Your phone privileges have been revoked.

So this happened today:

Guy on phone: "Hey, uh, I was just looking at your school online, and I was wondering if you guys had an athletic trainer there."
Me: "Do you mean, like, an athletic training major?"
Guy: "Uh, yeah."
Me: "Um, we have sports management or physical education."
Guy: "Uuuhhh, like, you know when someone's playing sports and they get hurt and the guy runs out on the field to take care of them? Like that."
Me: "Okay, the majors we have are more like, if you want to be a coach or a gym teacher."
Guy: "Oh. Uh, okay. What is your deadline for application?"
Me: "You need to have everything done by the time classes start, which is August 29th. So your application, your financial aid; everything needs to be taken care of by then."
Guy: "Okay. Because I had just graduated on June 7th, and I was going to go to another school, and they accepted my application, but it was too expensive. But I didn't see athletic trainer on your website, so I wanted to call and check."
Me: "Okay. Well, we don't have an athletic training major, but we do have sports management and physical education. They are the closest things we have to what you are looking for."
Guy: "Uh, okay. Do you have criminal justice?"
Me: "Yes."
Guy: "Okay, thank you. Bye."

Wait, do you want to major in athletic training or sports medicine? Because those are two different things. And neither one of them is criminal justice. Am i on Candid Camera? Do you even know what you want to major in? Where is Larissa, my office lover, when i have a great story to tell?!?!

playing house, part one

Like this, but slightly different colors. And slightly less creepy children.

When i was a kid, i was obsessed with building houses. (When i say "kid", i'm talking about ages 3-14ish). We had a playhouse that my grandparents bought us -- one of those plastic, PlaySkool types of things that came in about six big jigsaw pieces. A tornado in our yard ripped it apart one year, and even though we put it back together, we later decided that we liked it better in pieces. We frequently pulled it apart and rearranged the pieces into different configurations, especially once we got too big to comfortably fit in it. Plus, it was a favorite hangout for jumping spiders, and that shit is inappropriate. Spiders aren't bad enough, and now they have to jump? Really, God?!

We would place some pieces on their sides, arranging them in a rough rectangle, and imagining the walls and ceiling between the gaps. I seem to recall that we had each claimed one storage space in the house; it had cupboards or drawers or something in the "kitchen" that we used to hide our favorite stones and our collections of the colored glass we used as currency. My childhood was so Tom Sawyer-esque.

We lived in a very new development. We were pretty much the only house for miles for the first few years. Even once people started moving in, there were no houses in our immediate vicinity. They were all a few blocks away.

Each time a new house was built, the dirt from the foundation was dumped into a pile across the street from our house. Before long, the pile was over twenty feet high. It was our mountain, and my siblings and cousins and i played on it nearly every day. We mounted expeditions to the peak, we played hide-and-seek in the foothills, we searched for special rocks and sticks and flowers, we claimed different sections as our own property, we dared each other to leap from the summit, we sledded down the steep side and almost into the road. It was more than our house -- it was our country, and we worked the land together.

Reason #14 Why I Should Live With My Boyfriend

One of my roommates went to the grocery store this week and brought back butter for everyone to use. Unsalted butter. Who does that?!

Micah 4-7, Nahum, Habbakuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Matthew 1-4

NKJV


Habakkuk 3:17-19
Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls --
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer's feet,
And He will make me walk on my high hills.

First of all, i love the use of "joy" as a verb. "I will joy in the God of my salvation." This is why i like older translations of the Bible -- little grammatical surprises that are perfectly correct and perfectly lovely.

Secondly, it's been a shitty year. A lot of stuff has fallen on my head since i graduated: new stresses and responsibilities, family trauma, roommate tensions, heavy homework loads, and so forth. It's a lot to carry.

My academic adviser for grad school has taught two of my classes. He starts each class with a reading from "Chicken Soup for the Teacher's Soul", and then asks for prayer requests, and then prays for all of us. He has a big heart and a razor-sharp mind. He helped develop the curriculum standards for Massachusetts, and is widely known and respected in the field. He goes to my church. He is warm and compassionate, gentle and merciful, brilliant and dedicated.

