Library Maintenance

Location: Walt Disney Magnet School

Date: Tuesday, November 27, 2012; 6-8 pm

Was nice to see Minnie and Mickey again

Due to my Film Classes on Tuesdays, I had not done this project for a long time.  I arrived at the school and found that Laura was already there.  Once most of the volunteers had arrived, we proceeded to the library.  It looked like we were going to have a full house today and Laura divvied up the tasks for the evening.  Lo and behold, I found myself volunteering for the Non-Fiction again, and so caught up with my old friend Dewey.

 

I decided to employ a different tact today, where I would separate books by range of numbers and then take a bunch which belonged in a certain aisle.  Once that was done, I would come back for books in another aisle.  This way I would minimize my time walking from one aisle to another while trying to balance a stack of books.  This seemed to be working, till I started encountering aisles which already had volunteers in them.  This meant that if I had picked up books in the 600’s and there were more than 3 people in that aisle, I would keep those aside and go back for another set. The problem with this was that others were following a more freestyle approach and so there was always going to be some sort of adjustment that would be required because they would continue to change sections at random. 

White board cleaning lessons

I did the best that I could but after an hour, my fatigue started to catch up with me.  I tried to work faster, but did not want to mail it in either.  Once again I questioned my wisdom of doing this and perhaps Laura read my mind, because she asked if I would be willing to do a side project for the last 30 minutes.  I jumped at a chance of breaking the monotony and agreed without even asking what it was.  Laura handed me a cleaning solution and some tissue paper and asked if I could wipe down the two white boards.  I thought this would be an easy task, but little was I to know that the writing on the white boards was extremely stubborn and I had to put some effort into scrubbing it out.  Several sheets of tissue paper later, I finished one of the boards and then moved on to the next one.  This time I divided the board into 12 squares and attacked each square at a time.  No matter what the approach, it still required a lot of tissues and a lot of scrubbing.  Mr. Miyagi would have been proud.

I was tired and hungry and promised myself that this would be it for me as far as the Library Maintenance project was concerned.  I was putting on my coat when a woman approached me and asked if I would like a cookie.  I looked at the delicious Chocolate Chip cookies in the box and said yes.  As soon as I started eating a cookie, my mood improved.  She introduced herself as Megan and said that she worked in the Illinois Institute Of Technology.  At one of their youth mentoring events, the kids had given her this box and she thought of sharing it with the rest of us.  Megan is one of those people whose enthusiasm can be infectious.  She was chatting and laughing a lot and insisted I take another cookie when I said how much I liked them.  Laura offered us both a ride to the train station and as she drove us, thanked me for taking on the Non-Fiction section each time.  She mentioned that it is the most tedious thing to do and appreciated me volunteering to tackle the Dewey system.  She said that’s why she thought a wipe down of the white boards may be something that I would like to do.  Hearing her, I felt slightly ashamed that I had been annoyed earlier in the evening.

Laura dropped us at the station and wished us for the Holidays.  On the train Megan told me about how she and her husband had recently moved to Chicago and she was looking for projects to do on the evenings when he was working late.  I recommended the Mock Interviews and Job Coaching programs to her since they would suit her skills and background.  As we said goodbye, I contemplated the people that I had met over my time with Chicago Cares and Make-A-Wish. Other than Irina and the Volunteer leaders, I had not seen anyone else again, let alone socialize with them outside of our projects.  Even then, the interactions that I have had with them, such as with Megan tonight or Kristen at the UIC last Saturday, have made me realize how wonderful people are and how lucky I have been that our paths have crossed, even though fleetingly.