We process and file data and serve as human interfaces or resources within our organizations. In this way the forms of upkeep that office assistants do-processing and updating various data, addressing and routing correspondence from internal and external entities, tidying up around meetings (and documenting them in minute-taking), keeping the storeroom organized-blend elements of conventional domestic labor with data maintenance. One of a dozen miscellaneous, usually manual-intensive tasks often labeled “job security” because almost anyone could do them, but due to higher priorities and workloads, almost no one else would. The repetitive moving, arranging and cleaning of data wasn’t creative or intellectually stimulating, which made it ideal for zoning out. The sameness of the work was, for me, a feature, not a bug. Any mistakes I made I could feel through my fingertips and in my ears, like playing warmup scales on the flute in middle school band. Typing out the key commands in rote succession quickly became rhythmic, percussive – ctrl-c, alt-tab, ctrl-v, tab-tab, ctrl-c… The term “desk jockey” took on a more literal dimension. If it involved Excel and blocking hours on my schedule, I was interested. Scraping dozens of farmers market listings for changes in hours, location, contact info, etc. Deleting hundreds (thousands?) of duplicate participant entries from a MySQL database. Pulling columns and columns of census data for every county in the state and collating them into a sprawling Excel spreadsheet. Out of the remaining work, the kind I preferred was, ironically, the most seemingly dull and monotonous. Yet despite what joy the newsletter sparked, it amounted to maybe 10% of my job. Even after leaving the university herself, she likes crafting cards and mom memes in Publisher 2007, her visual design program of choice.įor both of us, making and remixing the newsletter offered a repeatable and at times innately satisfying diversion from the more fastidious duties usually delegated to assistants (among other even lower status/precarious workers, from part-time undergrads and interns to building maintenance and outside contractors). ![]() “She delighted in the visual design aspects, adding new flourishes and sections,” I wrote, remembering her face lighting up in the car on the drive home from high school when she’d find the perfect clipart or goofy pun to slip into the margins. In a short goodbye to readers, I found myself recalling another assistant who published her department’s newsletter-my mom. On my last day working at the university as an office support assistant (four years almost to the day), I published one more issue of the biweekly program newsletter one last time. Below are some reflections on that experience, which I share mainly to process them. In January I started a new job (woo me!), but I still don’t feel like I’ve gotten over the one I left yet, nor the job application process it took to get here.
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