The Bookseller Monologues

Amazingly, I got the call yesterday that the bookstore I wanted to work at was offering me the position I wanted - which of course I accepted. Now I start the Friday after this Friday, and already I’m having all sorts of terrible thoughts. What if I show up horribly over-dressed? Horribly under-dressed? What if I can’t figure out the cash register, or someone asks me to recommend a good Russian memoir and my brain is suddenly blank? Dashkova, why has thou forsaken me!

In all seriousness, I’m pretty excited about this new job - it’ll bring some much-needed income to our home, and best of all, I’d be working with books, glorious books. I’ve talked with a friend who also works at the company (albeit across the country) and she’s had nothing but good things to say about it, so I’m optimistic that things will work out. I’m not terribly concerned that I’ll have trouble doing the actual work, just that it may take a toll on me academically.

I’m in this strange place right now where the short papers are all in and all that’s left for the semester are two very long papers that may well end up being converted into thesis chapters, and a paper proposal. For one class last night, I had to give a brief presentation of my research so far, and it went really well (I think) - I surprised myself with how much research I’ve accomplished. But I can’t help wondering if it’s a false sense of security I’ve lulled myself into; can things really have settled down this much? Even if I’m wrong, I’m going to accept things as good for now, and see where I am in a month or two months or six months.

As part of the privilege of life in the academy, I haven’t really had a job outside of academia/college settings… there was that job at Baskin Robbins for two months when I was sixteen, and the month-long job at the telemarketing company after my first year of college, but besides that I’ve always been working at school. I have all these strange worries as a result of it, like what if I can’t figure out a cash register? The logical part of my mind says, Sheana, you’ve worked in tech services for three years, you can handle a cash register, but there’s that nagging part in the back that’s telling me I’ll need some kind of advanced degree in astrophysics to truly comprehend how the machine works.

I suppose I’ll have to wait and see, though I’m pretty sure I’m out of luck if I do need a PhD in physics - I don’t think SDSU allows concurrent enrollment in two departments, and I haven’t taken a math course since junior year of high school.