I lived in Boston for ten years. Ten long years. My feelings about the city itself aren’t complicated— it’s bad— but my life there wasn’t bad, just stagnant. Work was especially stagnant. The majority of my work experience comes from a school in Boston— well not IN Boston, but near it…no, not Tufts! It was this one:
Well technically it was this one:
Even more technically, it was this building:
This is the newly renovated building, not the 1960s nightmare I remember so fondly. I was 21 when I got hired at a coffee shop & cafe on the ground floor—“the arcade,” we called it. I worked there throughout college, bantering with my boss and dating…too many of my customers. One of my regulars at the time was the chief digital officer for the University, and got me an internship in the Public Affairs Office on the 10th floor. It was very upstairs/downstairs of me. Sometimes people were my customers, sometimes my coworkers! After that, I started temping at the Information Center, which was also in the arcade, across from the cafe. More of a downstairs/downstairs vibe. Then I worked here for a bit:
Well….technically I worked here, as VIP Coordinator, AKA The Bachelorette Party Whisperer.
It was fun— as much fun as seeing the same show once a week two times a night for a year can be. I have a kind of post traumatic stress from it, in that popular disco songs take me directly back there. This was the highpoint of my drinking career, given that I was both depressed and working at a bar that gave me a ton of free booze.
At some point, I got tired of staying up til 4AM and drinking and not having health insurance, so I threw myself into a job search. My parameters were that it had to be at Harvard, full time and benefits eligible, and it could not require a college degree, as I did not have one. It was not that I was deeply impressed by the school or the mission (lamo imagine??) but I knew full time employees received tuition benefits. If I got a full time job there, it would be possible for me to finish my degree—at some point. Because I was such a charming barista, the HR director from the office at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (henceforth GSAS) remembered me and got me in for a job as a Financial Aid Staff Assistant. The office was in the Smith Campus Center, this time on the third floor. Look, I’ve professionally annotated the building to show where I was located at each job:
The American Rep offices were on the “far” side of Harvard Square. People who work in Harvard Square consider a five minute walk to be “far.” Once I ran into an old colleague at a lunch spot on the “far side”, and he was like “Isn’t your office in Smith? What are you doing over way over here?” As if I traversed great rivers and deserts just to get to a mediocre sandwich—see Figure A below:
I worked in Financial Aid Office at the Graduate School for just under a year, and spent most of that time consuming literally everything I could read on the internet because I was so very dreadfully bored. The two most exciting thing that happened to me in that job were as follows:
One morning, I was disbursing funds (admin speak for money) to students when I got an error message in the program I was using. I popped my head into my boss’s office and was like “Hey did I break this? It says I can’t disburse anything?” and she looked and cheerily said “Oh you spent half a million dollars today! I’ll add some more funds to that account!” My face:
In order to receive their funding for the next academic year, students had to fill out and return a form we sent them, stating that they were aware of how much funding they had left, what years they would be responsible for their tuition payments, etc. I think it was an attempt to make sure they understood their funding packages, but it didn’t really work. Anway, one day, I’m checking the mail, and I notice I have a grease stained envelope in my mailbox. I pull it out and see it’s from a student who had been traveling in Greece. I open it, and the form itself is covered in what I can only assume is olive oil?? I never got an answer for how that could have happened, but here is what I imagine:
That student is filling out their forms in an olive grove, watching the sun glide through the treetops in the early morning. They sigh, stretch, and head towards the rambling cottage they are staying in to make a light, simple breakfast. Opening the door, they see Alessandro, their host, has gifted them fresh pressed olive oil, not in the bottles that Americans are so used to, but in a wide bucket. They lean in, delighting in the scent. So charmed are they by their life here that they forget they are holding the forms, and slip there they go, right into the bucket.
Right, that was kind of excitement I had working in Financial Aid—one time I spent a ton of money and one time I had an elaborate fantasy about olive oil. After a few months of making copies, a coworker in the Office of Student Affairs got a new job. Her boss had been one of my regulars at the coffee shop for years, and he asked me if I might be interested in applying. The job was a smooth $10,000 more than I was making at the time (which, $39,000 is…not a living a wage? In Boston?) and I was like “Absolutely, I will apply for this!” Even though the hiring process still managed to take two months (??? I literally work here?? Already?) I got the job, and spent the next five years of my life working in the student affairs office. The job was about 40% events and events management, which I loved, and 50% telling students that they needed to read for comprehension, which I loved less, and 10% actually helping one or two very stressed out students with like, three clicks of a mouse, which I did find satisfying. I was pretty good at it! It was also very boring!
As my 30th birthday approached, I decided: NO MORE! I had been in Boston long enough. I left my job on June 28th and moved to Philadelphia on July 2nd. So here I am! What…am I doing? What do I want? These are questions I cannot answer, and am allowing friends and internet strangers see behind the curtain because I live for external validation.
Tomorrow’s post will include a lot of feelings about this Dr. Who rewatch I’ve unwisely embarked upon, as well as a roundup of my favorite podcasts of the week. Going forward, I’m looking to get into a three-a-week schedule for this: an early week career crisis moment, a midweek pop culture moment, and for subscribers, an end of the week femslash moment. If the idea of femslash piques your interest, well….
XOXO
CT