Seventh Salon: What it is that we do.

[jenett]

Welcome to our seventh salon discussion thread. Wander in, invite a friend to come along, and chat! (Not sure what's going on? Here, have a brief FAQ.) You can find previous ones in my salon tag. Please take a quick look at the reminders at the bottom of this post, too. (Quick note: I'd originally said we'd do these through at least July. I am formally declaring that we'll keep going through at least August.)

Topic of the day:
A couple of conversations this week have gotten me thinking about jobs. One was a conversation with a friend yesterday (hi!) about job hunting, another was a meeting of a committee I'm on for staff awards, where we were asked to introduce ourselves (it's the first time we've met) with something we do that we're really good at (work or not.)

The committee is staff from all over the campus, only one of whom I already knew. And one of the things we were talking about is how recognising people for doing things well can take a lot of forms - but it's also complicated, because talking about what we do well is really hard, and sometimes (often!) other people don't really know what goes into our jobs. (And yes, I talked a little about both Imposter Syndrome and about synecdochic's weekly Pride Thread)

And yet, it's really important to talk about what we're good at, for a dozen reasons and more. (Morale, helping us do more of the really awesome stuff, helping other people do more really awesome stuff, appreciating the work other people do that keeps things running smoothly - we were talking about the school health service, and how you never hear when things are fine there, but it's important that they *are* fine.)

So, my question: What do you do, and why do you like it, and how did you get into doing that thing? I'm curious both about job-that-pays-you stuff but also about ongoing projects that aren't your job.

For bonus amusement, last January, there was a meme about describing things (your job) using the ten-thousand most common words in English. (Inspired by a xkcd cartoon). You can use a web-based tool to write one. If you did that meme and want to share in comments, that'd be awesome. (Or if you want to play with it and share something new!) Mine's in the first comment.

Currently reading: Queen Victoria's Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy - like the title says, this is gaslamp fantasy, not steampunk. Thus far I am generally agreeing with Brit Mandelo's review over on Tor.com, but even the stories that aren't quite my thing are making me think, which is pretty much what I ask for in an anthology.

Quick reminders

- jjhunter did a great guide to following conversations here on Dreamwidth. Also a roundup of regular Dreamwidth events.
- If you want to post anonymously, please pick a name (any name you like) that we can call you - it makes it more conversational and helps if we have more than one anon post.
- Base rule remains "Leave the conversation better than you found it, or at least not worse". If you're nervous about that, I'd rather you say something and we maybe sort out confusion later than have you not say something. (I've heard from a few people who worry they're going to say something that's going to be taken weirdly. If it helps, I am usually around and if there's a thing you'd like to get out in the conversation, but you're not sure how, feel free to PM or email or IM me, and I'll nudge the conversation that direction.)
- The FAQ still has useful stuff, and I added some thoughts about getting conversations going this week.
- Comments tend to trickle in over the course of a day or two, with a few nearly a week later: you might enjoy checking back later if you're not tracking the conversation.

Comments

Upgoer versions:

[jenett]

The job that pays me
I work in a place with books and computers and people at a college. Part of my job is making the computers work. Some of them are old, and some of them are sad, and sometimes they break in weird ways.

Part of my job is helping people use the computers. Sometimes I help them learn to do hard things. Sometimes I help people do things that are easy for other people, but not for them. Sometimes I answer lots of the same question, over and over again. Sometimes I help groups of people, but usually I help one person at a time.

I also help people with other questions. If they have to write a paper, I might help them find stuff to write about. Or I might help them find facts or use things. Sometimes I meet with other people. We talk about what they do with books and people at this college. (But not as much about computers.)

No two days are the same, but I often know what to expect from my day. And most of the time I can pick what I do when. I love my job because I get to help people do stuff that matters to them. And people pay me to do fun things with computers. I have a hard time with my job when none of the computers want to be good.

My hobbies (We're all noting I'm not talking about my religious life here, because getting that into simple enough words wasn't working for me.)

I have two big fun things right now. In one, I put words together to make a story. I make these stories with other people. We have even more people who read our stories and talk about our stories. Making the stories takes a lot of talking and ideas.

To help make the stories better, I also group things we have said in the stories so we can use them later. This is a lot of work, because we have lots and lots of words, but it is very fun for me. (I like grouping things and making them be in order and happy.)

In my other fun thing, I make things with two sticks and hair from animals. My fun thing right now with the sticks and the hair is making things with pictures about my first fun thing.

I also read books. Lots of books. About lots of things.

