Current location:	The Nerve Center (aka My Office)
Current mood:	thoughtful
Current music:	"Bad Blood" by Ministry
Entry tags:	interns

I'm Just Proud It's Over . . .
Another intern reception is thankfully over. In retrospect, as always, it strikes me like most major holidays: I dread it right up to the point it actually takes place and then it's like, what was all the fuss about? I had built it up to being such a nightmare that the DS (departmental secretary) and the PE (publishing editor) were convinced that something truly tragic/horrible was going to happen. Instead, people got to look at samples of the interns' work this semester, eat loads of food, and clap mightily has I passed out certificates and lovely parting gift bags. And, as always, tons of schmoozing abounded. As the PE and I were getting the dining area--where we had the reception--put back into shape the dean of instruction came by and we chatted at some length about various projects in the works: a history of the school, a co-op work book, the healthcare safety book, the hand tools book, and so on. 

After we were done talking and he was gone I asked the PE, do you know what that was an example of? 

What? he said. 

I said, that's me doing my job: talking to folks about publishing books.

He was not impressed. Me neither. The best job--in retrospect--that I ever had--in terms of suiting my needs, personality, abilities--was running my own little black and white photo lab at the back of a big custom photo processing facility/warehouse in Lubbock TX when I was in my early twenties. I spent all day by myself in the dark printing photos listening to the local rock radio station and as long as I stayed two days ahead on all my orders I never had to talk to anyone unless I was in the breakroom on break. That was it. That was all there was to it. Once again, given what my job consists of now, that's irony, bub. Then again, after nine months in Lubbock I was so desperate that I boiled out of there back to Fort Worth where things were never the same again and there you have it. 

Anyway, digressions aside to make a long story endless, it was a good bunch of kids this semester. In many ways, the interns are like the best teaching situation I never had: there are only 10--usually, at the most--of them per semester, they are all interested in what they're doing because it's what they've been trained to do, they're here for 10 hours a we so I get a chance to actually know them and a new bunch comes in every couple of semesters. (This is in stark contrast to the typical two-year college teaching gig where you've got five sections, 30 students each, you see them three hours a week, and all of them have better things to do than worry themselves about the ins and outs of writing essays of all things.) We've got the girl who works part-time at Starbucks and is obsessed with coffee. There is the Vietnam vet who likes to tell stories about going into Cambodia to burn down villages and kill anything that breathed. (He wore a tie today . . . and a t-shirt . . . and surfer jams.) There are the two churchy guys who are very earnest and very goofy. The level-headed quiet girl who does good work and is going to be our new work study come this spring.  We awarded a publishing scholarship to our current work study who is joining the staff full-time in January. And one of the churchy guys brought like three generations of his family--some of whom had driven two hours in the sleet to see all this--was the outstanding intern of the semester so we gave him a $50 gift certificate to a local italian food restaurant.

Anyway, despite all my trepidations about all this, my inherent distaste at being in the middle of public spectacles such as this, in the end, none of this is for me anyway, it really is for the interns who did seem to have a good time. So maybe there is some kind of lesson to be learned from all this. If I was the kind of person who could draw conclusions about things like that. Thankfully, I lack enough just enough self-awareness to really break on through to the other side. I'm the guy at the party leaning on a wall at the back of the room nursing his sixth beer gladly out of the mix . . . the one who is about three more beers away from a serious case of the dumb ass. The face in the room that looks like trouble. The guy who's just itching to get his sweaty, twitchy fingers on a Radio Shack bullhorn because he's got some things to say. Thinks he's got something to say. You know, that guy.