Some first impressions

I had all these grand plans of blogging everything chronologically, but I just emailed some people about what's going on right now and figured that I should take the email and put it here! So these are some of my first impressions of New Paltz.

Things are good. I have a ton of work to do and my house is still a mess so I have zero free time. I haven't even brought in my boxes of office stuff from Austin, so I am in a very empty office with a laptop for now. The feel of the school is totally different here. I have 3 student athletes out of 21 students in my physics lab for science majors. There are also a lot of women, both among the science students and the new faculty (8 of 12 - yes that is a small group; it's usually three times that but most SUNY campuses didn't even hire at all this year because of the economy). Everyone knows every campus person by name (Martin does textbooks, Linda does computing, Sarah assigns classrooms, etc.). There is an email list that literally goes to all faculty and staff and it gets used a lot ("I lost my wallet" "So and so's mom died" etc.). Everyone in the entire town is soooooo chatty, and everyone knows everyone. I know the life stories of my electrician, my painter, my lawnmower/snowblower, my landscaper, and my janitor, whose dad has bone caner and they are praying for him to die soon because of the pain. My next door neighbor gave me a nice plant. She's been living there since the 60s and knows everyone - the landscaper told me that she and her husband used to own the gas station on the corner. The guy who mows my lawn has been over to my house at least 4 times in the last week and he installed a new mailbox for me at no charge. He is the painter's brother, and their family has been here since the Huguenots settled in 1678. They are a chatty bunch, and as the landscaper pointed out, a bit inbred and not quite right in the head. Although the lawnmower himself informed us that one of the brothers really is not quite right in the head because his head got pinched with "fo-theps" on delivery. The electrician's father-in-law is going to come over to install a new kitchen faucet and the wife of the landscaper (who gave me a breakfast table and four chairs for free) is good friends with the computer guy on campus who I should really get to know in case I need computer help. The first painter we got a bid from is friends with a geology professor who I met at orientation, and she was the bridesmaid of the listing agent on my house. You get the picture. I've been here a week and I already run into people I know in restaurants. (A quick note about the restaurants - they are awesome! Mom has been taking me out for some very nice meals, and because of the nearby Culinary Institute of America there are tons of really great local choices.) While I find the small town feel very charming I really can't figure out how anybody gets anything done around here with all the visiting and socializing. An interesting, and perhaps inappropriate, side note - everyone here is so white. The only ethnic people run restaurants of that ethnicity (mostly Japanese). Minimum wage workers look just like everyone else. I don't really know how to describe it except to say that in most places you would not think of hanging out with your hired workers, but here you would. And the population seems to be 85% Jewish, which I am mostly oblivious to, but apparently my mom's generation grew up being attuned to that so she is always pointing it out. I did notice that the woman at Home Depot said "Mazel Tov" when I told her I just bought a house.

For now I am barely staying on top of my classes (I should write more about that process later), and I can't wait until I have time to get ahead a bit and relax. Oh, and it is the opinion of many of the above people that I will soon find a man, get married, and have babies. My friend says, "Watch out; they have a vested interest in your marrying and having a baby. You’d introduce some much needed heterozygosity into the New Paltz gene pool." Good point.

UPDATE: As soon as I posted this the janitor came into my office, sat down, and talked to me for a half hour. Most of it was complaining about how hard her job is and how the guy that does the other half of the building has a much easier load. I have never seen this woman do an ounce of work - she is always chatting with people. I kept saying that I had to get back to work and even went so far as to get out a textbook and start reading it, and she was still talking to me. Sigh.