Thursday, September 18, 2008

I Think I Will Like Not Being In Charge!

I have been training for my new job at the National Building Museum and I have to say, I think I am going to like not being in charge for a small little bit of time. I get to come, do the program I am assigned (I don't have to dress in 1917 or pioneer clothing, start fires, or make cookies! Yeah!!), talk/teach/play with kids, and go home. Oh, and get paid. Granted, it is just a part time job, and believe me, part time jobs don't really cut it here in the land of costing a million dollars to live. But I think it will be a good job and I am excited to be working with kids again.

But it has been funny to go through the trainings, on the other end of things! Helpful hints--people really try to give helpful hints, you know, the small things such as "Don't dump the whole box of tiles out, just dump out half" and then someone else saying "I make two small piles with the tiles." I know I probably did this for the people I trained for my job, and I see that it really just takes doing the program to learn what works best for me (or whoever). The employee (I would add volunteer) who knows more than the supervisor--this also was manifest at our training. A lady had to continually add her two cents in about everything in the program. "You aren't going to take out the marble are you? You can't do that. It is the best part." I remember what I thought when staff/volunteers told me that. The nice version of what I usually though: "Well, you don't have the entire picture. You are just seeing one small aspect of this." But these people will be everywhere.

I am sure I will have more to come. But my supervisor told me one thing that made me very happy. She told us that we may have kids recognize us when we are out in DC or on the metro from doing these school programs and it made me excited! Why, you may ask. Well, I don't particularly like being recognized, but if that does happen, it is that stamp of ownership, the evidence that yes, I do indeed live here and my sphere goes outside of the campus/my neighborhood. DC is monumentally huge. But if someone recognized me from my job, it would almost feel like Logan again. Oh, how I miss the manageable city of Logan.

For now, that is it... I am sure I will have more to say about my job later, but for now, things are moving along quite nicely.

1 comment:

Malmstroms said...

Jennette, I love your blog! It is so fun to hear what you are doing. We have a favor for you- Julie just found our blog and said she invited us to read hers, but I think I deleted the invite. When you are in contact with her (person, blog, etc.) would you ask her to send us another invite please. We'd like to see what she's up to. Thanks, and good luck with school and your job!