#FirstSevenJobs

These were my first seven jobs.

1. Babysitter.  This started for my mother and to be honest it sometimes paid and sometimes didn't.  My brother David ended up being the hardest kid I ever had to babysit.  You'd never guess now because he is super laid back but he was a tiny terror.  I best family I ever babysat for was the Carasco's.  They would give me a fifty dollar tip if I came short notice.  Their girls were great, they almost always ordered pizzas, and they had cable.  It was a win/win/win.  I liked them so much that I even one year cancelled new years plans to babysit their girls when I was home for Christmas vacation from college.  

2. Cold call insurance salesperson.  This job lasted me exactly one night.  My friend Melissa worked for a State Farm Agent.  He had a list of phone numbers that he wanted her to call at night when people were home from work.  He said bring a friend.  It was the pits.  No one wants to talk insurance when they first get home from work.  I did it the one night and backed out of doing it again.

3. Child Aide at the Foundation for Blind Children.  My friend Pamela worked for this woman who had a son with some physical and mental handicaps.  Occasionally I would go and help her out.  Every summer he would go to summer camp at the Foundation for Blind Children.  They hired her to be his aide for the summer and asked if she had any other friends who wanted to apply.  I had to drive downtown every weekday that summer and I missed our family vacation and girls camp, but it was totally worth it!  The kids were great and the people I worked with were awesome as well.  Plus I got to see my bestie all the time!  

4.  Library employee.  I worked in the request section of the BYU library.  Basically I just sat at a copy machine all day and copied articles that had been requested and then put them in envelopes and mailed them out.  Now that we have the internet I wonder if anyone even still does this job.  The worst part was trying to get some of those journals cracked open wide enough to get a legible copy.  I meet this guy there who a few weeks later showed up at my apartment with a bunch of his old roommates, "Oh we used to live here before our missions and just wanted to check the place out."  We hung out with those guys a few times including a pretty fun Halloween party at a Dojo they lived in.  Nothing ever came of it though and two years later when one of our other roommates little sisters happened to live in the exact same apartment those guys showed up again and pulled the same thing.  YIKERS!

5. Teaching Assistant.  I really hated my library job.  Don't get me wrong, I love libraries but I sat at a copy machine all day and had no one to talk to.  It was seriously depressing.  I was taking an anthropology class that I loved at the time.  It actually made me switch my major from Chemical Engineering to Anthropology.  Of course  biological anthropology class a year later lead me to my final degree in Zoology with  Human Biology emphasis but that is neither here nor there.  But I really loved this class.  It was like listening to a living, breathing National Geographic.  So one day I stayed after class and asked my teacher if he had anything I could do.  He was working on editing some film he'd taken on his last trip to Ghana.  Did I want to help.  Well of course I did.  It didn't hurt that this cute guy who sat a few seats away from me stayed after to ask if I was going to help and told me he was helping as well.  So I did that for a few weeks and flirted and went on a few dates with this guy Ryan...a relationship that petered out pretty fast when he found out I was 17.  He as 24 although still ended with one of he best lines I've to this day ever heard.  "Thanks for helping me getting over my ex.  Who knew dating a 17 year old could be so fun."  At this point I didn't really care because I was all lovely dovey over an 18 year old who lived across the street but while the guy didn't keep, the job did.  I worked for the anthropology department, although mostly this professor for the rest of my Freshman year of college.  I did transcription, film editing, ordered supplies, made copies, and while I wasn't always with other people at least I got to get out occasionally, plus the interviews and film were so fascinating and while I didn't keep this as a major I did finish out a minor in anthropology.

6. RA.  The summer after Freshman year my roommate and I without even talking to each other both applied to be RA's for the summer.  The nice part was we got free room and board and paid.  The lame part was every week we had to check in high school kids for summer camp and at the end of the week we had to collect and count all their linens before the cleaning crew could wash them.  On the weekends I lived in a resident hall all by myself.  It was to be honest kind of scary.  We also took turns working the front desk at Heritage Halls.  That part was great.  I know some people hate being a secretary but I think it is fun to talk to the random people who come in, plus it put us close to the mailbox.  That particular roommate and I happened to love the same boy who went on a mission that summer.  We used to get our mail together and compare our letters from him..."Why is yours longer," "Well why did you get two."  That was until our boss asked her out.  They were engaged before the summer was up and were married by that Christmas.  

7.  Video Librarian.  After summer was over I left BYU and went back to ASU.  My grandmother had been diagnosed with cancer that winter and it was extremely hard to be so far away.  So I transferred home for a year and half.  She ended up dying right before thanksgiving at the end of my time home and then I transferred back to BYU that Christmas.  I will always be grateful for that extra year and half I had to be close to her but I still needed to get a job.  I looked up a ton of jobs when I first got back and one that caught my eye was the Video Librarian.  ASU had a bunch of classes that they filmed for engineers who were already working in the field.  People who registered for the classes could then come and pick up the videos and watch them when they were no longer at work.  Here again is a job that I'm sure the internet has completely gotten rid of.  Someone had to work at the front desk and check the tapes out for them.  There were also a ton of TVS and VCRs in the library that students could use to watch the tapes there and we also were responsible for rewinding the tapes.  I got that job because my previous job in the library that I had hated.  You think I would have hated this one as well but I loved flirting with all our patroons.  They were all engineers and they loved the extra attention.  I also had three employees that I worked with and it was fun to have the company.  I was working there maybe a month when they offered me a supervisor position.  It was a great job and I loved it.