Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
Professional Gap Girl

As of Monday, I am a Gap girl. Okay, truth be told, I've been a Gap girl for a while now, but now they are going to pay me for it. I am still unsure what they are paying me, we only talked discount, so it might be a gift-in-kind of job - I show up, they give me khakis and polo shirts. I noticed that the Starbucks in the same plaza is hiring, so I could potentially sell jeans by day, espresso by night. If we really are what we consume, I'd be making a professional step toward discovering my true self. I am sure my anonymous reader from Bard, who chides me for my commericalism, is loving this...

Just the same, I am thrilled to at least be working - and it is a bonus to be working in a store I at least like, in a sunny and nice location (ironically, across the street from my TriZetto office building), and with the potential to interact with someone other than my mailman or the attendant at the gym. In the meantime, I surely haven't exhausted the search for real or better paying employment, but I think this little endeavor might actually be fun. I worked in a bookstore around Christmases in high school, which was largely a positive experience, but this is my first shot at clothing retail. The flaky manager told me that I really have the option to grow with the company - like becoming a denim specialist, ooooh, what a dream come through. I actually read an article last summer that denim specalists at Diesel make upwards of $50,000+ a year in New York. There is something very wrong with a world where, in the bazaar of life, dungaree mongers make almost five times as much as grad students. I did some research into my impending poverty and it looks like I might, proudly, qualify for food stamps. As I've learned, qualifying for foodstamps is based on monthly income. It all depends on how my $11,000 stipend is awarded - if I get a check every month for 12 months, I should make it, but if I get $11,000 over a 9 month academic year, then I might just miss it. I am certainly on the bubble. Getting *free* groceries would really be tits, so I toast social services for putting some bread in my pocket! I am going to continue investigating the matter, but it is looking like I won't be starving while in grad school because I'll be having free lunch for a while, or at least $136 worth of free goodies a month, which is probably more than most single people spend on groceries anyway - more than I will spend on morningstar farm products, angel hair pasta, and grilled cheese sandwiches. As for my dignity, I see that you now get a debit card with a balance to use, so it's not like whipping out a booklet of ration coupons from WWII to buy butter and 6oz of canned salted meats, even though, I am such a cheapo at heart, I really wouldn't mind the booklet - and quite frankly, this is sort of the badge of honor before the Ph.D. is framed in my den. If you fall into the same catagory of poverty-stricken academic, make use of the link and meet me at the deli. There are some restrictions for students, but I am sure my soon-to-be-assigned caseworker can help me out - as the recent Yale strike has taught us, grad students can sometimes be more "university employee" than student. When I am in grad school and held hostage off in the central time zone, please keep this in mind and take mercy on me by coming to visit and buy me dinner - realize that my income is actually within the government's bottomline for what you cannot live on in this country.

Since we're talking groceries... I am satisfying my PB&J craving that's ransacked my body for almost four days. My Dad, the domestic goddess, has been working and hasn't been making his daily pilgrimmage to the store (we've gone four days without milk or bread, realize how unheard of this is in my house). The PB is chunky, but I don't care. He stocked up provisions today, but big shopping will have to wait, tomorrow, my parents and I are taking a long overdue family outing to the casino. My parents love Vegas and slots, so it should be fun. I haven't stared down a one-armed bandit since last February, we're in for a rematch tomorrow. Sadly, either Connecticut casino doesn't offer the same variety of nickel or penny machines that seem to crowd every highly patterned rug of sin city.

posted by lmjasinski at 11:03 PM