[elisem]

My job according to Up-Goer Five:

I work making interesting art things for people to wear. Some of them are pretty. Some of them are just weird. Most of them use rocks or glass. Some use both. I surround rocks or glass with long bars to make a pleasing form. Then I show these to people, and they give me money for them, and I give them the things. I use the money to buy more rocks and glass and long bars of the good stuff to wrap into more forms.

Most of the time, I give names to the things I make. People like this. Sometimes they write stories about the things with names. I like it when they do this. Then I get to read stories, and so does every body else, most times. This is good for all of us.

I am very happy to have this job making things. Sometimes it seems to me that the things are waiting for me to come make them, and that when I do, they are glad. Then so are the people who get them, later. And they make art sometimes, and I get to see it, or they are just happy to wear the things, and either way, I like that very much.

Life is good.

[elisem]

What I do for fun:

I make music. Most of my life I have made music with my voice. Since a year or two ago, I also make music using a small music thing which I am learning to play. Sometimes I write songs. My favorite thing is to make voice music with other people, because using my voice to make their voice sound even better is a great good thing. It is an art to help someone's voice sound even better, and it interests me very much. It is not always easy, though, because since my ears are bad it is sometimes easier for me to make voice music if I am the first voice. But I still like making voice music no matter what. And I love hearing other people make music, with voice or with their music things they play, or both.

Also I read books. And sometimes I make stories, either alone or with other people. Also also I like to go places. Sometimes far places. And I love to see the things the land does that tell about what happened to the land long ago. (I like the stories the land tells about the long-ago ice time very much!) Sometimes it is like the land is talking. Or making voice music. So I go and listen with my eyes, and it makes me happy.

[kakiphony]

Up-Goer Job Description:
I explain, in writing, the classes and other things that my school offers to students (both kids and grown-ups). Then I explain why we need money for those things (and money to help the people who take classes pay for them). Then, in writing, I ask for money to help pay for these things.

I also learn as much as I can about people who might be interested in my school. Learning about people, especially people with lots of money, helps me find the right people to ask for money. They are the right people because they like the right things and have enough money to give a lot.

Using a few more words:
I am a grant writer and prospect researcher. Most people understand the main functions of a grant writer (describing our programmatic, capital and scholarship needs and then asking for money to support them -- usually in a pre-determined and often fairly technical format). Less people know about prospect research -- which is basically researching individuals in order to identify the right people to ask for money (and making sure you are asking them for the right amount, at the right time, to support the right program). I do all the background work and then feed the information I find to my front-line fundraisers, who introduce the people I research to our institution, get to know them, cultivate the relationship and, eventually, ask them for a major donation

I compile general biographical background about people, but also perform analysis of their wealth (as measured by stock, real estate, boats, and almost anything for which there is a public record) in order to determine how much they have the capacity to give. I engage in data mining and use Prizm scores and wealth screening data from companies like Wealth Engine. It's all taken from public record sources, but people get creeped out by it. And the Prism surveillance program has not helped me explain what I do...

What I like to do:
This is actually taken from a post I made a few weeks ago trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. I don't mind my job, and even mostly like it, but I don't want to do it for the next 30 years. I would like a job I truly enjoy more frequently. Sadly, most of my skills and likes tend to lend themselves to either lower paying jobs, another degree (I have a BA and a JD), or owning my own business, none of which are financially feasible for me.

1) I like short term projects and tight deadlines. Throw some complicated research or writing task in my lap and give me 24 to 48 hours to complete it and I am happy and fulfilled. I am the queen of getting these things done and done well.

2) I do not like long-term projects and projects with nebulous deadlines. You know what I do with those? Procrastinate until they turn into #1. This is not a good thing. I'd like a job where I didn't fall into that trap.

3) I like helping people. I like being the person others come to with questions, and the person who can jump in and problem solve. This is directly related to #1. There's a sense of accomplishment in helping, and of fixing things. It motivates me.

4) I like variety in my projects. If I have to write (or research or plan or whatever) the same thing over and over I get bored, and then I procrastinate. NEW keeps my brain engaged, and when I am engaged I do good work.

5) I like research. I liked it when I worked at the public library and was helping with everything from genealogy projects to school reports. I liked it as a prospect researcher when I had to research everything from rich people's family trees to the race horses at the Derby. I like doing it now to determine where a foundation gives their money (and if it actually fits with their stated priorities.) I like doing it in my personal life when I learn about beer or whiskey or gardening methods or myth or or or. I just like it. As long as it doesn't drag on for too long and get repetitive.

6) I like sharing my research/knowledge with others. I like doing it in writing (formal and informal) and I like doing it in person (one-on-one and in front of groups small and large). I like being approachable, and being the person others on the team come to with questions. I like knowing that if I can't immediately answer their questions, they can count on me to find the answer (through logic, intuition, or research).

7) I like working with people, but not too many people. My ideal team is somewhere between 2 and 10. More than that and I don't know names. Less than that and I get lonesome.

8) I like brain storming and idea generation. I like analyzing plans for projects/events/etc and pointing out their strengths and pitfalls.

What I do for fun:
Consume enormous amounts of fiction (mainly books and television), cook, practice yoga, and drink + talk about + attend events about beer (my husband is in the industry).

What I used to do for fun but for some reason no longer do:
Write fiction.

[eeyorerin]

Your mention of the committee to recognize people made me think of this: when my grandmother died, we started an award at her workplace (Harvard Medical School) to recognize people in service positions there, since there was lots of recognition for the medical personnel and academics working there but nothing for the administrative assistants and other people who work in service positions.

What the committee decided to do was to share the nominating materials with everyone who had been nominated, not just the winner, so that people who were nominated could see that their bosses were saying about them. That has apparently had a hugely transformative effect on workplace culture, as people now can see that they're being appreciated.

(My stepsister is now working there, and is eligible for the award. It would be interesting if she won it, given the family dynamics at play. I think I'd volunteer to be the award presenter that year; we try to rotate it among the family members.)

[adrian_turtle]

These days, I have health problems that prevent me from working full time. I do 2 kinds of freelance work, and volunteer, but all 3 activities need a lot of recovery time. Even though I don't work very many hours per week, it's enough for me to think of myself as a part-time teacher, rather than a disabled/former engineer. That's important.

Most of my freelance work is tutoring math, chemistry, and physics for high school and college students. That includes a lot of community college students and people learning math to prepare for standardized tests. Some of my favorite students are the ones who are worried they "can't do math," because their early teachers or parents or friends made them think only a certain kind of person could be good at math. (Boys, or people who don't care deeply about sports or poetry or politics, or people who see the answer right away instead of needing to figure it out slowly...) When I teach one frightened student and pay attention, I can recognize when he or she flinches and stops thinking, and often work around it gently enough to get through. It's great.

The hard part is FINDING local students who need this kind of help and can pay for it. (There are a lot of volunteer tutors these days.) Putting up flyers turns out to be most effective, but each flyer hurts my hand and shoulder.

The other kind of freelance work I do is helping social-science grad students with statistics. I edit research papers and MS theses, explain background research, and help with experiment design. Finding these students presents a different problem, because there's such a market in selling term papers...a lot of people think I'm doing that, and I'm not.

I also read chemistry textbooks out loud. This is really great, even though I don't get paid for it at all. I go to the recording studio that used to be called Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, and is now Learning Ally (which is polite but vague.) Everybody there is SO nice to me, and then I go sit in a very quiet comfy space for 2 hours and read and describe diagrams.

[finch]

The thing I get paid for, in up-goer: I work at a school. I meet with people who want to go to school and explain how they can pay for it. I help them put words on paper so they can get money for school. Then I tell the people with the money that we have put words on paper and to give us money, please.

In other words, I do financial aid. I like the part where I help people do a thing that's hard for them, and then they get a certificate and a job and they're happy. I got into it entirely by accident, by taking the first decent-paying job that came along out of college and then sticking around in the field because it's now the field all my experience is in.

(I literally have no idea how to get a job in a different field in this job market, since everybody expects you to have 3-5 years of experience in your entry-level job. Anybody managed to do that?)

I think the up-goer version of what I do for real would be simply, "I write." Everything else feels unnecessarily specific. I also sometimes hit metal with a hammer for fun.

[mrissa]

When people talk about purpose in life, I have a very short answer, which is that I am here to tell stories and love people, and the vast majority of the things I do proceed from that.

The baking, for example: I love to bake. I am good at baking. But for myself alone, I bake breakfast items on rare occasion. That's it. All the other baking I do is a conscious expression of love for one or more persons.

[alexseanchai]

Upgoer Five drives me buggy, so:

I am a data entry clerk slash paralegal for my state of residence, doing my share of the work that brings in like a quarter of the state's revenue and (I'm guessing) two-thirds of the state's international fame. I get the impression that I process orders faster than anybody in the division, certainly faster than anybody doing the same categories of work I do, and judging by my Opportunities For Improvement log I'm not sacrificing any accuracy for speed. Some of that is I read fast and some is I type fast, but a lot is I'm just damn good at what I do.

alexconall am I as well;
my business cards say feminist, poet,
author. I write speculatively, tell
about women and fairy tales—I know it
doesn't sell, not fantasy without
werewolves and vampires, nor fiction that
challenges heterosexist clout
or white male dominance, or goes to bat
against cissexism. I live in hope
that I'll acquire an audience who will
read and buy my work and cheer its scope,
encourage me to write—it's quite a thrill
just to get a comment that approves
my art. But still, the world I hope to move.

