Abstract: The first year after completing an undergraduate degree is strange. Unless you have committed to even more school, it’s the first time in your career that you are doing something completely different with your time. Sure, you may have had jobs before, but now is the time to think about your “career” or even just “What do I do with all the time that I’m not spending studying for tests or doing problem sets?” My plan is to apply for graduate schools this fall of 2024. So, I figured whatever I do in the meantime that isn’t directly related to school applications should build overall work experience.
My plan was to do something interesting with numbers, but the number that matters the most right now is the balance in my bank account, so I just need to make money. I landed on becoming a bank teller, at least for a little while. While it pays the bills, I simply don’t want to do it forever, even if it currently stands as the path of least resistance. So, between customers complaining about ID requirements and long wait times, I calculated the air pressure gradient needed to power the pneumatic tube system (those things where you take a canister, put your ID into it, put it back in a tube, then it gets sucked up quickly, and someone over an intercom asks if you’re withdrawing or depositing today) in the drive-through. Approximately -300 Pascals or 0.04 pounds per square inch.
Introduction: I graduated from college in the spring of 2023 with a double major in astronomy and English literature, and since then, I have been tremendously bored. Not to say nothing has happened; actually, this has been one of the most eventful stretches of eight months in my adult life so far, just not in any way that I wanted it to be. One of the biggest things that I went through was the search for a real job outside of school. All it had to be was a bridge between my bachelor’s degree and some yet-unspecified graduate program, but I wanted to do something engaging with my time, maybe something that looks nice on a resume.
I really wanted to be a teacher’s assistant or a tutor, something that would get me interacting with others while keeping my math and science skills at the forefront of what I was doing. Dozens of ignored applications, ten rejection notices, and three unsuccessful interviews later, I decided that getting some source of income was more important to me than waiting around for the perfect opportunity. This led to my resume landing in the receiving inboxes of local pet stores, post offices, grocery stores, bakeries, tech shops, glasses stores, and anything else that was either entry-level or only required a generic college degree. The result: I landed a gig as a teller at a bank down the street.
At first, I thought it would more or less be what I wanted out of the more education-oriented jobs; I’d get to work with people while I practiced math. Turns out, everything is done by computers now regardless of whether a customer uses the ATM or goes to the teller line. I don’t even get much in the way of organic customer interactions. The computer gives me the prompts it wants me to talk to the customer about, and my supervisors actively listen to whether I use them. What this looks like in practice is:
Step 1) I give the customer the canned greeting my managers have coached me to give.
Step 2) Request the customer give me some form of ID.
Step 3) Process the transaction. Half of the time, the amount of money I am allowed to handle is so low that I have to call over my manager to do it for me.
Step 4) Use the CONVERSATIONS button to have the computer tell me what to chat about with the customer.
Step 5) Give the customer a polite salutation.
If I follow the above steps, end with “Have a good day!” and don’t give people the wrong change, I can get through each interaction in 30 seconds.
To keep myself focused on astronomy instead of just spinning around in my swivel chair until the end of my shift, I’ve tried inventing problems for myself to solve and occupy my mind. The best one of these brainteasers I’ve come up with for myself is based on a physics concept I learned in my senior year seminars: Hydrostatic Equilibrium. It’s the process that holds up stars and planets, and there’s an incredibly practical example at basically any bank branch in the suburbs. It’s those pneumatic tube systems they use in the drive-through, and what I want to know is how low the pressure in them has to be to make the canisters zip back and forth through the network.
