You Just Might Find

This will be my last week at my internship. It's been a ride. But, to be honest, I wouldn't change it for anything. I think the most important part about working for a museum like the one I interned at is the fact that they don't have a budget. In school, we're told what to do if your institution doesn't have money, and yet we learned more how to act if your museum does have cash to spare on things like shelving, good item storage, and so on. My museum doesn't have those luxuries.

The lighting system in the cases for the angels has literally cooked the plastic and fabric over the years, and everything seems really brittle. The lights have begun to get turned off when visitors aren't present, which is something of a blessing. Food and drink are a no-go at the establishment, and the bulk of the collection is behind glass. But the wood in the display is the type that will emit gas, and the vents in the shelving units can let in all sorts of pests, if they could brave the temperature inside the cases.

I think it's so incredibly important that the institution someone volunteers at doesn't have the money to spare. You know what it looks like, then, when museums have to scrape by. And the thing is, the majority of the museums that you come across can't have environmentally monitored storage units, or even know to seal their wooden storage units in the first place. We're a little pampered, at college, which may be part of the point.

The amazing thing about my supervisor is how on my side she is. She truly believes in what I'm doing for them, and appreciates my personality and the fact that I took the time to help them. I sensed a good amount of resentment for my college, which is literally across the road from the museum. In the fifteen years that the museum has been open, they've only had maybe one other intern, according to my supervisor. I think that's terrible. The fear I had was that the museum would be filled with devout and preachy Christian old people, which wasn't the case. (The volunteers are over a certain age, but they're not decrepit or anything as ridiculous. My town is filled with the elderly, and volunteering at a small museum is not the worst thing they could do with their time.) They accepted me. And with the exception of not getting back to someone about acryloid B-72, I didn't ruffle anyone's feathers or offend them with my piercings or dark wardrobe.

They didn't care. They just needed the help.

And that's why I wouldn't trade my internship for anything. Maybe an art museum or anthropology museum internship, but we can't always get what we want. I'm not going to mince words: it was boring. So, so boring sometimes. But it was worth it. I took time to work on one thing, when I didn't have to worry about looming homework assignments (other than this blog), and I didn't have to concern myself with making it to class on time, or anything like that. School stuff. This was my job. And it definitely provided me with job-like discipline. No matter what, I had to get this done for them. Not for me, for the museum. For people who largely use the hunt-and-peck method for typing, and who don't know Excel like I vaguely do.

So that's my internship. Sometimes it sucked, but mostly it was nice. I got to feel like I was doing something worthwhile, and got some actual museum experience away from campus. Go me.

Angel's Museum forever.

How to Stay Sane With Data Entry

This isn't exactly a how-to guide, but here are some ways that I've found that keep me thinking while inputting numbers for my internship.

-Have a Netflix account or find a show on Hulu that you like a lot, but don't mind listening to. Likewise, find a good podcast. Preferably something entertaining-- my current go-tos are Supernatural, X-Files, Better Off Ted, Community, and gaming podcasts. I like watching police procedurals as well, but make sure that the episodes have enough twist to be surprising, but not enough that if you miss a clue while inputting numbers that you're not confused when they unveil the true criminal at the forty-five minute mark. Try some history or science podcasts, especially when it comes to subjects you don't know much about. You may not get everything the first time around, especially if you're multi-tasking, but you can always listen to it again. Audiobooks are good too.

-Make a good playlist with exciting music. Hell, try out some new music! You'll be at your computer for a while, so it might as well be something you haven't listened to before.

-Take breaks. Stretching your wrists, getting up once in a while, and finding a comfortable place to work are really important. If you're going to be at your desk for a really long time, do some desk yoga. There are YouTube videos for that which will walk you through it. Relaxing your eyes is also incredibly important. Focus on a far corner or object, and just focus your eyes on and off. Computer monitors can really mess up your eyesight, and there are programs out there that change the overall color of your monitor along with the hour, to match the more natural light of the sun.

-Your room is a trap. So find somewhere else to work. In school, your dorm room functions as your office/bedroom/living room/whatever. If you tend to work at your desk really well, then work at your desk. I have a friend who prefers to work on her bed, and she is dynamite at it. Me, I need somewhere else that isn't my desk, since I've essentially shaped my thinking process to desk equals art/fun internet time. For things other than small homework assignments, I tend to go elsewhere. It also means that you're not staring at the terrible white walls that invariably come with dorm rooms, and you get to pretend that you're hanging out with other people.

-Stay hydrated. If you get a cup of coffee, tea, soda, whatever, make sure you also get a glass of water along with it. When you finish a cup of coffee, switch to a glass of water. For one thing, it will keep you from feeling like electricity is running through your veins. After a couple of cups, coffee can be really dehydrating for your body, and switching to water for a bit will be good for you.  Eating food is good too-- I know I forget to eat if I get really absorbed in my work, so getting something like a muffin or scone that you can eat with your fingers is nice.

