practically to Amherst to pick me up. So after dinner and that Benadryl, I easily passed out at 10:00 pm.