Flying the Coop

Yesterday marked the last day on the job of one of my awesome co-workers, a brilliant, adorable Yonkers girl (YAYYYY, City of Y______) who is starting college on Monday. She'll be going locally, to **REDACTED**, a prestigious bastion of prestige, so we'll probably see her from time to time, but it'll be weird without her around. Being an awesome human being, she stopped at a bakery and brought some gluten-free cupcakes for all of her co-workers. Now, that's a great way to get everybody to miss you even more.

Of course, there was the inevitable torrent of advice, including some rather interesting "reveals"- for instance, the last person I thought would tell such a story cautioned everyone against eating a pint of blueberries before going out drinking, and informed us that the color of the resultant mishap was "strangely beautiful". Nice! Since the world is pretty much ugly these days, we all reminded her never to go out drinking without a responsible friend. I had a discussion with her about her science requirement, weighing the pros and cons of a humanities major getting the science and math courses out of the way (I cringe even writing this, being objectively pro-science) early, when one's high school classes are fresh in one's mind, or waiting until one declares a major, when one can choose science classes that are a better "fit".

One major theme of our discussion was to tell her to have fun, and not to miss home too much- she has the benefit of being familiar with New York City, so she will be able to help her roommates (a Texan and an Alabamian) navigate the big city, and gain some serious cool points. She'll do fine, she's the sort of young woman who brings gluten-free cupcakes to work.

On a parenthetical note, yesterday and today mark one of those rare occasions on which I find myself working a double- I started off at 4PM and am working straight through to 8AM. It's been a week, alright. Things should calm down a bit until mid-September, when we host a major event which will involve some serious scheduling contortions. Then in October, I descend into the maelstrom of madness that is our fall fundraising season. I'm a little knackered, but it's good practice for staying up all night: