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Friday, August 26, 2005
Headstrong
I tried to keep busy today in a futile attempt to keep my mind off of the fact that I am new in a big city with literally no personal relationships formed yet. Despite that, there’s something depressingly satisfying about realizing that there’s no chance of running into someone you don’t want to see or otherwise wish to avoid contact with. On the other hand, even a disliked familiar face would be nice right now. I realize it’s only a matter of time before I form those important social bonds that will define my experience at USF but until then, I’ll sit here in my little box of a room enjoying cable television (mostly the National Geographic Channel) and my last few moments of mental clarity and relaxation before classes start.
I’m slowing getting the business end of moving to Florida out of the way. Already having established Florida residency at my new address, I went to the bank this morning to order new checks and change my statement address. Strangely I don’t feel like a Floridian quite yet. Maybe that will happen when I vote in my fist election here. Tampa dodged the bullet with Katrina although we did get a bit of weather that was probably associated with the hurricane. I went four years in Wilmington without having to evacuate for a ‘cane and I plan on going two more in Tama without getting kicked out.
This morning was my first “full” day of working for my graduate assistantship. I was initially given the menial yet necessary task of organizing and rearranging one of the lab spaces in the building. I’m not usually a superstitious person (in fact never) but there was something decidedly eerie about handling and relocating the nineteen human crania in a dead-quiet basement lab. I felt like the bastard child of Indiana Jones and Dr. Frankenstein.
The job of the semester for my GA will end up being the inventory and cataloging of the other biological lab’s specimen and teaching aid collection. It consists of a few dozen hominid crania and other various casts that are used as teaching aids and reference tools. Right now there is no established check-out or tracking system for the collection so I will be working with a PhD student in entering data and descriptions, applying barcode labels, and getting the barcode scanning system, which is new, up and running.
Posted by Will at August 26, 2005 10:46 PM in Graduate School