I don't remember how I got into writing, or into fandom (my fannish activity is all on alexseanchai). It seems like I've always been, you know? I currently have one short-story collection published with my friend Anne Walsh, A Dinner of Herbs: Tales from Scarborough Fair (first link is Amazon paperback, second is all the ebook formats on Smashwords), and am working on a frightening number of other projects. I've set a goal of having Self-Rescuing Princess, which is princess-centered fairy tales with feminist twists (such as racebent heroines, female princes, and—of course—the leading ladies rescuing themselves), complete in draft by Sept 30.

[synecdochic]

i keep this crazy ship lurching along ;)

Venecia Here

[(Anonymous)]

I wrote up a bunch of stuff about my life using Up-goer Five and I have to say that it's a very good tool for clarifying your thinking about things. I may make it a regular exercise to attempt to explain my position on various topics using the tool. Here's my life in Up-goer:

----------
Work: I work at a place with lots of other people. We build stuff for computers to use in order to help people do things they need to do. I don't actually build the stuff. I help the people who build the stuff do a better job by explaining what is needed and when and what should be done next. I learn this by talking with the people who will end up using the stuff. This helps the people building the stuff make better stuff so the final people who use the stuff are happy.

I like my job very much. I think the people who build the stuff are great and I enjoy making their work easier. I like working with the people who use the computers with our stuff on it. Sometimes I get to visit these people, which means that I get to go to places that I would not go to on my own.

My work place is very nice. There are many good people there who know many things. I feel like they like me as well, which makes me happy. I hope to have this job for a very long time.

Not work: Outside of work, I do other things. I make things from sticks and animal hair. I turn animal hair into long bits to use with the sticks. I make pictures of things with paint and drawing. I like to make music with my voice and dance, but only for myself. I don't do these things enough, but I enjoy them when I do them.

Family: I have a family. My family is the person I married and the child we made and the dog we have. The person I married makes music and is great at making food. I love him very much. The child we made is also great and makes us very happy. She knows many things and learns fast. She plays a game with a ball and her feet with other girls on a team. She is the best child in the world. Maybe I think so because she is my girl and all mothers think their children are the best... but I don't think so.

Gods: Another person I love is not a person in life with a body, but a god who is bigger than I am and who I look to for help in being the right kind of person I need to be. This is not a person that I can see or talk to, except in dreams or inside my head. But this person is real and gives me lots of help. My family does the same, only with different gods. Some of the gods are men and some are women. Many people do this with one usual god, but we are different because we love older gods. I think that all gods are real and each person has to figure out that relationship for themselves. No person can tell another person how or who to love. My god likes it when I make art and make music and dance and be free. He wants me to do those things. My daughter has a women god who loves children and animals and writing. The person I married has a woman god who makes people better when they are hurt. He also loves my god, which is good because we all agree on these important things.

Making changes: In my family, we also believe that we can make changes in our lives in many ways. Some ways to make change are usual by acting or thinking and many people change things in this way. But other ways are not usual and work by making a line between acting / thinking and forces outside of the self. These ways are not usual but they do work, though they work more like art and not like planning or driving. Art is a very good word for the way that my family makes changes in our lives. This art is more like going around than going right from one point to the other. I enjoy this art very much and it has helped us in a number of ways. My god also likes this kind of art as do I.

Shit happens: Sometimes bad things happen. They happen even with good art and family love and work. Sometimes they happen because I need to learn something. Other times shit just happens and I have to learn to ride it out and not let it get me down. Life is full of ups and downs but it is the trip you take through life that is the most important.

Death: I don't think that trip ends when you die. I think you continue as someone new so that you can learn more things. This is not a usual way to think, but it makes sense to me. The body stays here, but the inside light moves on. It is sad when someone dies because you miss them. But it is not sad for them because they are moving on and learning new things. We had a dog who died and we miss our dog. But we know our dog is with the dark woman god of the night and art (long story) and so we are happy for him. His light visits us sometimes and I have known of other lights who return from time to time, even after the greater part of them has gone on to become someone new. There is something that forms a line between your light and their light. This line is made of love. The light may also be made of love. And this love and light goes on even when we die.

I am surprised at how much I can tell about my life with just a few simple words. It made me think more about what I wanted to say and make my thoughts more clear about my life.

