Work

Above: My summer job. Below: My peers' internships.

I like my job. My job is unusual, atypical for someone of my major. Or at least so it would appear. Political science majors don't usually work in university dairy barns. Well, this one does. I spend my time at work doing odd jobs around the barn (changing light bulbs, cleaning walls, doing paperwork) or helping with research and observation in the lab (usually stuff to do with the cows' food) or working on shift. Working on shift means, for me, moving the cows from their stalls to the milking parlor to be milked, cleaning out stalls (of both the normal cows, the calves, and the maternity cows), and generally spending most of my time ankle-deep in cow crap. I enjoy it, strangely enough. It's physical labor (at least being on shift is) and requires little active thought beyond doing the task at hand and staying on your toes so you don't get stepped on. Kinda therapeutic in a way. Anyway, it occurred to me today that there's little difference between what I do at my job and what my friends back in DC who have internships do. I spend my time up to my ankles in cow crap; they spend their time up to their necks in bullshit. The only real difference is that mine is literal and does some good-- fertilizes flowerbeds. Ha ha.
[Editor's Note: Of course I don't actually think that politics is nothing but B.S. I figure it's only gotta be, what, 60% B.S.? There are good people in political office working for good things. Just had to add that because how would it look for a political science major to be so jaded about the system she's studying already?]