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Continued from previous post
Ten things I've done that others might not have
8) Worked for PsyCorps grading standardized tests
OMG it's a non-Africa entry!! In San Antonio, after graduating from Trinity University, I worked for a while at a company called the Psychological Corporation, abbreviated PsyCoprs, which pleases my Babylon 5 geek heart no end. It was a division of Harcourt-Brace, and you know those standardized tests that all schoolkids take? They graded them. One division just ran Scan-Trons through the readers for eight hours a day in a really mind-numbingly tedious job, but my division graded essays. I graded sixth-grade Oklahomans and L.A. highschool students. Somewhere I've got a list of amusing sentences that we culled from the essays and posted at the front of the room in order to keep from going stir-crazy. I've posted it to mailing lists before - I wouldn't be surprised if it's loose on the Net somewhere.... yes! Thank you Google! It's up here*. I'm not going to claim credit for it on the site - I did sign a nondisclosure agreement after all, and I'd rather not have my name *too* closely associated with it, even though it's been over ten years. :) So you can decide to either trust me that I provided that list, or not. ;)
* edit, as of 2016 you need to use the Wayback Machine. But if you search the web for this phrase, in quotes, you'll find a lot of places where it's been scraped and posted: "My past experiences include a part-time job as a lawnmower for half a year."
9) Had our house invaded by Siafu
Gee, Africa again, how'd you guess? Siafu, or army ants, are the carnivorous ants that you hear horror stories about. If there's organic material in their path, they eat it. They are nomadic, and travel in traditional routes. The natives in the area built their huts on these paths, and every few months when the ants come trhough, they pack up and go visit the in-laws for a few days. When they get back, their house has been cleaned of vermin, and the ants are gone. Makes perfect sense for their lifestyles, however, not for Western lifestyles. Someone had built our house right on top of one of these paths and the first night we were in Africa, our house was invaded. I remember seeing big black ants all over the kitchen. We went over to our neighbors' house (the grass people) and kipped there for a couple of nights until the ants were gone. Dad found out later that kerosene messes up the ants' chemical signals, so when he saw them coming, he'd go squirt kerosene around the base of the house and they'd leave it alone.
10) Packaged human bones for shipping
And one last non-Africa one! After my first stint in grad school, I worked in a small museum in South Dakota doing inventory. ONe of the tasks of the inventory was to get the museum in compliance with NAGPRA, which is a law to repatriate Native American grave good, sacred objects, and human remains. (It's a lot more complicated than that, but I won't go into it now.) This museum had a bunch of that sort of stuff, and two state archaeologists came down to help us sort through it all, then my coworker and I packed it up and shipped it to the state archaeological society where they could figure out where it was supposed to go and do all the hard work. So I spent a day wrapping skulls, ribs, thighbones, and so on in tissue paper and stuffing them into boxes. We wore gloves to do that, not because we were afraid of what was on the bones, but so that the oils and acids on our skins wouldn't damage the bones and objects. It was quite ... interesting to start coughing and then realize that you were coughing because you were breathing in human bone dust.
That was an interesting, aggravating job and I could do stand-up comedy on it for hours. It had been negleted for a long time and had a curator with a crazy collecting mania, so it had lots and lots of crap - some nice artifacts, but a lot of "WTF was she thinking??" stuff, too. And let me tell you, back in the collections storage area because the lights are low to preserve the objects and it's quiet and there's only you or your coworker there, it gets a bit eerie, even when you're as much of a skeptic as I am. Especially, as my coworker pointed out, when you look on a shelf that you've looked at a thousand times before and see something that you could have sworn was not there earlier. Even more especially when it's from a culture not your own. There was a small African statue that freaked out both of us once by unexpectedly looming on top of a shelving unit we were inventorying.
So much from Africa ... I've got a box of the letters Mom wrote to both sets of grandparents. One of my "One Of These Days" projects is to type them in and do ... well, something-or-other with them.
The end.
