Getting a Summer Job: Step 1

As you may know from my previous posts, I'm looking for a summer job this year in order to help pay for college.

I thought I would share the first step in this process with you, in case you find getting a summer job as daunting as I do.

Obtain an Application

And either fill it out in the store (or wherever you're applying) or ask if you can take it home and bring it back later.

Prepare Yourself

Before you leave your house to go application-searching, make sure that you do three things:

Put on appropriate clothes that make you feel confident. Granted, you're probably not going to have an interview on the day that you fill out an application, and a lot of times you'll never set eye on your future boss -- somebody at the front desk might just hand you an application and ask you to fill it out. But you never know who might see you and it's best to make a good impression on your future boss and coworkers.

Think about where you want to apply, so that you'll have a strategic plan when you leave your house (although you can always be flexible and apply to different places that you see while you're out). If you're applying to a lot of businesses, make sure to have a list of all the applications that you've obtained, and note whether or not you've turned them in yet so that you won't have any surprises or confusion later on. On a related note, if you have a lot of applications you might want to write where they came from in pencil, since some applications don't have the business' name on them and you wouldn't want to mix them up.

Smile, since people will be more likely to hand you an application if they feel that you're approachable and friendly.

At first I was intimidated about asking for job applications, but it's actually a lot easier than I expected. I obtained applications by looking for businesses that looked like they might hire summer help. I walked into the store (etc.) and approached the person at the front desk/checkout (making sure to smile and be generally pleasant!). I asked them if (insert business name) would be hiring any summer help this year. They either responded... yes, no, or "maybe but it's not likely." If there was a possibility of being hired, they would hand me an application and I told them that I was going to take it home to fill it out and bring it back shortly.

Then you just fill the application out, which is generally self-explanatory (or if things are getting complicated, ask Google. ;) ) Don't forget to bring the applications back and ask where to turn it in. Somebody will either direct you to the manager or take the application for you. Then you wait. If you want you could follow up to make sure that the application has been received by the appropriate person.

Step one: accomplished.

P.S. Remember to say thank you to the people who take the time to provide you with a job application. But you already knew that.

Minimalist Plus Dinnerware

Now that I know where I'm going to college, I'll have to get ready for dorm life. I've been thinking a lot about the minimalist lifestyle and it seems like a good fit for my personality. I don't like spending time cleaning, I don't usually buy a lot of stuff, and I'm always in trouble for leaving things lying around the house... what better way to fix that than just to get rid of the offending property? Plus, I might actually be able to fit into my dorm room, without being crowded out by things.

The only problem is that I don't know how to reconcile minimalism with...

...well, and this is going to sound particular but...

as you probably guessed from this blog's title, I like formality. If I am a minimalist with one dinner plate and a spoon, how will I have a dinner party? Okay, and even if I splurge and provide spoons for everybody...

The logical answer would be that I should be a moderate minimalist. Hum, and I don't know what moderate minimalism looks like. See? We're getting into grey areas here... Spoons or no spoons? Minimalism or not?

Concretely, I guess, I'll be a minimalist plus dinnerware. There. Problem solved.

College News

There's good news on the horizon: I might get to go to Kalamazoo College! After a bit of a go-around (is that the right expression?) with the Registrar's Office (very patient people) we've determined that I will be able to transfer two AP units (Kalamazoo's version of 3.33 college credits), hopefully a third if I score high enough on their French Placement Test, and I will probably be able to transfer six units from the Community College. That would make it 9 units out of 36 needed to transfer. Exactly one year's worth. Which is exactly how much I needed in order to have a shot at affording Kalamazoo College.

On one hand I'm sad that I most likely won't be able to afford the full four years of college but I'm lucky that I ended up with enough transfer credits to give me the chance to go to a great college. I was a little bit sad yesterday because some of the staff have been implying that would be quite a loss not to go to Kalamazoo for the full four years. It's not that I don't want to stay, though... I just can't.

In any case, we're still not sure if I'll be able to go. I'll make my decision this week, I think.

Finishing Impossible Things

Sometimes when I'm overwhelmed I can't figure out where to begin to make things better.

An example: I'm really bad at keeping my bedroom clean. Especially when I'm busy. Clothes pile up on the furniture, art supplies clutter the floor, my bed is never made... eventually I stop putting things away at all because it doesn't make any difference. My bedroom looks like it has been ripped apart by a class of angry kindergartners.

At this point I have no motivation to clean my room. It looks like a circus? So what. It always looks like a circus. A messy one. 

Except that that's a lie and eventually the mess starts to get on my nerves.  

But I'm too lazy to clean it because I'm busy watching The Office.

Enter the Rule of 10. Actually, it's two rules:
1. I have to do ten things to make my room look better. Put away ten pairs of socks. Put ten colored pencils back in the pencil box. Whatever.
2. I can't do anything to make the mess worse. No more using my bed as a filing cabinet. Clean clothes have to be hung up upon entering the room.

