Aw

Aw, jobs that girls do! Aw, jobs that boys do! Aw, pay discrepancies! AW. It's interesting because if you say "I worked jobs as a receptionist/waitress/cafeteria worker/library assistant/office assistant and took out student loans in college" it somehow just lacks the panache of "I worked in XYZ manly muscle job to get through college." It was probably higher paying than those little customer service jobs that more girls do, so maybe that's why, because as everyone knows, boys jobs matter more! Even though they still want secretaries and waitresses and receptionists around for some reason.

But its even stranger when you take it further. When you are like "SOME people worked in a LIBRARY but I WAS DOING A REAL JOB." Apparently, something like working in a library at a lower level, (which is also a highly female profession, according to a person I know who is working on an MLS) just doesn't count as much, like actual jobs involving upper body strength and bigger paychecks. I'm also thinking of something I heard on TV the other day. Middle-aged women are at the highest risk for suicide these days. Are any of them laid off librarians?

Personally, I have loved libraries so much in my life. And I know they can have funny shenanigans and the job isn't always peachy and full of shelving books (thinking of the coworkers and bosses of college library I worked in, who could be rather unpleasant in various little ways, who told me I didn't look like I was really sick when I had severe weakness and anemia from crazy blood clots/bleeding, who left me nasty note in my mailbox threatening get me fired because someone thought I looked at them the wrong way--and I might've, because the girl in question was horrible to be around on numerous occasions, especially when she said she was a psychology major with no sympathy for the suicidal. "I'd probably hand them the gun and tell them to do it," she said. And, there was the person who sent me packing up a long windy hill to carry packages when I obviously had bronchitis and really wanted to be curled up in bed. Really? you couldn't have chosen one of the other peons who wasn't coughing their lungs out? And all for a minimum wage.) But that doesn't mean I don't love libraries, or think their employees' jobs should be trashed as unimportant.

It's also sad when they cut all the librarians and teaching assistants from schools. In first grade, I had a teacher with a really nasty attitude. There was a teaching assistant in that class. She, in comparison to the truly wretched woman, was nice. I mean she wasn't THAT nice. But still. Nicer. Thinking of someone eliminating her job makes me sad. If you're stuck with an embittered teacher who likes to dole out punishment and humiliate you for your accent and gangs up kids to pick on each other and will shove you in front of the class and make you cry because you were staring out the window during the math lesson, and then yells at you for being so embarrassing as to cry about being humilated in front of the whole class, then it's nice to know there's at least someone else, who you can tell feels bad for you, by the expression on her face. Boo for cutting teaching assistants. BOO.
Boo for people who need to put down others in order to make themselves seem awesome.
Not awesome.