News and Notes
« Tue.07.25.2000 »
12:02 am EDT 55°F (13°C) in Ann Arbor
UPDATE #92 -- 8 MORE UNTIL 100
I was trying to make a Monday, July 24 update, but it doesn't help when you start at 11:58 pm. So, this ended up as a Tuesday, July 25 update, even though I started making the update in the waning moments of the 24th.
I'm still waiting to hear about a couple of things I began to pursue last week, namely reinstatement and social mentorship. It's been since last Wednesday, right in the middle of the Art Fair, that I've been waiting to hear from Prof. Howard about getting the W. She'd better not have tricked me and found a way to send it right to the College of Engineering without my knowing about it, or there's gonna be big trouble. I am also waiting to hear from my social mentees, to whom I mailed letters last Monday. Hopefully, I'll know something about both of those later this week.
Work is nearly complete on the bus-schedule project I've been doing most of the month. I've decided that I'm going to wait for official confirmation of the fall-winter hospital shuttle schedules before I post those, so those won't go up until late August at the earliest. The only thing I have left to do before then is the run information for Bursley-Baits, which I'll probably get around to doing tomorrow. However, if the rumors I've been hearing turn out to be true, a lot of runs are going to be "re-cut," meaning all the information I have there will require potentially extensive changes.
Speaking of the "re-cut" rumors, I just want to put in my two cents here that if the rumors are true, I may have to seek another job. I can't be working only 4pm-7pm, even if it's five days a week, unless they're going to raise me to about $20/hour. A lot of the other student drivers will be in the same boat; most have come to expect a routine of morning classes and afternoon driving shifts. I hope this whole idea isn't just a case of supervision using incorrect assumptions to justify screwing a lot of people over.
Hopefully after I break the single-month record with my next update of this page, I'll find something better to occupy myself with. I must admit, I've had a hard time coming up with decent stuff to post here in several of these July updates. Then again, I don't want to disappear like I did last fall term, so I'll try to strike a balance.
Number 8 on the Top 10 countdown reflects how much stress I was faced with in the summer of 1999. Looking through the history of this page, I am able to reflect on things that have happened to me -- either specific things at certain points in time, or general things that took shape over a longer period of time. When I looked through the first 89 updates and compiled my list of the ten most interesting ones, this one brought to my mind the many things that really pissed me off that summer, and probably led to my academic crash-and-burn job in the fall 1999 term. It certainly wasn't a period of depression -- I've never had a serious one of those, and wouldn't need this page to remember it if I had -- rather, it was the "Summer from Hell" where it seemed like absolutely nobody (primarily my parents and my Arbor Drugs supervisor Mike, among a few others) was cutting me any slack at all. So, here goes.
Thu.06.03.1999
I fucked up my CDL test this morning -- it was the vehicle inspection that got me, partly because the mechanic a week ago was a blithering idiot and partly because the examiner was doing his best to confuse me. In any case, it won't be repeated until next Friday.
I've also reached my limits with Arbor. I've been working too much, the customers have been getting more and more stupid, and now I'm going to have problems getting days off in the future.
I'm also starting to reach my limits with living at home for the summer. My parents are getting worse and worse, and it seems like August 27 can't come fast enough.