Seven jobs

Someone asked about your first seven jobs on the twitts:

What were your first 7 jobs?

Babysitting, janitorial, slinging coffee, yard work, writing radio news, voice-overs, data entry/secretarial

— Marian Call (@mariancall) August 5, 2016

It’s especially interesting to me because I have on again, off again conversations with a peer or two about how the employment history of academic trainees makes a difference. In essence my position boils down to thinking the more you’ve learned to work hard in shitty jobs, the more you are able to see academic science as a fine privilege that deserves a little bit of hard work. And the less you see it as your entitlement by birthright that functions as an optional vocation that should reward you with a comfortable life regardless of performance.
(#7firstjobs might be entertaining)

My answer was:

1) baby sitter: Probably the first thing I ever did for cash. 11 years old? maybe? It was basically the covering for the parents going out on a date type of deal. So, very easy work putting the kids to bed and watching television for a few hours. We didn’t have a teevee so that was part of the compensation as far as I was concerned.

2) lawn mower: I always mostly enjoyed the mowing of my own lawn as a kid. A straightforward job with a clear endpoint. And you could look at your work and see a difference. So I mowed a few lawns around the neighborhood. Not totally sure start and end dates but lets say before the age of 12. Pretty easy money.

3) forestry labor: pulling christmas trees out of the woods in knee high snow, fertilizing and trimming trees in the summer. tree tagging. maple sugaring. clearing stuff from place a to place b. off and on from about 8 or 10 to mid teens, I think. Learned all about getting the thing done, no excuses*, in this stint. And about actual hard work. And, eventually, something about the rewards of being the guy the boss can trust to get the thing accomplished.

4) table waiter: for a few years I worked summers at a Gordon Conference location. three meals a day and all the breaks in between to screw around with the other kids who worked there. high school years…..MAN we had fun. One summer at a real restaurant- better money, shorter overall hours, but way less fun.

5) contractor crew: Dumb labor of “move all this heavy shit over to where the skilled people are” to start. Also “hold this”. Eventually learned a little bit of framing, sheetrocking, insulation and some other stuff. Formative job for sure. 10 h days, 4 days a week. Work, home, eat, shower, sleep, off to work again. Trying to get in my bike training- remember that post work scene in Breaking Away? Like that. Working next to 40-50 y old guys for whom this was all it was ever going to be. Boss who rode you no matter the fact you were a dumb laborer (in pay) because he expected you to act like an experienced carpenter. Another really clear lesson about being the guy who gets shit done- my friend joined the crew at same time and was fired in two weeks. Ended a bust ass exhausting summer and went back to school where I wrote a tuition check for essentially the entire amount I had earned all summer (lesson learned, Dad, lesson learned).

6) dishwasher: really brief stint in a nasty, cramped kitchen of a pretty chi chi resort restaurant. The meals we got when on shift were phenomenal, but the work…I may never have been so grimy in my life before or since. Had some exp with industrial dishwashing due to number 4 but…ugh. This blew.

7) music festival roustabout: Built staging, ran spotlights, picked up the talent from the airport. Don McLean (American Pie fame) was an asshole. Remaining Mommas and Poppas were cool. Bonnie Rait concert was amazing.

How about you, folks? What were your first seven paying gigs?

__
*One of my favorite lines, issued in the context of putting hay into pickemuptrucks, from the boss of this outfit (who is kind of uncle-like in my development as a man): “Don’t wish it up there, Randy!”.

Rescue: A Blog Meme

Back when science blogging was still vibrant, bloggers would launch a challenge query and tag some other folks to answer. I’m tagging dr24hrs, Gerty-Z, docbecca and iBAM on this one.

(I just saw something like this on Fb or somewhere, btw. I didn’t invent it.)

The question is, from the teevee (or movies) you’ve been watching recently, name the top five characters you’d want coming to rescue you from a bad situation. 

Mine are:

1. Tyrion Lannister

2.DCI John Luther

3. Jessica Jones

4. Varys the Spider

5. Sergeant Antigone Bezzerides

Yours? Feel free to answer on your blog if you have one, and drop a link. If not, use the comments. 

Who are you, what are you doing here and why do you keep looking at me? VII: "You know nothing Jon Snow"

I have an extra special reason for this annual event, so hook me up, Dear Reader. (I might even explain why in a few weeks.)

This post is a meme for you, the readers of this blog, to take more than the usual spotlight you enjoy here in the comments. This is especially for you lurkers (in case you didn’t notice, the email field can be filled with nonsense like dev@null.com). For the the veterans, yes I know who you are but feel free to update us on any changes in the way you interact with the blog…especially if you’ve lost touch with the content, been dismayed or just decided that I’m not who you thought at first, ideas-wise.

1) Tell me about yourself. Who are you? Do you have a background in science? If so, what draws you here as opposed to meatier, more academic fare? And if not, what brought you here and why have you stayed?

2) Have you told anyone else about this blog? Why? Were they folks who are not a scientist?. Ever sent anything to family members or groups of friends who don’t understand your career?

3) How did you find us and how do you regularly follow us? through Twitter, Facebook and/or other beyond-RSS mechanisms?

If you blog, and I know many of you do, go ahead and post your own version of this. Take the time to get to know your audience and ask the lurkers to come out and play. You’ll be most pleasantly surprised how many take you up on it.

[This is all the fault of Ed Yong. Head over the the last iteration to see all the gory details and links to prior comment threads.]

Twelve Months of DrugMonkey (2011)

The rules for this blog meme are quite simple.
-Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year.
I originally did this meme, after seeing similar posted by Janet Stemwedel and John Lynch. Prior editions include 2010, 2009 and 2008.

Wikipedia meme: MDMA

via Pascale

1. MDMA
2. Entactogen
3. Psychoactive drug
4. Chemical substance
5. Chemistry
6. Science
7. Knowledge
8. Description
9. Rhetorical modes
10. Exposition (which goes to Expository writing)
11. Writing
12. Language
13. Human
14. Living
15. Biology
16. Natural science
17. Naturalistic (goes to Naturalism (philosophy))
18. Philosophical (goes to Philosophy)

Twelve Months of DrugMonkey (2010)

The rules for this blog meme are quite simple.
-Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year.
I originally did this meme, after seeing similar posted by Janet Stemwedel and John Lynch. Last year’s edition is here and the 2008 edition is here.

Wiiiiiiiiilllddd Horses

see more Funny Graphs

[h/t: laelaps]

The Pharyngula Mutating Genre Meme

The inestimable Dr. Free-Ride has tagged us with a meme which runs as follows:

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] in [genre] is…”.

Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

• You can leave them exactly as is.
• You can delete any one question.
• You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is…”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”.
  
• You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] in [genre] is…”




• You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.