Thursday, March 27, 2008

A good day at work

I was busy almost the whole time. I finished up the arts and crafts project. Dr. Monica is giving a presentation at a big RCC meeting tomorrow. The whole meeting is themed. All the presentations will have something to do with growing things. Monica's presentation is called Tilling the Soil. She has a little gardening bag with assorted implements to use as props. Yesterday I made the labels for them. I did the graphics on Word, printed them out, cut them up and mounted them on card stock. Today I affixed them to the implements. Sounds kinda cheesy but they looked really cute. Five of them are attached to the implements and the sixth one is on a glove. I cut a hand out of cardboard and slipped it inside the glove and stapled the label on the outside.

Now, if I had done all this at home I would have used all my wonderful supplies and tools. At work I have almost nothing that functions well for doing an art project. I think that's what made this so fun to do. I had to improvise and it all turned out looking just as good as if I had done it at home.

I also made business cards. She wanted to have something that was specific to the counseling department that she could hand out at the meeting. I downloaded a very simple template and designed the card. The cutter they had in the office caused the card stock to shift so I ended up cutting them all by hand using a metal ruler and a box cutter. They weren't perfect but they were pretty damn close. Monica was pleased and she was reeeally happy with the gardening bag.

Then in the afternoon I redid a bunch of Tanya's notebooks. Not a lot of creativity involved there but now her notebooks are organized and freshly labeled. With the garden bag project and organizing the notebooks AND working on my Psych essay I'm really getting to know my way around Word. So, even if all this stuff sounds boring I'm learning a lot. Plus, I'm pleasing the people I work for.

Ugh! My psych essay. It's supposed to be at least five pages. I've got four full pages and I've said all I want to say. Now I just need to find some extra stuff to fluff it out. I don't want to fluff it out because I like it the way it is. But fluff I must. I still have almost a month before it's due. So, why am I whining?

I'm going to gather up some art supplies to take to work.

9 comments:

vivage said...

Hey, that is great. You could work your way into being the creative design person for them.

Sounds like a really fun day at work.

Anonymous said...

re: fluffing a paper

I am the expert. You have to go back to the original material and pick out one more thing that applies to your point so you can get another fat paragraph out of it. AND, you get the added verbiage of relating your new point to your old ones: another 3/4 page, guaranteed.

-dean

gomtsy--the illegal white space in the too-wide margins of an essay paper stretched thin

vivage said...

Another way easy way to stretch is to add in an illustration. A graph of some kind and then text explaining the graph.

And do yu need notations and footnotes? That always adds if it's allowable as a page and not an extra.

Donita Curioso said...

I don't think he'd be too happy with graphs. No extras allowed. His instructions were pretty specific.

Oh, I've been fluffing. I've been back over the original material several times already. I had to fluff it to get 4 pages. I did find one more fluff point before Monica gave me that project. I think it's good for 1/3 of a page. But jeez, I have almost a month before I have to turn it in. And before I turn it in I have to turn it in to turnitin.com. It has to be screened for plagiarism. That's why it's taking me so long to write it. I'm paraphrasing like mad. Millions of essays get written every year. How many different ways can one idea be written? Especially when you're writing about something pretty specific like this book.

When I write blog posts I try to economize on the words. I really do. Some of these posts can get pretty long and I don't want to bore my readers (or myself). So, I've kind of trained myself to get to the point using as few words as possible while still making it interesting. To write this essay I've had to do the opposite. Heh! I'm even using more commas because, they, take, up, space,,,.

I'll get there. It's an interesting challenge. I think it's good that I'm getting the gunk out of my system. I haven't written an essay in 30 years and I'm sure everything I wrote back then was pure crap. This is only the first of many essays I'll have to write while I'm working on this AA. And term papers. TERM PAPERS! Bluck!

I've got it pretty easy right now, actually. It's not a long paper, the material is unchallenging and I get to do it at work. It won't always be this way. I'm really not stressing about it that much. I just want to get it done.

By the way, Virginia, I'm managing ok on Word but can you help me with the final formatting? Right now it's looking a little askew.

What you said about me being the creative design person for them? I actually had that thought today. When I got this job I didn't think I had that much to offer. I'm glad to know I was wrong about that one. But, hoo-boy, I get nervous when they ask me to do this stuff because I'm still not skilled enough to just whip it out (no jokes, please). :-)

Oh yeah, I did it. I emoticonned.

Like when she asked me to make the labels and the business cards I told her I could do it pretty easily at home on Photoshop. She said she really wanted me to do it there. She was pretty firm on that. I was impressed with way she very diplomatically pushed me into doing it. I like Monica.

But hey, I did it. Later Tanya asked me about that program I was talking about. I said, "You mean Photoshop?" She said, "Yeah, do we have it here?" I told her no. She said, "I'll bet we can order it." I like Tanya.

Oh, shit, I have to brush up on Photoshop!

vivage said...

Totally try to get PS, once the state starts freezing monies it will be hard to fit it into the budget.

A good boss stretches their employees by raising the bar and it sounds like they're raising the bar for you. Which of course you can easily do. :-) <----emoticon!

Yes, I will help you with the formatting. No problem. In a week or two ok?

p.s. I'll also show you how you can access graphic files that are in the Word libary and how you can add your own images as well. They aren't as good as what you can probably create in PS but they do in a fast pinch.

Nancy said...

What a great day! You like your bosses, you like your co-worker, you feel like you're adding value - all that and you're getting paid to be there! Yay! Yeah, bring in your stuff - including xacto knives. Better than box cutters. I can't work without xacto knives nearby, no matter what I'm doing.

Anonymous said...

NO NO!! Don't stop writing concisely and getting straight to the point, just make more points. Extrapolate. But don't take shortcuts just for the sake of brevity. Don't do this:

"Einstein's theory of a curved universe is so weird that it keeps me up at night. IT makes me nervous."

Don't use IT or THEY or THIS to avoid restating your subject. Go ahead and say what "IT" is again: "The theory makes me nervous." That's perfectly legitimate padding. Or "The idea that space/time is curved makes me nervous." Perfectly legal padding--in fact, teachers subtract points for using broad pronouns like that. It doesn't look thoughtfully brief; it looks lazy.

-dean

Anonymous said...

I should say:

"Using broad pronouns doesn't make a writer look thoughtfully brief; the practice can make a writer look lazy."

Four lines from TWO!

Donita Curioso said...

Virginia- Thanks! That would be great.

Nancy- I'm the same way. I use Xacto knives for everything. I can do a LOT with an Xacto, a metal ruler and a bottle of white glue.

Dean- That's what I'm trying to do-come up with more points. I'm getting close. I have three weak areas that need fleshing out. I think once I do that I'm done.

By the way, I liked your gomsty definition.