What I did with my summer vacation...

Put on your sci-fi caps, folks. Pretend I'm trying to answer that question in September, like a space-age time traveller whose sense of duty to build an impressive CV has taken over a small portion her brain. It's only January, but these summer programs are quickly filled by eager beaver grad students and postdocs.

There's a paid internship available at the Missouri State Archives, but the pay only amounts to $7.50 per hour for ten 40-hour weeks of work...low pay for potentially boring (mind-numbing, eye-watering) work and the lost opportunity to take a trip with the man this summer. Not so great. There's also a week-long summer institute in Dublin, but I would have to get there and back and pay an additional $600 to participate. Pretty steep, and there isn't a seminar offered that fits my interests well enough to spend $2000 for the pleasure of joining in.

I will probably wait tables or bartend for cash. But I can't put that on my CV. Unless the chair of a particular department values the nuance of a finely poured highball. Not likely.