(“I parked my car in Harvard Yard” => “I pahked my cah in Hahvad Yahd” is an old joke – about the Boston accent, how difficult it is to drive and park here – especially in Harvard Square, and how it’s forbidden to drive into the college's quad.) Transgender work is my life’s work; yet alas, I'm still rarely given money for it.
So I’ve been searching for a paid job, and have become an employee of Spherion, the agency that provides temps to Harvard University. Harvard is one of the best places for me to work, and Spherion is the way.
Harvard decided to upgrade their ID cards to “smart cards” (with a computer chip inside), and so they are "recarding" all of their cardholders. They’ve replaced the 12,000 undergraduates’ cards and given the incoming freshmen (frosh? freshpeople?) smart cards. They’ve also created smart cards for the other 56,000 people who have Harvard IDs.
I’ve mostly worked on the Smart Card ID Project, primarily the “production” of the cards. I’ve also worked for Harvard Yard Operations, and for my longtime GLBT colleague Robyn Ochs (bisexual leader) in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.
Today I started working on the Project’s “distribution” of the cards. Between now and March, I’ll be one of the managers that travels with all 56,000 cards to several sites on the Harvard campuses so that the cardholders can visit us to exchange their current IDs for smart cards.
My previous post about this is "I’m working on Smaht Cahds at Hahvad" (September 22nd).
