My aching feet.

Woke up at 6 am. Sleeping sucks when one does not have a pillow. I wish I wasn't living out of a suitcase until January. My comfy bed and pictures and room and candles and decorations and teddy bear and PILLOWS are all still in Ithaca.

The job's pretty intense, but I'm starting to get accustomed to it. Today I encountered, for the first time, a few instances of overt rudeness directed towards me. I take it personally, although I've been warned not to. I've been thinking about why this may have occurred. It might have nothing to do with me personally. It might be because of my race, or my position. But it could be me, it could be my fault. I think that my mannerisms, while I'm being polite, may come off as arrogant and paternalistic. I can't think of any way to change that. I can't approach the staff and say, "Yo, wassup Mr/Ms [insert last name here]! How are my people today?" THAT, I think, would be worse. So instead, I stick with the, "Mr/Ms X, may I please see/have/ask...?" But I guess it could come off as being bossy and snotty. I don't pretend that I know what I'm doing. But today, it really irked me when a staff member looked up, saw it was me, rolled the eyes, looked away, and grunted in response to my requests. One of my fellow interns receives nothing but the most affectionate and cooperative responses from this staff member. I take it personally. It's my burden to bear, and it won't kill me to be humbled, but it still makes me uncomfortable because there is nothing that I can do to rectify the situation. And as a result, it makes an essential part of my job difficult for me to do, and of course this only hurts the kids. Doesn't affect my [lack of] paycheck. I did as much as I could, with consistent rudeness being directed towards me, and then I just decided that while I still had some things left to do, they weren't important enough to continue to put up with that. So instead of completing the tasks that could have been done, I went home. And that makes me angry too. It's my own fault for allowing someone else's actions control my own.

I'm listening to the Kanye West CD that I indulgently bought today. It's just too good not to own. All of you should go out and buy it. My fellow intern, G, popped it in today when we were going to grab lunch because he knows I'm feelin' Kanye right now. I think that G and I are slowly forging an interesting acquaintanceship. If that's a word. He's a great guy and I find myself just watching him a lot. He catches me looking at him, I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm out of my fucking mind because I'm always staring at him, but I think I have a lot to learn from him. I definitely have a lot to learn from the other intern L as well, and I'm thankful to have the summer to get to know them and work with them both. L and I communicate well. G and I haven't quite found a conversation pattern; we always seem to be a beat off. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone else but that is the best way I can explain it. I get the sense that we both know that we enjoy each other's company and make an effort to have good interactions, and I think we're both interested in the other's thoughts - but for some reason, the conversation, while always enjoyable, never quite lives up to its potential - it's like there's a sparkplug misfiring or water in the gas tank or a dirty fuel filter. It's going to take some revving of the engine, some spinning of the wheels, I think, before we get going. Then again, maybe we never quite hit the rhythm because he's just being polite. Maybe he thinks I'm stupid. But we had lunch together today because neither of us brought food. It was nice.

I did buy a pillow today at Target and I am looking forward to placing my head upon it. Oh, how the working world manages to consume my week. I found out today that I have Friday off though. Sweet. What to do with an entire extra day? And how cool is it that this will be my third consecutive four-day week? Then Sunday, I'm going to South Carolina for a week to sit in on the capital trial I worked on.