So, as some of you may know, I have been working here at Quiddities for the summer as Office Assistant and general People Wrangler. Now, in order to fully explain my experience here I have to give you all a little background.
I’m a theatre major at an undisclosed school in SF that happens to be a state school. (Nobody’ll guess it’s SFSU) I don’t disclose the name of the school because I had such a hard time this past year. I’ve always been the type of student whose performance reflects on the teacher in a big way. If the teacher and I didn’t get along, I tended to fail the class. Now this is one thing you can get away with in High School that doesn’t fly too well in College.
In theatre life is a little more relaxed than the real world. It’s a collaborative, creative environment, but there is still a very necessary chain of command. Not to say that there is one supreme boss (except for the person with the money). Anyway, back to my story. In school for theatre your teachers are really just more steps in the chain of command. And when your teacher is a no brain dolt it means that you’re buggered. Well, needless to say I got my first A- in theatre in a long time, and there were a lot of arguments and nasty emails. All year. Endless wars about batteries and walkie-talkies. Pointless quibbles over out-of-date paperwork.
Keep in mind I’m going to school for a degree in Theatre Arts. Paying money to be here and take these classes. Busting my tush for little to no pay for the experience. And I’m repaid with these trifle situations and little to no support from staff and faculty. Yaaaaaay theatre.
So, much to the chagrin of the 7 jobs I turned down, I decided in order to keep my fervor for the arts I needed to go on sabbatical. This decision led me to my job here, with Quiddities. It’s been the relief needed after a long painful year. I’ve met plenty of new and exciting people while nerding out in ways I didn’t know I could. I went to the Santa Cruz Geek Dinner in July and had a fabulous time! Who’d have thought that little miss twenty something could have a blast talking about things she didn’t even know she knew!
I thought that this job would be mainly a way for me to rekindle the flame of my lost love of theatre, but it turned into more. It turned into quality time with my family. It turned into good times for me to work and make money, but not be engulfed in something harmfully interactive. It turned into me learning about interoffice communication, good phone etiquette. To be perfectly honest, I’ve never worked in an office environment before. I’ve been fortunate enough to have jobs in theatre for my entire professional career. While that may look good on the theatre resume, when looking for good solid work, people don’t know what it means to be a stage manager or master electrician.
Don’t get me wrong; this entire experience has been so much more than resume building. It’s been a chance to get to know the inner working of a web development company, to learn about open sourcing and its benefits. To learn what it takes to try and organize someone’s life. But most important to me was what I took away in understanding the lives of my family. Understanding how exhausting it can be to sit at a computer all day and still have piles upon piles of To Do’s at the end of it all. Understanding what it means to come in at 7am and not leave until 10pm. Understanding how much work and stamina and sweat it takes to get a web site on its feet. That’s more than just resume building, it’s more than a sad attempt to give theatre a chance to redeem itself in my eyes, and it was certainly more than a piddley nine to five.