-----------

[silveradept]

I kind of fell into the profession when my secondary school librarian suggested that, based on what she knew about me and my habit of being in the library, I might enjoy being a librarian. Turns out, she was right, thankfully. I went with it because I didn't really have much other idea about what I would do professionally. Based on how the rest of my family turned out, I would probably be teaching. Perhaps hilariously, my co-worker, who is currently going through library school, has said that she thinks I would do really well as a lecturer, based on how I explain things. I think it's mostly because I can explain things to zie in a way zie understands when zie needs help with assignments, but it's nice to hear someone say "You are really good at helping people understand things."

Unlike jenett, I work in youth services, so I do story times and help with the programming, visit schools to talk about our resources, and spend an inordinate amount of time helping everyone with computer issues and finding books while in the branch. (We've been short-staffed since before the recession.) Which makes me both That Tech Guy and the person the non-professional staff comes to whenever there are behavioral issues that involve children or teenagers, regardless of whether there is already policy and procedure in place on how to handle those things.

I also like it when people ask questions about what I do.

[jenett]

Ok. More usefully coming back to "Things I'm good at"

The thing I'm really best at doesn't have an easy description: it's breaking down complicated things in a way that doesn't oversimplify them, but that also seems to be less overwhelming (and a lot more useful) to people than a lot of other approaches.

I do it with technology, I do it with religion [1]. I do it with other projects. I *adore* teaching, and I'm excited that my job is about to hand me more chances to do more of it, though we'll see how many people actually show up.

(I am not nearly as good at marketing.)

Part of it is, I think, that I'm really pragmatic about some of it: I care that the end thing works, and I don't usually have a ton of ego about how we get there. (If I have to ask stupid questions to understand, fine. If I have to spend a bunch of time making it better, fine.)

(I do occasionally go off and sulk when someone points out that I've messed up on something, but not that often, and y'know, I'm fairly good at not being obvious about it. Because getting it right matters way more than my ego.)

I also have the secret superpower of getting data out of Google (and other sources) that most people can't, and of running sufficent background logistics in my head that I can External Brain for a friend, run

(When my health - and especially my brain and executive function went bad a few years ago, it was really hard to explain to my doctors what was going on, because "No, you don't understand, I'm working on a level like most people, and it's WRONG FOR ME, WOE I AM BROKEN." I finally got to it with "This thing that used to take me 30 minutes is still doable, but it takes me 4 hours now.")

There is tons of other stuff I am simply not good at (or where I am, in fact, broken, just in ways I am not all woe about. I have very cranky lungs, f'ex, which is annoying and limiting, but not nearly the same disruptor of identity problem.) I'm just also good at the sleight of mind that makes people not notice it among the shinier bits.

[1] When I was recovering from the health foo, I set up a website of intro-level religious witchcraft material, both to prove to myself I could do coherent writing, and because I knew when I started teaching Craft stuff again, it would be Very Useful to have handy. (At the time, I was not working, and was thoroughly job hunting, but still had more time on my hands than one does while working.) http://gleewood.org/seeking is the result, and every time someone tells me it made their life better, I grin a lot. Because making it was a rather selfish project in a lot of ways.

One of my principles in life is "Never do things for just one reason, it saves time." But it also has some really interesting outgrowths.

[oursin]

What I do: I'm an archivist. I fell into this somewhat by chance when I was in a job that was a very bad fit for me, soon after graduating, and applied for a clerical job in an organisation that deals with historical records. I didn't get it, but it led to a strong recommendation to apply for a fairly low-level job at one of the major UK national repositories, where they would send me on the professional diploma course and there was a chance of advancement. (This wouldn't happen these days: these days just to get on the course you need to display a commitment to archives going back to junior school and involving volunteering at your local record office - maybe I exaggerate, slightly.)

I turned out to be very good at a) finding out information for enquirers and b) producing coherent finding aids to sometimes rather disorganised groups of archives. I have discovered in the job I subsequently moved to, that I'm also rather good at doing presentations. I've even developed a certain competence at negotiating with potential depositors, though I don't consider diplomacy one of my core strengths. I really like engaging in the process that makes historical material available for people to do research on.

The liking doing research moved me in a slightly different direction, into (on the side) doing serious historical research myself. I would never want to teach but I enjoy being part of a wider scholarly community with overlapping interests. I enjoy doing research and I also enjoy writing it up, not to mention talking about it, whether in academic seminars or in radio/tv interviews.

three graces in new guise: science, poetry, and education

[jjhunter]

My working motto is think like a scientist, dream like a poet; education is the way I realize those values in my communities.

