Written 8/29, late at night.

Today's rant: TACIT, my time, and things that really irritate me

I usually try to stay away from inflammatory statements in this journal, as I'd rather not offend people. However, I'll have to beg pardon from those of you in TACIT for this one.

What did I spend 5 hours of my life doing on Tuesday? Sewing TACIT costumes for the upcoming play. This was on my own, in the TACIT house, while the costume designer was running errands to the two other plays she's also working on right now. In the meantime, I machine-sewed a back pleat, hemmed a full-skirted dress by hand so I didn't go all the way through both layers of the fabric, attempted to machine-sew another hem, tried multiple times to get the machine to quit chewing up the thread, and hand-sewed a pocket onto the inside of a tailcoat. I didn't break for lunch for more than 20 minutes, and spent that time studying art history as well. No one else was there to help. Gavin was downstairs doing something or other, and came up once or twice - not to help sew, but apparently to make sure I was still working. The last time he showed up, it was a quarter to four, and I had to leave at four to drive blacker socteam members to get pumpkins for carving on friday. During this 15 minutes, he stood around while I whipstitched the pocket on and complained about how the theatre dept was being given short shrift by caltech right now, since dabney lounge is under renovation. Note: this was AFTER I'd told him I was a member of the orchestra. Somewhere in there, I mentioned that I was in the orchestra, and we'd had to compensate for the loss of Ramo because TACIT was using it, by transferring our rehearsals to Oxy instead of holding them here. We'd only had two rehearsals in Ramo, at the very beginning of the term, then we'd switched to Thorne Hall. "What??" he cried, with an affronted look. "You mean we could've had an extra two rehearsals in Ramo???"

I'm sorry. I missed something there. Are you such an inconsiderate prat that you don't care about any other organizations on the campus?

Add to this the constant, unsympathetic demand for my time. "You *can* make the rehearsal tuesday night too, right? Call's at 6:30, run's at 7:30, it'll run for about 2 hours, so probably until 9:30, maybe later." "Um... my dinner runs until 7. And I have a midterm to study for on wednesday" "But you can eat early with the waiters. Besides, you can study while the rehearsal's going." "But I have to run a few errands with socteam, because I'm a *house officer* and that priority comes before TACIT. I don't know how long those will last" "Great! I'll see you there. And make sure you call over here before you come so you can help Corine move the costumes to Ramo."

WTF??? Did I miss something here? I agreed to volunteer some of my time, because a FRIEND was in the play and sent an email begging her friends for help. I'm here out of pity and friendship. I'm not throwing my soul into the bargain!! And midterms are important. I'm sorry, but sewing for TACIT ain't high on the list, next to academics.

And I think the real kicker was that after all that time, he never did bother to say even a WORD of gratitude.

Let me get this straight. I don't expect people to fall on hands and knees and praise me - god knows that'll never happen, and it'd embarrass the fool out of me. All I ask for, from complete strangers, is 2 words of acknowledgement, delivered sincerely. That's what my parents taught me was the polite and kind thing to do, when someone's helped you. That will get you virtually anything, and probably secure my services and goodwill the next time you need them. It means a lot to me to know that someone appreciates what I do - doesn't anyone else feel this way? This is how I feel vindicated. That's how I know you care about what I do. If you don't care enough to expend the effort for two words, when I could be busting my brain on memorizing dates and artists of art history for a midterm the next day, or on GRE preparation, then you know what? FORGET IT. I refuse to be a slave. I refuse to work for nothing. I'm sorry, Ewen, Kate, and Matt K, but it's just not worth it. I'll come and see the show and congratulate you on your performances, but I've put in my time. Unless something else dramatically changes my mind, that's all I will *ever* do for TACIT.

And if the rest of the TACIT staff treats you that way, then I'm absolutely appalled. I don't even think I would've stayed in orchestra, had Allen treated me that way. One of the reasons I've stayed is because I feel appreciated and needed - if I do something well, he says so. He also understands that there are times when work comes before rehearsals - he just asks that you give him some warning, and not miss more than 2-3. I think that's perfectly reasonable. However, demanding excessive amounts of time from volunteers who aren't even onstage is a little much. Maybe it's just Gavin. I don't know. But if others are like this, I don't know how TACIT keeps people around from season to season.