stereotypical single woman

I’ll admit it, academically I am a perfectionistic over-achiever. A big old nerd. Oddly enough though, growing up my parents never really outwardly pushed academic excellence, always instead saying “They’re your grades, get what you want.” Which proves that they are experts in psychological warfare. Because you just can’t say that to a quietly competitive child with a large amount of good old Catholic guilt in her DNA and not expect to have that translated into “Get A’s or else.” But the problem is that while I am smart, I’m no genius. And I’ve gone to school with some amazingly brilliant people. So I just worked really fucking hard to try to keep up with the geniuses. And while I never quite caught up with them, I definitely did well in school. Always have, and today I’m still working that hard in grad school. Although the guilt and competitiveness has been replaced by the conviction that I am not going this much further into student loan debt unless I am graduating with honors. Or I will kick my own ass.

Anyway, because I worked so hard, I feel very sorry for whatever children I may eventually have because I’m going to expect a lot out of them academically. Especially in comparison to what I’ve seen in the library lately.

The library closes at 9 every week night. This has never changed. Tuesday night, about 8:40 a mother and her son, who’s about 10, walk into the lab. They’re regulars so they sit down at “their” computers when without so much as a hello and, about 10 minutes later, the mother comes up to me at the desk.

“Can you help my son.”
“Sure, what does he need?”
“He has a book report due tomorrow. Could you just check on him and make sure he’s doing OK?”
Ummmm…..okay, still don’t know what you want me to do, but sure, maybe he’s having computer problems. So I walk over, he’s typing a report into Word, and the mother comes up behind us.
(to her son) “She’s here, let her sit down.”
“What can I help you with?” I ask the son as he gets up.
The mother says “Just type it for him.”
At this point I wanted to laugh at them, I am so shocked by their audacity. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”

Oh, let’s see, why am I not going to type your son’s report? How about because it’d be cheating. And it’s not my job. And maybe you, as a mother, should have brought him in here more than 20 minutes before the end of the night to do this. And maybe, if you’re so concerned with his academic performance, instead of playing on MySpace YOU should have been helping him. And just maybe, because I’m a bitch and I don’t want to.

Most of the time I leave my job content. It may have been stressful. It may have been tiring. It may have given me a huge tension headache. But I’ve helped people learn new skills, find new information, and simply been there for someone who needs to talk. On the whole everyone is very appreciative and entertaining (not to mention giving me great blog fodder.) And I enjoy making a difference, however small, in these people’s lives. But after days like this I leave just wanting to smack some sense into people. With a baseball bat.