If I follow these rules it ends up taking a really long time to clean my room. But it also doesn't take more than a minute every day. Usually I find that if I put ten things away I'll want to put ten more things away, and then ten more. You know. Inertia.
Mostly, though, it helps me to feel like I'm more in control. Like an it's going to take forever to do this but at least it won't be difficult sort of feeling.

This concept can be applied to a lot of projects that seem impossible.  Writing a book?  Write ten sentences.  Starting a garden?  Plant ten plants.  Doing your homework?  Finish ten problems...

Growing a High-Maintenance Garden

Aside from my personal vegetable garden, we have a family garden that we put in last year. We tried to grow squash and beans but the zucchini and the monster tomatoes took over. Well, and then the tomatoes suffocated the zucchini so it ended up being a tomato garden.

Part I: Before we planted our garden we came to the understanding that it was to be an organic garden. Marigolds. Pepper spray. Hand-picking the caterpillars and relocating them.

It was great, actually. The plants were doing really well. Unnervingly well. Especially the tomatoes, which by mid-summer were taller than a regular-sized adult. The caterpillars, too, were probably snacking on the robins that popped in once in a while.

It was great until the tomato plants grew bigger than my car. Then it was scary. We could almost hear a fe fi fo fum floating from the tops of the tomato stalks. The caterpillars were multiplying. Unfamiliar insects were breeding in the shade of the tomato trees. We should have started pruning a long time ago.

Part II: The Fertilizer Man (sorry I can't think of a more dignified name for him) was not on board with the organic aspect of the organic garden. I walked outside one day and my mom handed me a broom. "Here," she said, "the lawn man came."

Sweeping fertilizer pellets out of a garden is hard. Sweeping fertilizer pellets out of a tomato jungle is harder.

I guess the point of saying this is to emphasize that we can fuss as much as we want over things, but sometimes we just can't control what happens.  We planted marigolds to use as a pest repellant so that we wouldn't have to use chemicals in the garden.  The marigolds ended up thriving on artificial grass fertilizer.

(Organic gardening is worth the fuss, mind you.  I just wish the Fertilizer Man agreed.)

Growing the Easiest Garden

My compost pile is the love of my life.

I used to like gardening. A lot. Literally, I would turn my bedroom into a greenhouse in the winter. I planted every seed I could find, as well as some things that in hindsight I'm pretty sure were not seeds. (Cheerios, for example, will not grow.)

The problem is that I killed every plant I owned except for one aloe vera plant and a ponytail palm tree (my mom is in charge of taking care of them). I dreamed of starting a garden but my seedlings would die before they ever saw the Great Outdoors.

I tried really hard to grow a garden. I planted beans. I watered flowers. Everything died. I planted beans. I watered flowers. Everything died. I planted beans. I watered flowers...

It took me a while to accept this, but growing plants is not my calling. Not now.

No, I have a different vocation. It's called Composting Kitchen Scraps and I'm really good at it. It's simple: you take your kitchen scraps (no raw meat) (or any meat) and put them in a bowl. Take the bowl outside. Dump the bowl on your compost heap. It helps if you can contain your compost in some way so that the wild animals and your little dog Abbey won't carry yesterday's mango peels into the neighbors' yards. I built my compost pile around a huge pine tree in our backyard, inside a fence we made from old bricks.

Composting isn't all that different from gardening. It's just that instead of creating food from dirt you're creating dirt from food. Reverse gardening.

Lately, I've found that my compost pile bears great benefits called Mystery Plants That Grow in Piles of Food Scraps. Mostly these are seeds from food that we ate earlier in the season, and which have germinated. So far we've had squash, broccoli, potato, squash, onion, squash, and squash plants, plus a few extras that we couldn't identify. While we don't feel comfortable eating these plants, I have to tell you that they don't die. Let me repeat that: I cannot kill the plants that grow in my compost heap. It's compost and a garden all in one!

How Not to Get a Job

Thinking about paying for college is seriously scary. I feel like I'm going to dig myself into a hole of debt that I won't be able to climb out of. I mean, I've never had a real job. I've never even finished a job application. How am I supposed to pay for an education?

There are two job applications sitting on my counter as I write this. I brought them home a few days ago and I was pretty gung-ho about filling them out until I googled "How To Fill Out a Job Application" and came to the realization that I was supposed to fill out the applications at the store. So I'm afraid to turn in the applications because now that I think of it the lady at the flower shop gave me a funny look when went skipping out the door with my application in hand.

Well, and then I have to send in a résumé. Which would be fine except that I haven't got any idea how to write a résumé. And even if I did, what would I put on it? I'm good at writing, and teaching French. That's not going to help me get a job at the supermarket.

Special skills? Verb conjugation.

Special interests? Words and sentences.

Maybe people are wondering why I don't just go find more French students.
I am, too. I don't know where to find them.

There's always a third option: henna tattoos. I have a skill for giving people henna tattoos.

I guess my first step toward paying for college would be to find a job. Who wants a tattoo?