Monday, July 2, 2012

Museums and Mad Scientists

This entry will be a bit more impromptu, my darlings, and will recount (in stunning blow-by-blow detail) my first day at my new job. Said job is actually an internship, in specific terms, but for me it's a job of near-sacred importance.

Simply put, I'm working in a museum.

And what led up to me sitting in a temperature controlled room awaiting my boss/the head of collection's arrival? Well it was preceded by several months of the most exhaustive job/internship hunting imaginable. I cast a wide net, emailing internship queries and filling out applications in museums across the country, ranging from the Big Apple itself to the baking heat of New Mexico. No museum or collection was too mean, no job too small, no preservation task too exacting. So out the emails went, and, as to be expected, in came the rejection notices, till at last I received a message from the University of Iowa, asking of I'd be interested in taking on an internship in their natural history collections. I jumped on the offer (and a plane) and thus it came to be that yours truly is here today.

(Later...)

So I now have my marching orders. I will be doing archive work on one of the museum's many contributors, hunting up information on him and the items he donated. Essentially i will be pulling a Mikael Blomkvist/Lisbeth Salander and dredging up all the details on this man. And not to give too much away at this stage of the story, but he seems to be quite the 'I wonder what happens if I do THIS?' type. As such I'm currently sifting some basic documents and writing up some core notes on my very own mad scientist, and waiting for my boss to get out of a meeting so she can introduce me to the library archives and archivists. Wish me happy hunting, my darlings.

~ Victoria

P.S. I find it ironic how while almost every American-based tale of going out into the wide world to seek one's fortune features the lead character departing Iowa (or somewhere else in the Great Plains), I chose to come here instead.

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