Emily Does Show Biz!

For those of you who do not pay attention, my long-term career goal is to become an archivist or librarian. If you didn't know about that, seriously, are you even listening? Libraries are all I talk about.

Anyway, last year I had a work-study job shelving books, a job I also held in my hometown library. I have to clarify here: I love libraries but I hate shelving, partially from overexposure, but partially because shelvers are the peons of the library world. When your child smears his poop all over Horton Hears a Who, shelvers clean it up. When you wander into the library with a three-day old beard and fall asleep on one of the couches, shelvers wake you up when the library is closing. Not to mention art books and oversize books are regularly hoisted by our skinny, malnourished college arms. I thought, after a solid four years of shelving books, my passion for Information Technology could be utilized better elsewhere in the library. Enter the Archives job, a mythical position I heard about from everybody except the people who could actually hook me up--the Career and Employment people and the head of the library. No matter! I said to myself joyfully. I will probably land that job by virtue of interest and not actually need to exert myself anymore.

WRONG-O. James, the nice man that had to give me some disappointing news in Career and Employment Services, completely shut me down on the archives thing.

It went like this:

ME: Are there any positions open in the--?
JAMES: No.
ME: I was going to say ar--
JAMES: Definitely not.
ME: Archi-
JAMES: I don't think that will work this year.
ME: ARCHIVES!!
JAMES: I'm referring you to the costume shop in the theater department. Do you know how to sew?

Before you pity me and feel disappointed that I didn't get into the archives, think for a minute. I'm a costume stitcher in the theater department. I sew clothes. They are paying me ten bucks an hour to do a job that half-blind children do in third-world countries for ten cents a day. Yeah boy! No, I don't really know how to sew. But hello, the position title is costume STITCHER. Not costume SEWER. Besides, I'm sure they'll train me. They said they would...so if they don't I'll be stuck putting labels on boxes of fabric scraps when showtime rolls around, and won't they be sorry that they don't have an extra pair of hands when all of their chorus girls suddenly pick up the Freshman Five Hundred and need their costumes let out.

Anyway, this new and foreign job will be an adventurous experience, no doubt. Organizing tunics and clerical robes sounds delightful! Cutting up yards of fabric sounds delightful! Sneezing in the costume shop and being attacked by the ghost sounds like a blast! Bobbins ho!