Ten things I've done that others might not have
8) Worked for PsyCorps grading standardized tests
OMG it's a non-Africa entry!! In San Antonio, after graduating from Trinity University, I worked for a while at a company called the Psychological Corporation, abbreviated PsyCoprs, which pleases my Babylon 5 geek heart no end. It was a division of Harcourt-Brace, and you know those standardized tests that all schoolkids take? They graded them. One division just ran Scan-Trons through the readers for eight hours a day in a really mind-numbingly tedious job, but my division graded essays. I graded sixth-grade Oklahomans and L.A. highschool students. Somewhere I've got a list of amusing sentences that we culled from the essays and posted at the front of the room in order to keep from going stir-crazy. I've posted it to mailing lists before - I wouldn't be surprised if it's loose on the Net somewhere.... yes! Thank you Google! It's up here*. I'm not going to claim credit for it on the site - I did sign a nondisclosure agreement after all, and I'd rather not have my name *too* closely associated with it, even though it's been over ten years. :) So you can decide to either trust me that I provided that list, or not. ;)
* edit, as of 2016 you need to use the Wayback Machine. But if you search the web for this phrase, in quotes, you'll find a lot of places where it's been scraped and posted: "My past experiences include a part-time job as a lawnmower for half a year."
9) Had our house invaded by Siafu
Gee, Africa again, how'd you guess? Siafu, or army ants, are the carnivorous ants that you hear horror stories about. If there's organic material in their path, they eat it. They are nomadic, and travel in traditional routes. The natives in the area built their huts on these paths, and every few months when the ants come trhough, they pack up and go visit the in-laws for a few days. When they get back, their house has been cleaned of vermin, and the ants are gone. Makes perfect sense for their lifestyles, however, not for Western lifestyles. Someone had built our house right on top of one of these paths and the first night we were in Africa, our house was invaded. I remember seeing big black ants all over the kitchen. We went over to our neighbors' house (the grass people) and kipped there for a couple of nights until the ants were gone. Dad found out later that kerosene messes up the ants' chemical signals, so when he saw them coming, he'd go squirt kerosene around the base of the house and they'd leave it alone.
10) Packaged human bones for shipping
And one last non-Africa one! After my first stint in grad school, I worked in a small museum in South Dakota doing inventory. ONe of the tasks of the inventory was to get the museum in compliance with NAGPRA, which is a law to repatriate Native American grave good, sacred objects, and human remains. (It's a lot more complicated than that, but I won't go into it now.) This museum had a bunch of that sort of stuff, and two state archaeologists came down to help us sort through it all, then my coworker and I packed it up and shipped it to the state archaeological society where they could figure out where it was supposed to go and do all the hard work. So I spent a day wrapping skulls, ribs, thighbones, and so on in tissue paper and stuffing them into boxes. We wore gloves to do that, not because we were afraid of what was on the bones, but so that the oils and acids on our skins wouldn't damage the bones and objects. It was quite ... interesting to start coughing and then realize that you were coughing because you were breathing in human bone dust.
That was an interesting, aggravating job and I could do stand-up comedy on it for hours. It had been negleted for a long time and had a curator with a crazy collecting mania, so it had lots and lots of crap - some nice artifacts, but a lot of "WTF was she thinking??" stuff, too. And let me tell you, back in the collections storage area because the lights are low to preserve the objects and it's quiet and there's only you or your coworker there, it gets a bit eerie, even when you're as much of a skeptic as I am. Especially, as my coworker pointed out, when you look on a shelf that you've looked at a thousand times before and see something that you could have sworn was not there earlier. Even more especially when it's from a culture not your own. There was a small African statue that freaked out both of us once by unexpectedly looming on top of a shelving unit we were inventorying.
So much from Africa ... I've got a box of the letters Mom wrote to both sets of grandparents. One of my "One Of These Days" projects is to type them in and do ... well, something-or-other with them.
The end.
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The bones and statue weren't even the most disturbing thing about that museum. It had a baby in a jar. Six-month human fetus from a scientific specimen supply house sometime in the 1940s. AUGH! Anyway, we were on the cmapus of a univresity with a med school, and we got the guy who ran the medical-specimen disposal unit to come and get it. Eesh. *shudder*
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