I hope that some of these tips help out in some way! These are just some thing that I've learned over the last couple of years, as well as things that I've figured out during the course of my internship.

Data Entry Pains

The great thing about having an internship is that, generally, it allows you to do work that you may not get the opportunity to experience later down the line. My internship with the museum is exactly that. I used to joke that I'd probably be hauling boxes or getting things down from shelves for the museum, but.

No.

I'm re-numbering the largest private collection of angels.

And let me tell you, it's not my thing.

Everything has already been separated. I think. I've been typing in numbers into Excel for the museum for the past couple of weeks, and as glad as I am to be able to help, it's not quite as glamorous as the readers at home may think it is. I've gotten to know the number-pad on my laptop very intimately these past few weeks. The biggest hurdle is finding a way to actually engage myself enough with the information to type up the numbers. Podcasts and my Netflix account are the best things to remedy boredom, as they're entertaining to listen to while I plug in numbers. I've been going through the document to allow for a common parlance to be used (such as what materials the object was made from in the form of keywords), which has helped matters some. Excel is really easy to use, but isn't always the best of programs if you need to edit a document and not have the field you were editing get accidentally wiped. I can see why it's used by accountants, but I wish there was a cheaper option for small museums like my internship.

Mostly, I work from home, or from my favorite cafe. Being at home means I tend to relax far more, so getting work done entails cracking down on my bad habits. I like the cafe because it makes me feel like I'm engaging with a wider community, while also allowing me delicious opportunities for coffee or food that I don't have to make myself. Likewise, it makes me feel like a real college student-- you know, the ones that talk about Margaret Mead or evolutionary biology over coffee, or the ones that prominently display the fact that they're reading Moby Dick outside a college curriculum. Those types of college students. (The ones everyone likely hates in secret.) Recently, however, there's been a heatwave, and I've been moderately ill, so my input isn't as great as it should be. But it's getting along.

The Meeting

Last Monday, I had my first Real Curatorial Meeting. It was, frankly, quite worrying for me.

In my opinion, I don't immediately look like someone who screams "mainstream employment." And it is incredibly important for me to look presentable to people, in order to counteract that. (Looking nice also makes me feel nice. I will never understand the people who go to class in PJs.) So I got dressed nicely for a meeting with people who are far above my age bracket and that of my professors. On the way there I drank coffee, and prayed I wouldn't be late-- oftentimes I have heard a complaint that people my age don't understand timeliness, and looking responsible is important too!

A lot of the meeting was, to be honest, explaining how museum numbering systems work. I had mocked up an example for the curatorial committee, and spent the next hour answering their questions and explaining to the committee at the museum why it was important that it get done. I also answered to some of their other questions, such as the pest issue, and worried the whole time that this internship wouldn't be worthwhile for myself or the museum. But, ultimately, I think that's for them to decide.

The First Step

It took me all of ten minutes to realize that the small museum I volunteer at is so much more complicated than I was ever lead to believe. My college campus is incredibly secular, and just about any whiff of a strongly faithful Christian is met with general distrust. Our campus is located in a small Midwestern town that was once heavily immersed in the industrialization of the U.S., and we were known for producing the machines that made printing presses, as well as some other items. As such, our city is pretty well-entrenched in the Rust Belt, from what I can tell and from what I've heard. The downtown area, since I was a freshman, has been undergoing a lot of renovations in order to bring in revenue and to encourage more visitation to the town. There are now a bunch of adorable (and sometimes over-priced) shops, which are for the most part standard small-town college fair.

The museum I intern at is, to put it simply, tiny. The vast bulk of their collection is on permanent display, and they've managed to stay open for fifteen years. Their collection is, as well, incredibly specialized, which makes it interesting to spend time in the physical building. It was once a Catholic church, and as such has beautiful round stained glass windows that look like sunflowers at first glance.

To put it simply, I was nervous when I went for my initial interview. I had never stepped foot inside the building proper until my interview, and it was nerve-wracking to try and come up with a way to make myself look a little less like a college student and more like someone an institution like that would want seen around the building. I clean up well, though.

The woman who would become my on-site supervisor is incredibly kind. She worked for a car company for thirty years putting together engines, which is staggering to think about. I can't much imagine doing something for thirty years, let alone doing something like putting engines together. After talking with her for a few minutes into my interview, she told me that it wouldn't be likely that they would have a whole lot to do. I assumed I would mostly be dusting collections or moving heavy boxes for the volunteer staff that are all fifty or above (by my reckoning). My heart sank. I needed the credit, and I wanted the experience. But it turns out they needed someone to catalog the collections, which would be perfect for someone to do. I agreed, and that was that.

I'm not going to lie: cataloging is incredibly boring work so far. I've had to come up with a good way of organizing a collection of over one thousand items, many of which are numbered in ways that I can't quite fathom-- even if the system was explained to me by the owner of the collection. Microsoft Exel, it turns out, will be my very close friend.