Thursday, August 13, 2015

VCBH: My Cubicle



Most of us work for a living (wishing I didn't have to), some of us in way swankier places than 
others (right now thinking of all my friends who work at places like Google and Salesforce.. le jealous! all dem snacks!) Anyways I am curious for a pictorial tour of your office or cubicle.

I work in a museum, doing a wide variety of education/programming/community relations type of things. I am not in a job where I spend all day, every day at my desk. I do a fair amount of travelling around the state, and even just moving between different facilities and different spaces in the facility depending on the needs and events of the day. I actually have two offices, but am much more settled into one than the other, since I typically spend only 1-2 days a week there. (Trying not to give too many details to preserve some semblance of anonymity on the internet, though if you tried you could easily find out!)

Anyway: here's my office, which is actually its own proper room. While I don't have a window, my chair sits where I can see out my door and through a window onto a very pretty grassy area.


I am one of those people who really has to settle in to a place to decide how and when to decorate, so the stuff on the walls has grown up over a period of months to years. I add to it every so often.

I work from a laptop, because I am so constantly on the move. It's not the best, ergonomically speaking. I'm thinking half-seriously about buying myself some monitors and a keyboard and setting up more of a docking station. I tend to keep papers I'm working on immediately to my right, as well as my to-do list for the day. I have a few horsey things scattered about - my mousepad is Tristan's face - but not too many. I live out of that file cabinet to my left and usually have my feet propped up on a handle at any given time.

The bookshelves to the left have a bunch of different things: binders for larger projects, extras of any of the forms/sheets/postcards/envelopes that I might use, reference books, an emergency kit for collections, spare banners/posters for various annual events, and usually extras of whatever exhibit peripherals we need at the moment


It's kind of a mess, but yeah. Map of Vermont, that I refer to quite a lot actually since we're always trying to plan trips or events so they make sense as we move around the state. Dinosaur of a printer that just will not die. (You know you work in nonprofits when...) If you turned left again you'd see the white board that I use to keep track of longer-range projects, as well as a complete run of our museum's scholarly journal back into the 19th century. Partially there's nowhere else to keep them and partially they're a good reference. When I have an intern (maybe about 1/3 of the time) he or she sits at that table, which makes us quite cozy.

The setup was done for me when I moved into the office and I'm still trying to figure out how best to use the space. It's a slightly awkward size, and my furniture is limited in quantity and variety. I'm always trying to find new ideas but rarely have time to execute them.

I also tend to work at the front desk of the museum on a regular basis, and in the spaces just outside my office - there's a big calendar I have to update regularly, and I work out of the kitchen for our events, and then of course the main exhibit itself, as well as the research spaces and so on and so forth.


That's my main event room, where I do most of my programming. In the midst of our busy season a coworker and I will set this up and break it down (we have tables & chairs in storage that you can't see) multiple times a week.



4 comments:

  1. I love hearing about everyone else's jobs and what they do!

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  2. The museum I worked at in PR was both art and history based, and was one of the oldest museums on the island. It is a small museum with a huge archeological, historical and art collection. They've rotated some of their pieces out to the Smithsonian! I helped design their exhibits during my 5 years there, both from the initial computer design of flyers, brochures, and promotional ads to the actual putting together of the exhibits, which was a whole other level of design. I got to see the backstage of museum work at its best and to see and sometimes even touch, pieces that otherwise I would have only known about from reading history books. Loved that job and still miss it; I would trade another museum job for vet tech in a heartbeat. Hence why I always love hearing about yours! :)

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  3. one of these days i should add a white board to my arsenal ...

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