First Jobs

One of our new student workers -- we call them Pages (appropriate for the library, huh?) -- was shocked when he found out that I, too, was once a Page. Okay, it was back in the mid-'70s and I was a graduate student at the time, but still.... we all have humble beginnings in the working world. Or at least, most of us do. So I was thinking about the jobs I've had before becoming a librarian.

There was my first job, in the women's sportswear department of a now-defunct local department store chain. That was one horrible month of my life after I graduated from high school and before I started college. Before that, I'd done some babysitting, mostly for my aunt and uncle.

I was a "coach" in my senior year of college, which was a glorified tutor for a self-paced introductory psych class. Ah, the early-'70s. Self-pacing was a nice idea, but impractical for kids who were in college thanks to another late-'60s/early-'70s concept: open enrollment. Guaranteed admittance to a city college, no matter what their SAT scores, they were ill-prepared to handle college coursework, so I did more teaching of basic reading skills than administer the required quizzes.

In grad school (for psych), I was a Teaching Assistant for an undergrad experimental psych class. The highlight lowlight was cleaning a dozen pigeon cages at the end of the school year.

For the following two years, I had "real" jobs. One year had me typing bills for a typography company, which fed my font fanaticism. The next year, I was a receptionist/typist (with limited skills and I didn't even know how to make coffee -- making me a major disappointment -- since I don't like the stuff) for a magazine.

Librarianship came soon after.

So, anyone have any really horrid jobs?

Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
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