With Attitude

When I was in college I applied for a work-study job in the biology department. One of the questions asked how I felt about tedious, repetitious tasks. Suspecting that it was a trick question, I decided against writing, “I thrive on tedium,” and wrote instead, “Any task can be interesting if approached with the right attitude.”
I got the job, and in my mind I still see the job supervisor chuckling to himself as he read my application. That job was my first experience with gut-twisting, back-aching, suck-my-breath-away boredom. It consisted of leaning over a formalin filled tray and counting organisms from an environmental assessment project.
The job was so tedious that it completely overshadowed the three weeks I worked in a pizza factory filling packages with pizza rolls while my idle brain reconfigured the grinding background noise of machinery into symphonies which I was convinced I actually heard.
That's all. I wish I had learned a lesson or come to a conclusion about tedium especially since it sticks in my mind more clearly than all the interesting adventures that I could remember instead.
Nancy Sherer