October - One of my worries is settled

Posted by Krystyna Hunt in

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I managed to raise all the money I hoped to raise for this academic year, but I had factored in a part-time job and for all of September I did not find one.

I had hoped to be hired by the office or the library at the college but applied too late. Plan B was to get a job at nearby malls or industrial parks, or frankly anywhere, doing anything I can get. I did shudder at those possibilities since part-time student jobs could be pretty gruesome, jobs were scarce and likely I would have to take anything that I was offered.

Well, lucky for me, I saw an ad on a bulletin board at the school for a Studio Monitor. The Theatre and Drama Studies program needed someone to go into the studios their students used for classes and/or rehearsals and check to see that all the equipment and props were in their right places. Each studio has a specific list of equipment that frequently gets borrowed by almost anybody for almost anything and it was up to me to hunt it down if it was missing and to make sure, that by the end of the day everything in the studio looked like it did at the beginning of the day. By the time I applied one sofa and two mattresses had already been missing for awhile.

I wasn't the best choice for the job, but I was the only one who applied. As usual, Patrick, my boss, was surprised when he first saw me. I am almost used to seeing the surprised look on people's faces when I explain that no, I am not staff, no I am not faculty, no I am not a parent, I am a full-time student. However, he was easily prepared to be convinced that at the age of 63 I was willing to move furniture around and mop up 6 studios because it was already October and no one had yet applied for the job. I don't know why not. It was not that hard, a fairly relaxed work ethic when no furniture had been "borrowed" and paid $10 an hour which was as much as anyone could expect to be paid for a student job.

Patrick is a former professional actor who is now Professor of Theatre and Drama Studies on a joint program with this College and a university. He selects all the plays the students will work on and they all need to have the exact number of male and female performers as his classes, which is quite the challenge finding such plays. He hoped to find a resident student because the studios tend to be used until about 10 PM and it works best if the Studio Monitor can come after that time and straighten things up.

However, since I go home to a city two hours commuter travel away, and I was the only one who applied, and he was desperate, we agreed I would be on the job from 5:30 to 7:30. That was when I had to leave to make sure I caught the 8:30 train and had a chance to make it home for 10:00 PM providing I could ride my bike from the train station and it wasn't raining.

There have been occasions when I did not leave on time to catch the train. In that case home would happen an hour later.

The job was the best I could expect under my circumstances. I am almost never supervised and as long as things are okay, no one needs to supervise my work. Most of the time items are not moved around, or if they are they are moved back. Aside from having to pick up an amazing amount of half full water bottles, sweep up Doritos and Goldfish crackers and worm gummies off the floors and re-stack the stacking chairs. The rest of the time I work on my assignments from my laptop and keep one ear open for anything amiss in the studios. Patrick is happy that someone is there and that alone is a deterrent from stuff disappearing.

I get to listen to the students rehearsing their songs from musicals like Oklahoma and do their tap routines. The prop and set design department is part of my jurisdiction. Another time I had to walk through the hallways with my brooms. Students were rehearsing scenes in the hallways and I could only get past by walking through their scenes. They'd be yelling or swearing or threatening to kill each other, or trying to kill each other and I just walk through with, "excuse me, excuse me".

The missing sofa and mattresses were found under the studio theatre stage and returned to their own rooms.