Saturday we spent all day walking around. First we went to El Malecon, where we had wonderful cafe con leche and egg and cheese sandwiches for breakfast. After that, we walked to the Cloisters to have a look at Fort Tryon Park. From there, we took the subway downtown, getting off at Columbus Circle to have a stroll through the southern part of Central Park. Shopping came next. We had fun at a sale at Zara, and then we headed to SoHo for more. In Yellow Rat Bastard, we spent a lot of time looking at trendy and hip t-shirts (they only had small and "medium" sizes for women). Tricia had to go to the bathroom, which led to a traumatizing experience. A store clerk took her down to the basement, telling her that it was "kind of creepy" and then making jokes about mugging her as he led her down the stairs. Tricia began to feel that maybe she shouldn't have gone down there, and when the store clerk had left, she heard a scratching sound, which turned out to be two big rats. She screamed and ran up the stairs, and we left to find a better bathroom.
We had dinner at a noodle place in Union Square, where I love the cocktails, and then we shopped at Trader Joe's. Home at last just before midnight, we pretty much went to bed quickly.
Sunday morning we went to El Presidente for cafe con leche, and then we cooked a lentil dish from a recipe I'd found on somebody's blog, because the author had used the exact same black lentils from Trader Joe's. It was mighty tasty! We ended up eating and chatting with Seena at home, and before we knew it, it was almost time to leave for her flight. We went down to my school to look around and because we can catch the bus to the airport from there. There were Christmas lights all over the bare trees in the main campus walk, which was very pretty. We went into the university bookstore and made fun of all the stupid paraphernalia they had there.
Finally at the airport an hour later, we discovered that her flight had been cancelled. (I'd forgotten to suggest checking in online!) Because we were not as late as other passengers and because our airline representative was nice, Tricia managed to get on another flight leaving soon. We trekked over to the next terminal while a light snow fell, and then we ate at the overpriced airport food court before she had to make the journey through security.
Overall it was a success; we both had fun and walked a lot and relaxed. I didn't get much homework done, but I got by with the little I could do on Monday before classes.
I'm now at work, waiting for a program meeting. Because our new college president was inaugurated today, things have been slower than usual -- a lot of people were attending the inauguration events so they weren't around giving us work to do. It's always nice to see all the professors in their full academic regalia; it also always makes me want to get a PhD and have one, too. But I don't think doing a dissertation solely for the chance to wear a silly cap, hood, and gown is really worth it.
I think I am building an affinity for the machines in the office. I mean, I should, given that I am near them and use them for practically the entire day, five days a week. Everybody hates the old copier in my office, and many people have trouble using it because it jams on them a lot. But I feel like I have more patience for them, and I can usually get them to work. It's not like it doesn't have all kinds of problems, but you can work around them much of the time. My boss, on the other hand, just kicks and hits it, which doesn't really help things.
This afternoon, an annoying doctoral student came in and tried to make copies on it. It kept jamming, and she kept refusing my offers to help. Finally I went over there, because I was worried that she was just tearing the jammed sheets out and leaving bits of paper still in the machine, which just messes it up more. When I asked, "Do you want me to try it?" she just told me off. "It's happened three times already, so I think I will just abort and use the machine in the other room." I was kind of irritated because she was basically saying that I wouldn't be able to do it if she couldn't. But of course, why should she think that I have the secretary superpowers that I have? When she came back from the other office, she apologized, but then took it back when she said, "It's not all my fault, you know; it's mostly the machine's fault." She was obviously annoyed at my implication that I could do it and she couldn't. I said good-naturedly, "Well, of course it's the machine's fault," because it is.
Big deal; so she's unaware of my copier-whisperer skills -- why should I care? It bugged me, though. I guess it bothers me that she thinks I was putting her down by offering to help. The professors never get offended by my offers to help, because they know that I can get it to work better than they can, and because they're often pretty bad at anything technological. I just tend to take things personally, but I don't have to just because somebody else takes it personally; just because somebody else thinks I'm condescending doesn't mean that I was condescending.
Anyway, I've got to let shit like that go. Like when my boss thinks I haven't done a good job because she wants me to be more aggressive, but I don't know how to be as aggressive as she is while preserving human relations. There's a lot of bureaucracy, and she thinks that I should be able to get around a lot of the red tape like she does. But I'm new here, and I don't really know how to work it that well, so I just bring her the stupid forms that they give me to make me go away.
My therapist talked to me about this last week, and it was actually rather uncomfortable for me, because I felt like she was saying that I am a bad worker. I don't totally dismiss my boss' priorities; I just don't feel the same sense of urgency that she feels about things. This, apparently, is not very effective. OK, OK, adopt Effective Mind rather than Principled Mind in order to get things done, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've talked about this before. But it is so difficult to shut off that part of me that revolts -- I'm not going to do this because it's stupid! or I'm going to do it my way because it's better than my boss' way! or Why is she upset at me when I didn't do anything wrong?!
In the social-organizational psychology department where I work, scholars talk about leadership and supervision a lot. Followership is actually a term I have heard as well. Maybe I need to learn about good followership....
Back at OSU a while ago, I took some personality/interest assessments at Career Services. The description for my Meyers-Briggs career type was pretty funny -- something about how I need a job where I don't have a supervisor or externally-imposed deadlines or rules. Daniel laughed at me, saying that I need a career designed for a lazy person. Well, yeah, I've got issues with authority. I'd better deal with them before I begin teaching in the public school system, right?
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