Harriet A. Allen was late for her first day of school.
Her cat, Copernicus, lazily doing some “kitty yoga” and stretching as if to say, “why don’t you just stay home with me?,” and Harriet was almost tempted to at this point. After arriving to her new flat late because of a delayed flight (and dealing with an angry cat *and* angry airline representatives), not having any of her boxes of clothes arrive, and finding the studio apartment much smaller than promised, she’d just about had it with this move. At least she spotted a man with a cheap breakfast cart outside on her block.
She wished her brother was here to deal with all this.
Copernicus rolled around their maroon sheets, claiming it with a sheet of black fur. She sighed. “*I’ll deal with it later*” she thought, while standing in front of her hasty assortment of Macy’s brand clothing, trying to piece together a decent first day outfit.
“What do you think, Perny?” She asked her kitten, holding up a black skirt with bright green top. He just flopped, and promptly fell asleep in the exact center of their bed. “*At least now there’s no way I can crawl back in.*” she grimly determined.
After settling on black jeans and a more subdued navy striped top with a beautiful petal collar, she grabbed her backpack and jacket, kissed her cat and flew out the door to get a cheap bagel and coffee. As soon as her front door opens, she’s instantly smacked in the face with the cool Northeastern autumn air, and hopes her relocation from the West coast isn’t too much to bear when snow comes.
After getting a free breakfast (“Welcome to New York!”), Harriet had to hurry to make it to the Museum on time. “*I could probably run through Central Park faster than the bus, right?*” She decided to go for it. “*If anything, it will be a nice nature walk, and hopefully I’ll see some inspiration for my dissertation*”
Though she laughed off this ludicrous thought (“*I probably won’t know my dissertation until it smacks me in the face, literally.*”) and turning on some Explosions in the Sky on her phone, she was quickly entranced walking down the winding roads of the park, supposedly walking in the direction of the museum where she’d spend the next four years studying. In the air and trees, Harriet spotted several blue jays, yellow-rumped warblers, even a red-headed woodpecker! In the paths near the lake, she saw red-eared slider turtles sun bathing while eager squirrels waited near tourists to catch bits of their breakfast.
“*You’d never have thought it, but New York City is randomly an ecologists’ dream.*” Harriet thought, gazing in wonder at the lush reserve in the heart of the city.
It wasn’t until she glanced at her Macy’s brand watch, and noticed it was 8:30am, the exact time her itinerary said “Meet in the lower level Atrium,” that she began to run. As she whipped down the paths, she realized that she was totally and completely lost. “*Gorram it. I should have never let myself walk.*” She hadn’t even had the sense to look at which signposts she was following, totally entranced in the ecosystem that seems to be both isolated and a part of the city that never sleeps.
Harriet tried to recreate her path while convincing herself she was “*totally paying attention and knew where to go*” and ended up stepping on her slightly-too-long jeans, tearing a bit at the seam. “*At least I didn’t manage to spill--*” She began, right before spilling a third of her large, black coffee onto her pants.
After trying to ask some people in the park to point her towards 79th street, and trying to do so in French a few times, she brought out Google to save her from total and complete embarrassment. She just hoped that following along with
“*Where the frack is this museum?!*” Harriet screamed internally, wandering around the Upper West Side, eyes glued to her phone. “*I’m late!!*” Half-running, half-jogging through Central Park, she curses herself for even thinking her sense of direction could take her through the maze of the Park, even with Google as a backup. A giant planetarium suddenly came into view over the trees, and she rediscovered her misplaced geography skills.
Outside the museum, Harriet pauses. Looking up at the grandeur of the 142 year old building, her breath catches in her throat. “*Wow.*” is all she can think, as it looms above her, daring her to come in and discover. Then her mind returns, and all she can think is “*Wow. I hope no one notices my torn and coffee stained pants under my jacket*.”
