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Miriam: An "Average" Day

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Transcript:

Matt: Do you want to go over what was an average day for you? That’s one of the questions. What’s an average day for you?

Miriam: I don’t remember anymore!

Matt: I think what this question says to me, what I saw all the way through your process because I’ve been along for the ride – I think a lot of people asked you to wear many hats at once. I think you asked yourself to wear too many hats. It’s true – Lynn asked you to wear many hats, and your project asked you to, you know, the school or whatever. How do you think that affected your work and your research?

Miriam:

Okay, that’s a good way to look at it. Let’s take it back to what is an average day, and we can talk about the different hats that I put on and take off.
The first thing that I would be doing would be administrating the projects. For people unfamiliar with administrating, that means emailing people to remind them of commitments that they made; emailing other people to follow up on commitments that you’ve made to them; emailing yet another set of people to arrange for further commitments in the future, or to figure out how you’re going to offload some commitments that you might have to them, so that you can get other work done. I think that’s what’s email is all about – it’s about commitments and verbal agreements that we make in writing. It used to get done over the phone.

After organizing things and administrating things, there would be a part of my day that would be devoted to trying to actually create policy about things. That would be the part where I would be trying to put into writing some of the stuff that had happened that was unspoken at the Atwater Library. I could say how teachers should behave, and how students need to respect the rules of attendance; how partnerships should get made, so there’d be a policy development part When that was done, there might be a bit of working on an application for some funding, so that would be the fundraising part of the day.
That would be where I would take some of the policy documentation and reframe it as grant application, and talk about why we need some money so we could make some of the policies become realities.

Then, if there was a workshop, there’d be a part where I’d assist the workshop, just because one of my major weaknesses is that I’m not very good at developing volunteer communities, and so I would always just be the volunteer. Also because I’m a busybody and I like to be in the workshops.

The last step would possibly be brainstorming or planning, or trying to do human resources management with the people that were working with us, so they would feel like their contribution was valued and that their input was being requested, and their needs for support were being met.

On top of all that, I would be researching. Everything I was doing at the same time, I was trying to keep a mental note of like, “And now, you’re doing this thing, and now you’re doing that thing, and now here’s this person saying this thing to you, and how does that implicate your research?”

Matt: How do you think that affected your job?

Miriam: Also, all this was happening between 2 and 3 days a week. There was never a time where I was working full time.

Matt: You were only a working 2 days a week?

Miriam: The first year, I was doing two days a week. The second year, I was doing one day a week, and then this year I was doing 3 days a week.

Matt: But it was enough – I mean if you’re doing one day a week --

Miriam:

Yes, I mean – the first year when I was extensively doing 2 days a week, I was really probably doing 4 days a week. The year I was doing one day a week, I was probably doing one day a week at the Atwater Library, and then one day a week at home. This year when I was doing 3 days a week, it was the first year that I was actually getting paid for the amount of time I spent working on the project. I finally managed to set that boundary and maintain it.

Matt: So there’s a progression there?

Miriam: There’s a progression, exactly.

Matt: Setting goals, and meeting them. That’s good.

Miriam: Yes. But I think also by the third year, I was tired.

Matt: When did I film you?

Miriam: That was the first year.

Matt: That was the first year? I feel like we’ve grown together and I’ve watched you grow up on camera!

Miriam:

The first year was also the first year I had the most passion for the project and felt like it had a lot of potential. By the third year, I was beginning to feel like it had a lot of potential, but it’s not necessarily going to meet that potential.