Okay, I'm not doing such a good job at blogging...I must admit I do not enjoy it. I'm sorry if this feels forced!

In the discussion post for Change, I talked about my switch from working in retail to higher ed, which is the change that set me on a path to a career. I would like to elaborate on that here.

I was an English major in college and just assumed I would work in publishing when I graduated. I didn’t understand the job market or what networking was at the time, and was woefully unprepared for the professional world when I graduated, so needless to say, I didn’t get a publishing job. 

After a number of miserable, low-paying temp jobs, I discovered that I could make decent money working for a retail makeup company - MAC Cosmetics. Initially, it was really fun, quirky, and creative. I had a background in art, so I enjoyed the artistic aspect of it. I got into the company while it was still young and in demand, and the vibe was really alternative and artsy. At the time there was only one store location in the Boston area and it was in a rich suburb outside of the city. Otherwise there were a few counter locations in various department stores like Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Nordstrom. Working at the store felt pretty special. Because we were the only store near Boston, people came from all over New England to shop there. We had our drag queen regulars that came in to spend their paychecks once a month, which was always a fun break from the rich soccer moms that were our daily clientele. We also got all the local media, celebrities, and working makeup artists  who needed access to high quality makeup for film and TV and didn't want to go all the way to New York to get it (this was before you could buy everything on the internet, y'all). We also got a lot of attention from the MAC corporate office so a ton of amazing makeup artists worked there and there were always Senior MAC artists from NYC coming through to offer workshops and special in-store demos for our clients. I was a novice, completely self taught, but working in this thriving environment with these incredible artists, I was able to learn a ton and fast. I absolutely loved it. Ruth Pointer of the Pointer Sisters was a regular. I got to do Alicia Keys' makeup for a Kiss 108 music festival. I got to make up models for various runway shows in the city. I also got flown down to Atlanta to do wedding makeup for a woman who randomly came into the store to try false lashes, and who I was lucky enough to wait on. It was a wild and very fun time in my life.

Of course, I was only part-time at the store, because the full-time positions were highly coveted and people held onto them forever. If a spot did open up, it was usually filled by seniority (which I did not have). So, to supplement my makeup job, I also worked as a counter girl for a couple hair salons...an exercise in survival - that is, working with catty, gossipy, back-stabbing humans. Oh I learned so many things in the beauty industry!

MAC grew quickly in the early 2000's and before I knew it there were new counter locations popping up all over New England and they opened a second store in a suburban mall north of Boston. I was starting to crave more challenges and hoping for a full time position, so when an assistant manager position opened up at the new store, I jumped at it. This change was more difficult than I anticipated. I went from the comfort of our fun store at a low key mall, to the insanity of a high-traffic mall and a brand new store. It was certainly challenging, but not entirely in a good way. I learned a lot about managing staff (especially unmotivated staff), but it quickly turned into the retail grind. The realities and drudgery of working long hours, nights, weekends, and holidays, the insanity of working in a high volume mall (especially during holidays), and the pressure to meet numbers to boost the bottom line, sucked the fun right out of it. I still have nightmares about that mall at christmas time. I can't even drive by it without having a panic attack! (truth)

So, without boring you with my long sordid history with MAC, let's just say that I worked for MAC in a variety of capacities, in different locations, for many years. At some point, I hit a wall and was bored and fed up with retail and the service industry in general. I couldn’t match another foundation or find the perfect lipstick for anyone else. I was done. I wanted to use my liberal arts education and was itching for more intellectual pursuits.

Breaking into a new field after working in retail was daunting. I didn't know where exactly to begin. The world was so big. I knew I wanted to do something meaningful, so I looked at non-profits, rather than corporate, but the field was broad and I had to figure out how my skills related to the posted jobs. This was my first foray into the art of resume writing (read as manipulating) – demonstrating how the skill set from your totally unrelated job, matches the skill set of your desired job - a skill I have refined over the years and have taught to hundreds of college students.

I was not having much luck on my own, and needed to make some money, so I added my name to the roster for a local temp agency. I was very specific about the types of jobs I would take. Luckily they were good at their job and found me a decent placement at a local college. Thus begins my illustrious career (JK) in Higher Education.

Stay tuned...

