Vanitas Vanitatum!

Things have been just fine this far. Graduated, got a job (don’t have to think very hard for the sake of the future), granted a very nice working atmosphere, and a bunch of amusing partners; I could hardly expect for more. Thus, the fact that I am working without payment for several months could somehow be forgotten for a while. If the ultimate goal of my working here was for money, I would severely be punished by the reality a civil servant must face.

I lived under the roof of a rent room I paid monthly. Not the best place in the world, but still it could please me with the facilities, environment, or the other dwellers, who also live-and-pay in there. Alone as I am in this great, crowded, polluted city (but promises many dreams to reach), I could never deny the moments when I missed home. Well, it is hard to get a good friend here; life is just too short to living with a wrong choice. 

Not really in to it, but..
The first time they explained my job description, I was not really in to it. I was placed in the Law and Cooperation subdivision, which surely dealt with the making of constitutions. While I had spent almost four years mastering English literature, then I found the fact that my occupation afterward had nothing to do with literary theories. I just put my self forward in the level of theoretical implementations into papers; I had not yet devoted myself into the real practice. That’s why I began to realize that my understanding on them would fade away through times.

The workload in the office was so heavy that I didn’t even have time to compose any writing at all since my staying here. Before the entrance of this Department, I thought I would be able to extend the amount of my writing, specifically the pop culture ones. However, I could not manage it. The last five days, for example, I got extra times in the office, filing the documents, attending the meetings, and managing the law-making of Digital Broadcasting in Indonesia. There is no position in the office (anywhere, except in the Translation Bureau) of being a translator. Translation was only the side effect of the job descriptions.

I should condemned the fact that my lectures in university did not have a really strong connection with the works I had in the office. That’s all there is to it. I knew it perfectly that a graduate of English Literature could only apply his or her knowledge into practice by being a lecturer, then. Some friends of mine had traced the path and continued their master either in Literature or Linguistics. Surely I had good faith in them as the next generation of English Department in my university.

Yet, one of the greatest things in this office was its working atmosphere. I really had to thank God to have taken the Apprenticeship program in the seventh semester, for then I didn’t really have to adapt very hard with working partners; how to deal with the so-called ‘seniors’, the ‘old school’ employees, bosses, and partners, or how to be a multitasking worker. The welcome was fairly good, for they did not put us under the label of ‘newcomers’, but instead introduced us with the rules of the war, explained the procedures, showed our desks, and directly gave something to work on. At least there was a moment when I realized that I had been put in the right place and thanked God for it.