Work so Far

Monday was my first day full-time. Perhaps the most interesting thing that happened was that I got a mini-lecture on the evils of the philosophies of Ayn Rand. To elaborate: I finished getting my cleaning supplies out of the closet and emerged to hear the sound bytes of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" coming from a conversation between my cleaning compatriot and a nicely suited person, probably a faculty member. So, being the shy young lady that I am, I loudly jumped into the conversation with "Oh, I love Atlas Shrugged!" I don't remember whether I kept going then, or whether the professor-looking person started it, but I announced that I thought she was dead on, in a way, and he kept warning me that hidden right in the middle of her books was this philosophy of the Virtue of Selfishness. I tried to explain myself, but he didn't seem to want to talk about whether the "selfishness" Ayn Rand was advocating might possibly have some positive points, and what she really meant by it. Anyway, the professor left and I discussed it for a bit with my cleaning buddy. He's from Brooklyn, and was saying that selfishness did no good there. We argued about what kind of selfishness Ayn Rand was advocating for a while, and got on to talking about God and what Christ really did on the cross. Then, he asked me whether I liked "intellectual" arguments. I said that I did. He said that he didn't; because they are discussions about fantasy, because we can't understand God. That kind of put an end to the conversation. I don't believe him, though; he seemed pretty into the "intellectual arguments" earlier.

On Tuesday I tried to walk home. It took me more than an hour. On Oregon someone whistled at me, and some other guy ran onto the shoulder to try to scare me. I'm not doing that again.

I eat lunch every day with my supervisor, who's also a college student. She and her two sisters are living on campus, and they were nice enough to let me come eat with them. One of them is a Comm/Film major at Nyack. (See! They do that at other schools.)

It was absolute torture yesterday and today, having to walk through the chapel lobby an hour before lunch time, and see all the fruit and chocolate out as snacks for the Ten Thousand Villages Anniversary Conference people, and not be able to eat anything.

That's it.