Goodbye Equilibrium. Hello Crisis.

Since we were asked to take stock of our "life course," I'd like to start out with some happy nostalgia. I was born in the 70s, a child of the 80s, and came of age in the 90s. There were so many great things about all of these eras and there's a thousand blogs out there dedicated to each one of them, so I'll limit my nostalgia to a few fond memories. 

One of the biggest influences  on my childhood was the rise of the home computer. My father was an early adopter, so we had one of the first Macintosh PCs. He was a teacher and used it for different aspects of course planning and management. I used it mostly to play games. I don’t remember most of the games now, although I can recall what some of the screens looked like. I do remember Print Shop, which I loved…I used to make up signs, like “happy birthday” flanked on either side by a very pixelated looking birthday cake, and then I’d print it out on our very loud and slow dot matrix printer with the perforated paper. It annoyed everyone in the house and wasted tons of paper, but I loved it.

I also have fond memories of the computer lab in my elementary school. We played all sorts of educational games. One that I do remember was called Number Munchers and Word Munchers where you solved math or word problems to avoid the Troggle monsters. There was also a program where you developed simple code that programmed the computer to create very basic line drawings. It involved all sorts of math to get the code right so that it would draw exactly what you wanted it to. I actually won an award for my interpretation of the Charlotte’s Web book cover…ultimately a pig, a web, and a spider. That was my first and last foray into computer programming. I wish I could remember the name of that program. My Internet searches have failed to produce it.

Anywho, thinking back on my childhood, adolescence, and more recent life course and comparing it to my parents’ was fun, nostalgic, and actually quite painful. The readings we’re using in this course and some of our discussions are hitting extremely close to home. I will use this blog to unpack some of that, since it’s so prominent in my mind, but I’ll try limit the time spent at the pity party.

So, my life is in crisis and has been for several years now. I keep getting hit with one bad thing after another and I’m just trying to keep my head above water. My father died in September 2014, which is not an unusual thing to happen, but it did occur “off-time,” if you will. My marriage crumbled soon after and I was divorced by October 2015. Now I’m dealing with a ridiculous court case that is the aftermath of having a very unstable person live in my home for a brief period of time. As someone who has always been a happy and hopeful person, I find myself in a completely foreign place of pain, constant stress and anxiety, and mourning for my father and for the life I thought I would have with my now ex husband. Lots of darkness these days in a once very sunny, optimistic life.

Reading Chapter 4, from Tennant & Pogson, brought out all kinds of nasty and unwelcomed introspection for me. They introduce Riegel’s work on page 14 of the PDF (can’t see the actual book page numbers) where they describe his view that: “The individual is considered a changing person in a changing world. Human development is conceived as moving along at least four dimensions:

1. The inner-biological dimension – maturation, health

2. The individual-psychological dimension – self-concept, self-esteem ideal self

3. The cultural-sociological dimension – social organization, rules, regulations, rituals

4. The outer-physical dimension – natural catastrophe, economic conditions

In this scenario, stable periods of equilibrium and balance are the exception rather than the rule. When any two of the dimensions are in conflict, a crisis with the potential to generate developmental change may occur.”

And there you have it! My individual-psychological and cultural-sociological dimensions are out of whack, and given that all of this happened alongside the Great Recession, one might argue that the outer-physical dimension is also in flux, I guess I have some serious developmental changes to look forward to then. I must say I am not excited about this. I should probably be looking for a therapist.

Tennant & Pogson go on to say:

“Plateaus of balance, stability, and equilibrium occur when the developmental or historical task is completed. But developmental and historical tasks are never completed. At the very moment when completion seems to be achieved, new questions and doubts arise in the individual and in society. The organism, the individual, society, and even outer nature are never at rest, and in their restlessness they are rarely in perfect harmony” (pg 15 in the PDF).

Regardless of my own woes, this idea strikes me as the most accurate of all the models we read about in Lesson 3. I believe this is an accurate description of how the world works and how we work within it. We are always in flux – mentally, physically, socially, naturally…the most constant thing in this life is change, is it not?

I have more to say on this, but I'm stopping for the moment. I will follow up with more thoughts about the life course as a social construct.

Testing...

Testing, 1, 2, 3...is this thing on?