Standing taller than I am was a dozen stacks of plastic trashcans in a tiny room. My job for the morning, starting at 7:00 am, was to put a plastic bag into every one of them and distribute the prepared trashcans to all the rooms that were to house guests during Yale’s 313th Commencement. It was my first full time campus job.
The University Commencement appears to have little to do with trash, linens, or room keys, but these seemingly irrelevant elements were exactly what commencement workers like me were involved in. During commencement, some families of graduating seniors stay in campus dormitories, so the college hires workers to turn the residential rooms into hotels. Now I was beginning to understand the enormity of the workload behind all the events the college put on. One trashcan is negligible, but 200 trashcans seem insurmountable.
Just a week ago, I was debating the ups and downs of Stalin and making up stories in Spanish. Now, at the same place, I was equipped with a pair of rubber gloves and a big trash bag, wandering around in a courtyard and picking trash. Tourists often marvel at the beauty of the Yale campus, but Yale is not pretty if no one picks up trash in her courtyards.
What seems ordinary becomes extraordinary when I actually do it myself. I couldn’t help thinking about those who do this every day, who do this for a living. I could count down to the end of the eight-hour day and the end of the three-week struggle, but many people do not have such a privilege to count down.
Although many acknowledged that I worked a tough job, I still felt quite spoiled. After all, campus jobs are only valuable experiences that teach me about the real world. However, for me at this point, the mentality of a real job still seems far away.