File compression

A chunk of this job consists of taking two pages of copy sent by a writer and somehow squeezing them onto one page. We're limited by fixed formatting, ranging from the font sizes needed for second graders to the "evaluation rubric" boxes that go in the teacher's handbooks. It would be a lot easier if I could throw that away and just say: grade this work based on factors A, B, C, and D, instead of having to have a chart and lots of repetition.

On the other hand, yesterday afternoon I was doing what they call "scrap", which means finding appropriate pictures to send the art vendor so they have an idea of what they want. There are far worse assignments than going through Google images looking for a picture of a fossil skull with teeth, a clipper ship, or a communications satellite.

File compression

A chunk of this job consists of taking two pages of copy sent by a writer and somehow squeezing them onto one page. We're limited by fixed formatting, ranging from the font sizes needed for second graders to the "evaluation rubric" boxes that go in the teacher's handbooks. It would be a lot easier if I could throw that away and just say: grade this work based on factors A, B, C, and D, instead of having to have a chart and lots of repetition.

On the other hand, yesterday afternoon I was doing what they call "scrap", which means finding appropriate pictures to send the art vendor so they have an idea of what they want. There are far worse assignments than going through Google images looking for a picture of a fossil skull with teeth, a clipper ship, or a communications satellite.

Trying to remember

I had a very emotional conversation with my mother on Saturday. Emotional and unsatisfying, in part because there were things I'd wanted to discuss that we didn't get to.

Thinking about it a bit, and in conversation with adrian_turtle, I realized that there were at least two important disjunctions between her memories and mine. When I thought there was only the one, I was prepared to accept her version, just because I'd been five and she an adult. That was also the less important: I have a clear memory of walking (being walked) to school in heavy snow when I was in kindergarten, and being put in with the first graders because I was the only kindergarten student there, and my teacher hadn't made it in. Mom says I'm conflating a blizzard in which my parents, for no good reason, decided to drive to visit friends way out on Long Island, with a public school strike. This seems possible, and not especially important except in that I have few enough memories of childhood without being told that I'm getting them wrong.

But Mom also said that Amy, who I met at Hunter (i.e., in eighth or ninth grade) was my first real friend.

Yes, I was a lonely child, and not good at making friends. But I know that Amy wasn't the first. Possibly the second. I had a good
friend in elementary school named Jenny. Her parents were Japanese, and her father's company had sent him to New York for a few years to work. The assignment ended, and she moved back to Japan. We had no further contact. But she did (and quite possibly does) exist, and she was my friend.

And Mom forgetting that leaves me with less confidence in her memories--and understanding--of my childhood.

Trying to remember

I had a very emotional conversation with my mother on Saturday. Emotional and unsatisfying, in part because there were things I'd wanted to discuss that we didn't get to.

Thinking about it a bit, and in conversation with adrian_turtle, I realized that there were at least two important disjunctions between her memories and mine. When I thought there was only the one, I was prepared to accept her version, just because I'd been five and she an adult. That was also the less important: I have a clear memory of walking (being walked) to school in heavy snow when I was in kindergarten, and being put in with the first graders because I was the only kindergarten student there, and my teacher hadn't made it in. Mom says I'm conflating a blizzard in which my parents, for no good reason, decided to drive to visit friends way out on Long Island, with a public school strike. This seems possible, and not especially important except in that I have few enough memories of childhood without being told that I'm getting them wrong.

But Mom also said that Amy, who I met at Hunter (i.e., in eighth or ninth grade) was my first real friend.

Yes, I was a lonely child, and not good at making friends. But I know that Amy wasn't the first. Possibly the second. I had a good
friend in elementary school named Jenny. Her parents were Japanese, and her father's company had sent him to New York for a few years to work. The assignment ended, and she moved back to Japan. We had no further contact. But she did (and quite possibly does) exist, and she was my friend.

And Mom forgetting that leaves me with less confidence in her memories--and understanding--of my childhood.