A retrospective of jobs

I've had a variety of fun and unusual jobs.

Jobs I had during high school included tutoring flute and saxophone (ok, so I was paid in jazz CDs instead of money), working the barn crew at the Marshfield and East Middleboro fairs, and babysitting (ok, so sometimes that always fun!).

During college I worked at Sears for one summer (where I discovered that working for commission was not something I enjoyed.. but I did learn a lot about tractors, grills, lawn mowers, and exercise equipment!). I also worked for BUDS, which sent me to a variety of locations on campus: the Ivy Room (where I made a mean falafel), the Gate (where I got to take home tasty pizzas), the CIT cafe, and the Campus Market (my favorite place to work - the late night shift!). While those jobs helped me pay for books and bills, I certainly did not love them.

But I certainly had some wonderful jobs at Brown. I was a community assistant (known as an RA in most colleges) for the greatest dorm on campus, Slater Hall, which was one of the oldest (and smallest) buildings. I loved helping my residents and running community events, and really feeling like I was making a difference, whether it was in a silly way like bonding with your neighbors during a dorm Halloween party (everyone knows what a great team Mary and Halloween makes!) or in a more quiet way, through counseling a resident through a difficult situation. The following year I became a leader of community assistants in addition to being a community assistant - so I worked with and helped counsel the community assistants themselves.

I was a research assistant for a wonderful anthropology professor who travels to South Africa to study child development in some of the villages. Part of my work was to create large family trees that connected families across the villages, over many generations. I was fascinated and captivated by the lives of these people and children who I had never met.

Last year I worked through the John Hay library at the university's archives, where I worked with the Hall-Hoag Collections of Dissenting Propaganda. I loved both the process of archival methods as well as the potential for research held within the archives.

A love of research, archives, history, genealogy, libraries, working with people, teaching.. these certainly were some shared aspects across these varied jobs...