The Myth & The Majesty

It's still a little astonishing to me, twenty-some years later, how this one came about. I had applied the previous spring for an undergraduate research position and did not get it. Life moved on, I got through the summer at camp, started my (incredibly demanding) junior year at school, and then learned of an opportunity to go to Russia the following summer to spend a month teaching English. There was, of course, one big catch here: you can't disappear for a month in the summer and expect to get a job of any note. Still, I couldn't pass it up. I'd do what I could to make money that summer but Russia was not something I wanted to pass up. Only about two weeks after I told my parents my intention, I got an unexpected email. It was from a biology professor I had never met; she wanted me on her research team that year. "I read your application from last year and I was hoping you'd be interested this summer." I was thrilled but had to tell her that I intended t...

You know, I've had a lot of jobs. Boxer, mascot, astronaut, imitation Krusty, baby proofer, trucker, hippie, plow driver, food critic, conceptual artist, grease salesman, carnie, mayor, grifter, bodyguard for the mayor, garbage commissioner... If someone asks, how do you describe your first job? Not shockingly (if you’ve known me at all in the last three or four years decade ) I’ve been thinking rather hard about the road to my current point, as far as the professional (or at least employed) realm goes. And I don’t know how to describe my first job. Well, okay. I suppose what I don’t know is what to consider my first job. There’s the first non-chore thing I did to earn money, which involved putting together bridge reports for the family company. They’d give me an envelope of photos and a photo log from the day’s inspections and I’d sit on the floor in my mom’s office, gluing photos onto sheets of paper and carefully writing out the descriptions. My penmanship ...