Last week, he was riding his bike and the front tire struck something. He flipped over his handlebars and landed head first. His helmet was split in half, and there was extensive bleeding in his brain. His face was also badly damaged. He was rushed to a neurosurgeon, and we have all been anxiously awaiting updates. It seems that he is mostly okay, that the damage was relatively minimal, and the doctors seem more concerned about his face than his brain, which is a good sign.

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.

It's not always a question of God "doing something" about the shitty parts of our lives. It's not always about a miraculous rescue, or total protection from all harm, or unimaginable prosperity and happiness. Sometimes, it's just about Him being there, by your side, when the shit inevitably hits the fan. Sometimes, the greatest miracle we can ask for is a friend to stand beside us no matter what.

independence day 2012

I hope you're all enjoying the holiday and not reading things on the internet, but just in case you are online, remember this: freedom only exists when everyone has it. Celebrate your freedoms today, but do so with the knowledge that you are more privileged than most. Even the fact that you have internet access makes you far better off than a large percentage of the earth's population. Practice your freedoms wisely and kindly, and fight for the freedoms of others, if for no other reason than to ensure the security of your own.


"First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out, because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out, because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out, because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me."

Human Interactions 103

At 7:20 PM Monday night, a woman called one of our enrollment counselors and left a message, asking if she could bring a large group in for a tour on Tuesday morning. Several problems with this:

1. The counselor she called is not the one who arranges the tours. She does not have access to the tour guide schedules. It is therefore difficult for her to set up a tour for anyone.
2. The person who does set up tours was not in the office at all on Monday. She works from home in the mornings on Tuesday, but she does not check her voicemail from home. And this Tuesday being the day before a national holiday, i'm not sure if she will be in at all today. There has therefore been no opportunity for the tour request to be passed along to her, leaving it to the counselor who received the voicemail to do everything herself.
3. Calling thirteen and a half hours before you intend to show up is not really ideal. Especially if you are calling after normal business hours. (Hint: normal business hours are 9-5, though 8-6 is not totally unheard of.) If you call outside of normal business hours, you should do so at least 24 hours before you plan to show up, giving the other person time to hear your voicemail, call you to confirm your visit, and set up the tour for you.
4. Group tours are harder to arrange than individual ones, and really really really need advance notice. We can throw together a really good individual visit at the last second, but group tours are very tricky. 
5. If you have left a voicemail for someone but have not yet spoken to them in person, you should not assume that they are prepared to handle your request. They may be on vacation, especially if you are calling two days before a national holiday. If their job requires travel (like, for example, a college enrollment counselor who goes to lots of college fairs and teen camps during the summer), they may not be in the office at all this week.
6. Having left a voicemail thirteen and a half hours ago with the wrong person, and having failed to talk to anyone at all to confirm your visit, when you come strolling into the office at ten minutes after nine AM, it does not behoove you to demand that the tour be "quick". Our campus is a certain predetermined size and has a certain predetermined number of buildings. In order for the tour to be worth your while, it will necessarily take a certain predetermined amount of time. But showing up ten minutes after we have all gotten to the office and demanding that we abbreviate the service that we have not yet agreed to render you is a little presumptuous. 

So what can we learn from this?


Be considerate of others, especially when you are demanding a service from them. I know this goes against much of what you were taught. You are the customer, and the customer is always right. However, this is not true. The customer is always the customer, and always deserves respect, patience, and our best efforts to make you happy. But you are not always right.

Remember that this is our job, and we know a lot more about how it works than you do. Defer to our knowledge, experience, and skills. Ask us how we can best serve you.

Give people plenty of advance notice when you are planning to visit, especially if you are asking them to do something special for you on that visit. When you drop in with no notice, you are only hurting yourself. If the abbreviated tour you demanded does not meet your expectations, that is your own fault.

Respect normal business hours. If you have to call outside of them, that's fine. We understand. But leave a voicemail with the understanding that we won't be able to even listen to your voicemail until 8 AM at the earliest, and more realistically, 9. We won't be able to return your call until after that. We won't be able to talk to you personally and set up a visit and make sure  your needs and requests are met until after 9 AM. This is just how businesses work.

Know what you're asking for. Some requests are small and some are large. And when you don't work in that particular business, you don't always know which is which. Don't assume that a request that seems simple actually will be. There might be a lot more to it than you think.

There will be a test on all of this. Be prepared. Class dismissed.

Reason #13 Why I Should Live With My Boyfriend

He understands the concept of "not dishwasher safe".