In my day job, I work for a science education grant that partners sciences with school teachers to generate novel cutting-edge curricula and build experience, infrastructure for improved implementation of our curricula and science education in general. On a day-to-day basis my bland 'Assistant' job title encompasses an ever-shifting combination of acting webmaster, backup lab technician, copy editor, layout editor, tech consultant, researcher, archivist, assistant project manager, and administrative assistant. Compared to other jobs I might get at my level of education & experience, the pay is lower & the benefits essentially non-existent, but in compensation I get paid to acquire skills & expertise of use to our team (& to me career-wise!), and I get to work with incredibly competent people who are willing & happy to help me grow & advance as a professional.

I got the job via somewhat circuitous route - I'd worked for boss boss a few years back as a lab technician, and apparently been memorable for my attention to detail & facility with coaxing certain ancient software programs to do their job properly. She contacted me to see if I'd be interested in doing some tech consultant work on an ad-hoc basis for the education grant team, and that rapidly turned into full-time work when a different job opportunity fell through.

Poetry-wise, I founded the poetry discussion community POETREE @ Dreamwidth (poetree), and continue to run it with my co-admin alee_grrl. Over the last year and a half, we've spent quite a bit of time thinking through & experimenting with different ways of building community around poetry, and nurturing people's poetry confidence (to adapt a framework from kaberett's excellent Tech confidence vs. tech competence article). I've learned that I'm great at not only thinking of interesting ideas, but also working with other people to get them initiated. I've also learned that I need anticipate & construct work-arounds for the periods where things that I find fun / casual to do suddenly feel like enormous crushing burdens, and especially in such circumstances delegation is my friend. (This is why it's good to have a co-admin - thank you, alee_grrl!)

What am I 'good' at? Articulation. A certain fearlessness about owning my voice that isn't necessarily self-confidence or charisma or bravery or arrogance or strength or bossiness or wisdom or irreverence, but has elements of all those in varying proportions. Listening, when I am relaxed enough (or consciously remember) to be quiet inside. Thinking interdependently and independently, and the self-awareness to know which is which at any given time. Metaphorical and literal vision, both internal and external, in the moment with what is directly in front of me and long term, both pro- and retrospective. Finding small opportunities for grace to creep into my everyday. Appreciating people. Making stuff work, and figuring out how to make it work better. (Software, institutions, infrastructure...)

[edschweppe]

using the ten-thousand most common words in English
It's a bit of a nitpick, but the Up-Goer Five vocabulary was limited to the ten hundred most common words, not the ten thousand - presumably because "thousand" wasn't one of the thousand most common words.

[edschweppe]

In Up-Goer words, for the job that pays me: I write stuff that tells computers what to do. It's harder than it looks, because the people who want the computers to do stuff don't always know exactly what it is they want the computers to do. And they sometimes aren't very good at telling me what it is they want the computers to do, even when they know what it is. So I have to try and figure out what it is they want the computers to do before I can tell the computers how to do it.

Things that I don't get paid for: I like reading lots of books. I also like to make music with my voice and with the voices of my friends. Sometimes I take pictures of things and put them on computers (like these).

[sofiaviolet]

Another archivist, though I am far less experienced than oursin. I don't even have my relevant degree yet, but I've been doing the job for about five years anyway; I came onboard my alma mater's archives/special collections department as an undergraduate and they've kept me around into grad school.

I went into the archives to do research my second semester of college (mandatory for a required history course, and I was a history student), and then when I received work-study as part of my financial aid package, I cold-emailed them asking for a job, and got it. I spent a couple of months minioning but the head archivist adopted me and I learned how to process collections (taking the records from "jumbled boxes of stuff we got out of the donor's attic" to "organized resources with a reasonably detailed description of the collection's contents available online") on the job.

After losing my work-study funding, I was briefly a volunteer and briefly paid out of a grant (I was finishing someone else's project when they got a more permanent job elsewhere). The department also had one 35hr/wk experiential education position, doled out to interested students at the university, which I held twice. Then I picked up one of the reference archivist positions (there are three of us, and we're scheduled so that one of us is always there to help researchers), which are normally held by archives-focused library science students and recent graduates - that's my current job.

I've had the chance to work with both internal records - stuff from the various bits of the university - and collections from outside the university - materials donated by organizations and individuals. I also have some experience working with records generated by the government:

My second job came out of an internship I was required to do in grad school. I (and the other interns-turned-contractors) are processing a very specific and very extensive collection living in closets and file cabinets in City Hall and preparing it for digitization and transfer to the archives. The city apparently decided it was more effective to pay the five of us for as long as it takes than to bring in and train a new group of people every semester. I suppose it does improve consistency, at least.

