Out of Spec

SHUT UP: My First Five Bucks

Seeing as how this is my final semester on dearest Seton Hill, I wanted to get a change of scenery. I was fired/I quit the Biology department… It’s not either or, it’s somewhere in the blurry middle. Like, I was strongly encouraged to leave, and I did so happily. It’s not that I didn’t love working there… That’s a lie. I didn’t love working there. Regardless, I moved on to bigger and better things. I did my first work study hour-and-a-half of 2005 in my brand new area of employment—Seton Hill University Theater Undergraduate Program (SHUT UP)!

So as I have told about a dozen people, I taught myself how to knit over break. I learned this valuable skill in preparation of working under Sue O’Neill, the costume shop lady, who genuinely appreciates my work. This year for the musical Pippin, the costume shop was planning on making chain mail armor. No, not out of chains, but out of yarn! Anyone who has seen the most wonderful epic film Monty Python and the Holy Grail knows how beautiful sweaters can take the place of chain mail. Yes, the chain mail shirts in Holy Grail were actually sweaters.

I am thrilled to work in the theater department. As I have said in the past, I often feel like I don’t have a lot of creative leeway as a scientist. For this reason, I am a proud member of the beloved Eye Contact. Working for the theater department is going to be another outlet for my love of art. I am sure that this semester is going to be full of exciting twists and turns, many of them blogworthy.

My other four work study hours still belong to the SHU Chem Department. I got an e-mail from my supervisor, asking me to get started right away, making the following solutions for Monday’s lab:
1. 1.0 M acetic acid - 100 mL
2. 1.0 M lead acetate
3. 1.0 M NaOH
4. 1% hydroxylamine hydrochloride
You can see why I feel like I have no creativity. If I switched from 1.0 M NaOH to, oh, 10.0 M NaOH, my boss probably wouldn’t be happy. If I decided that lead acetate just wouldn’t look right under the hood, I couldn’t switch to sodium acetate for better color complementation. Sure, I enjoy working for the Chemistry department, I love it. It’s just a different bird.

To give my chosen area of study a little credit, I do have fun things involved in my major. As Vice President of the Chem Club, I get to design really nifty signs. Those awesome signs for Chemistry Club meetings? The ones with all of the colors and pretty pictures? Yep, that’d be me. I also get to write articles for the Communicator and design the newsletter.

I will always have this need to be creative no matter what I do. Even after I’m employed full time as a Ph.D. chemist working 40 hours a week, I’ll still be sewing my own costumes, knitting my own scarves, and Irish jigging at concerts. As my semester draws to a close, however, I’ll be able to earn money doing something I do for free for myself—sewing.

Posted by StephanieReigh at January 26, 2005 11:12 PM