Another week has gone by in the great state of New York. Sweltering hot walks, subway rides, and minutes on platforms. Coming from Virginia and living in Williamsburg for the past two years, one would think that I would be used to high humidity and heat...I'm not. Well, at least I'm not used to wearing business causal everyday in said heat. It wouldn't be so bad if the Museum had central air but alas, historic buildings do not have that capacity. I wish I could report a week full of extremely exciting and new adventures but in reality they were few and far between. Tuesday night we had the first of the Garden Gala summer events at work. Two jazz musicians from New Orleans played an hour long concert in the Museum's garden while the interns helped take money and serve drinks. Though the crowd was small and the demographic...elderly, it was still a nice evening and the music was wonderful. The rest of the week I did more research, took inventory of craft supplies for camp, and spent my first day as a docent sitting in the gift shop talking to the two volunteers that work on Thursdays. Both are older and absolutely hilarious. The older man is basically blind and loves telling stories. The other volunteer, an older Jewish lady who's lived in Manhattan her entire life, looks and sounds exactly like Grandma Yedda from The Nanny. They feed off each other, cracking jokes, making fun of each other (and other docents), telling stories about their stints at the public libraries and various other institutions, and painting me a very vivid picture of the political spectrum within their respective families. A day that would have been quite and a tad boring was filled with amusement thanks to their vivid personalities. Instead of going into the museum on Friday, I slept in, took a later train into the city, and hopped the C up to 86th Street on the Upper West Side. The plan was to do some research at the BGC (Bard Graduate Center) where they have an extensive material culture library collection that I was hoping could aid my research. Alas, I only got through 4 of the 14 books the librarian had pulled for me but on the bright side, I'm planning on going back this week! (I must confess it's partly because there is this coffee shop a block over that I REALLY want to go to. Yes, I am a slave to the addiction that is coffee.)
This weekend I've taken some time off from my exploration schedule to catch up some work and research. Saturday, after waking up late-ish, I hung out with Joe's little sister while she study for exams and I read one of my secondary sources. It was nice to just sit in silence, listening to Adele on my iPod while I read the source (though I would have rather been reading one of the many books on my summer reading list).
Now, if ye who read my sparse blog shall permit me, I would like to delve into some personal development thoughts. Having been working for a few weeks now (it seems much longer) I have slowly come to the realization that I am not cut out to research every day, from 9-5, with little to no actual human interaction. This discovery is a bit disconcerting as my projected career path of curator requires quite a bit of research. I am beginning to question whether or not the museum field is where I should actually be or if I would even enjoy it. I know this doesn't sound like a huge deal but for someone like myself, who has had their life planned out for a very long time, it's quite scary. What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to be? What profession will make me happy?
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