[eeyorerin]

My day job: I am a professor. When I was talking with a social worker about foster parenting, she said, "And what do you profess?" which I had never been asked before. I profess rhetoric and composition, which to me means helping people to learn how to better express ideas in a written format and to learn how we make arguments and documents by taking them apart and putting them together. Sometimes I do this in a classroom; sometimes I do it online; sometimes I do it in my office with individual students. I work a lot with librarians because part of learning how to express ideas and create arguments involves using other people's words and ideas, and librarians can help people find those.

I used to do research; then I got sick, and I stopped doing it because my brain stopped being able to handle the cognitive load. I want to start doing more of it now that I am feeling better. Right now I am torn between two possible research projects and I need to figure out which one I should do first.

I also do committee work; this means I go to meetings and sometimes I say helpful things and sometimes I keep my mouth shut when people are saying things with which I disagree but with whom it is not worth arguing. Sometimes I do research and write reports as part of these committees. Right now I am on a committee that is revising how the curriculum for our major will work, which means that I spend a lot of time trying to figure out combinations of courses for people to take in future years.

Things I do for fun:

1) I just started volunteering with our local SPCA, in the cat room. For 2 hours a week (although I usually stay later), I go and spend time with the up to 40 cats that we have in the front room of the shelter. I clean their cages, show them to potential adopters, brush them, pet them, and otherwise try and socialize them. I enjoy it a lot, even when the cats try to scratch or bite me. (I do not blame the cats. They are sometimes afraid or upset and that is how they express it.)

2) I read a lot of books. I read very fast, so owning an e-reader has been awesome in terms of "books I can have available to me immediately" and "space in my house for books."

3) I am working on adopting a human being. Right now I am in the exciting stage of "saving enough money to be able to afford the process," since I am not pursuing foster adoption. (I would prefer not to discuss why; suffice it to say that I have done extensive research and have reasons for my choice.) I should have enough money by this fall. I am nervous about it.

4) I spend a lot of time reading things online. Sometimes it is related to my work and sometimes it is just for fun.

[ilyena_sylph]

My job, in Up-Goer Five:

I work in a place that has a lot of books and a lot of things that aren't books but have words and pictures that come out every month or every few months. It also has a lot of computers, but I don't work with those.

My spot at my job is where the new things come in. We get them, and we make them all ready to live in my work in the right spots so that people can find them later. It takes a lot of work. We have to make sure that people can't take them away, and we have to put things on them so that people can find them, and mark them as ours. Once a week we put them in a new place so that people can see what new books we have gotten for them to read or use for their work or school.

My part of my work does more than just that, though. We also take care of all the many, many books we already have, because books get hurt a lot. We fix torn spots in them, and get new leaves to put where people have cut leaves out, and dry them out when they have gotten wet, and we do a lot of other things to make them last so that more people can use them. Sometimes we even make new outsides for them, and put the insides back in. If there is a lot wrong with them, sometimes we can't fix the books and we have to put them in a car that comes every two weeks to take the books to other people who can fix them.

What that actually means: I work in the physical processing and preservation department of a major research library in the Midwest. I do a lot of processing of new materials (books and magazines) and a lot of preservation work on our physical collection.

I absolutely fell into it, quite literally. I applied for any student position in the library because being dependent on my mother was making my crazy!brain even crazier than usual, and through circumstances I cannot even attempt to explain, four months later I was full-time staff and acting unit head for three months.

I love my job fiercely. Every day is something new, every day is something I get to make better, make whole, make last longer, make accessible to people. And it's books, which are pretty much my favorite things in the entire world.

[sanacrow]

I'm finally getting here! (It's been A Day. It's also Crush Week, with all my class projects due Friday and Saturday, and finals for the summer semester next week.) I'm not using UpGoer because while I love the nifty things I see folks doing with it, it makes me want to throw my computer. Something I can say in a few sentences gets turned into a page and a half that still doesn't get to half the nuance of the original few sentences.

The biggest thing I do right now is go to school. I'm finishing up the requirements to get in the advanced placement Social Work program with a Public Health minor at another college about 100 miles from here. I'll be making that transfer after spring semester, and the goal is to finish my Master's there, get my LCSW and Health Educator certifications, and then head to the West Coast to work on the doctorate.

I work "less-than-full-time" as the lead assistant in the counseling department of the college I'm currently attending. I do triage for folks coming into the department, provide services that don't require a counseling license, help our intern navigate the system, and do support work for our director/head counselor. While some days are draining and seem like directing traffic at a riot, I love my job. I'm learning things I could never get in a classroom (my dream "end job" is doing the work one of our counselors specializes in), I'm really good at sorting people to the person or place that fits what they need best, and my boss openly appreciates the work I do for her.

My current eating-up-my-spare-time project is getting a home business (Lillimae's) doing lotions, skin care and such started/restarted. We last did any batches large enough to sell/share in 2004, so I'm pulling notes and having to re-find sources for small to medium quantities of some of our ingredients. With all 3 of us in college, and with the cuts to grants and work-study, we need another income to make ends meet. My recipes are based on my grandmother's recipes, and they've been really popular as gifts and such over the years, and so we're going to make a thing of it. The plan is to Indigogo the first round of nifties, set up with perks so that it's kind like pre-ordering, so that we can get a few of the items we can't work into student budgets, and then run it through Etsy and a website, and some minor distribution through a few friends. After we get moved and transferred, I'll bring Aunt Crow's back as an online resource and an outlet for some of the more... witchy... things.

[zhelana]

10 hundred most common words for my life:

I don't have a job but sometimes I do a job I don't get paid for working with animals that live in the water. I tell people about these animals and how to help them keep living. I show them an animal's head, and mouth. I let them guess how long it will take for stuff they throw in the water to disappear. Sometimes I also have skin from a soft dead animal for people to touch. When I am not at this not-job, I write and draw and fight with sticks. I like to make things to wear around my middle to hold up my pants. I also like to dance.

Job discussions

[jenett]

Related to the process of job hunting, there's two links from the last day that might make interesting additions here (I'm also thinking about a friend - hi! - posting that her early conversations with her new employers are awesome and hopeful, and about how much I am continually delighted by my current boss. The awesome folks are out there.)

Anyway: Captain Awkward has a post on red flags in job searching (with a bunch of contextual stuff) that has some interesting things in it. (Mostly aimed at white-collar type jobs).

And then Brigid, here on Dreamwidth, <a href="has a post about retail and fast food type jobs</a> along the same lines. I'll say this: in my job hunt, the jobs I wanted the most are the ones where the people doing the interviewing treated me the best: my current job was one of the top three by *far*. By this, I don't mean they were extravagant by any means, just that they were thoughtful about my comfort, gave me plenty of information about the job and the area and other things I'd logically have questions about, and made sure I had plenty of time to decompress when I needed. (Academic jobs, including most library jobs, tend to be full-day interviews, and they're a huge test of stamina.)

Belated

[theora]

What I do, up-goer version:

"I am a stay-at-home mother to two children under 5. The big work is keeping two small people who can move faster than they can think from being dead or too hurt. Any time I am less than perfect could end up with them dead or hurt. I do this for about 9 hours a day on my own, and am either 50% doing it or on call for the other 15. At the same time as that work, I make and clean up food 3-4 times a day, clean clothes 1-2 times a day, clean up a lot of other things, go from place to place a lot, read a lot of books to small people, answer a lot of whys, save a lot of cats from grabbing hands (really only 2 cats, but the hands seem to be many), and so on."

Whether I'm good at it? No idea. Maybe I'll know in 30 years or so when my kids are in a position to have some perspective. The wider culture doesn't provide much in the way of useful feedback, telling me that what I'm doing is simultaneously 1) the most important job in the world, and 2) not real work, and giving me the choice of two types of mom (and I do think this is laid mostly on mothers): self-sacrificing or selfish, with no ground in between...and I'll stop on this topic now before I become excessively grumpy.

Job I have done in the past and hope to do again at some point in the future: working in a library, preferably in a reference and/or instruction position, preferably in an academic library. I have not had a professional position yet (MLS between kid 1 and kid 2), but I worked in a number of libraries as a paraprofessional for 4 years before then. Loved doing public-facing work, which surprised me, a serious introvert. Loved reference. Loved doing instruction, both big (class-type sessions - again surprising as I hate public speaking) and small (helping an individual figure stuff out). Love (and am good at, I think) explaining things in a way that helps others understand them as I do.

Hobbies are a whole other thing that I don't have time to get into right now, other than to say that I'm rather obsessed with plants.

UpGoer 5 job description.

[kyrielle]

Day job: I write computer things for the people who take calls for police, fire men, and others. I have to help make sure the things we write are free of problems, run all the time, and do what they want and need. I also have to answer the phone and do what is needed if the things we write are not doing what they should. I also help new people who come to work with us understand what we do, and what the people we help do and need.

At home: I am a mother to two children under five. I try to keep the house clean and sometimes make food instead of buying it. I am often tired.