Scrambling up the stairs of the museum, she stares up at Theodore Roosevelt on his horse, triumphant, and darkens, “*He’s totally mocking me.*”
She tries to catch her breath, to run faster, and as she finally breaches the Atrium doors, looking around for her new cohort of classmates, she staggered back, staring down at her chest. “*What was that?*”
An intense pang in her heart makes her look down to make sure no child has blasted her with a toy from the gift shop. Nothing. Her ears start ringing, and her heart pounds faster and faster as she looks around for the source of this feeling. Because no, it can’t be from her. She can’t get sick.
Just over the crowd, Harriet makes out a woman's scratchy, irritated voice, "Harriet A. Allen?! This is your last call!"
Harriet snaps back to awareness, eyes wildly searching out the voice while panting “Yes, I’m here!” She finally spots the waving hand of the woman, and weaves through the crowd to a small group of eight, professionally and darkly dressed twenty- and thirty-something-year-olds.
"Well thank goodness. We were just about to leave you to fend for yourself." The woman, whose name tag reads “Jay,” gestured to Harriet’s cohort of PhD students, and continued "Well, let's go. We have to make up some time in the schedule."
Harriet visibly sags, stammering out an apology. Everyone else files in front of her before she walks forward, following Jay and her new classmates. “*This was supposed to be my defining moment, and I’m at the back of the line, yet again. Perfect.*” She wallows, eyes cast down, and straightens her shirt to try to reassemble her confidence. Brushing her gigantic conglomeration of long, dark curls out of her face, she quickly tucked her hair back in a bun, much in the fashion of the others in her group.
One girl, whose straight, tawny hair hangs freely, stayed back with Harriet, gave her a commiserating look, and starts to introduce herself: “Hi, I’m --” before being interrupted by Jay, at the head of the group.
“I’ll say this again for the late arrival,” Another visible cringe from Harriet as a few classmates snicker, “Welcome to the American Museum of Natural History. As PhD candidates in our comparative biology program, you will be learning from leaders in fields of Anthropology, Vertebrate and Invertebrate Zoology, Paleontology, and Physical Sciences, which includes astrophysics and earth and planetary sciences.”
A brief pause for everyone to enter the elevator, with Harriet and the mystery woman at the back.
“I’m Ruth, what’s your--” The younger looking woman was able to breathe out before being cut off yet again by Jay’s lecture.
“I’m going to bring you up to the fourth floor, and you’ll have one and a half hours to do a self-guided tour down to the first floor, after which we’ll do some super exciting paperwork and housekeeping. Take this as a chance to do some bonding with the folks you’re stuck with for the next four years.” She laughed to herself as she led us out of the elevators, pointed us down a random hall of bones, and took off down the stairs.
“*Great, I didn’t get a name--*” Harriet began to think, before Ruth spoke again: “I see you didn’t get a name tag. I introduced *myself*, what’s your name?”
Harriet, unused to this kind of attention, shyly replied, “Harriet. It’s nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you too, Harriet! I’m sorry Jay called you out like that. Majorly uncool. Want to start by walking down the Hall of the Ornithischian Dinosaurs? We can loop around and end near the special exhibit gallery and the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs!” Ruth gushed out in one breath.
“So, you’ve been before I take it?” Harriet asked, as they began to walk in the proposed direction, wading through the hordes of small children, with a few of their cohort slightly behind them.
“Yeah, a few times. I came to visit before applying. Didn’t you?”
“No, I couldn’t. I came from Oregon, so the trip was a bit much.”
“Oh wow! Neat! Well I can be your tour guide” Ruth smiled enthusiastically, and began to give Harriet a rundown of the structure of the museum. “One time at a visit, my parents came down from Boston and we spent the whole day in here! One and a half hours is so not enough.”
Harriet was too busy looking at the facsimiles of ancient creatures, and listening to the curators on the video displays to really take in what Ruth was saying. When there was a lull in the conversation, she realized that Ruth had asked her a question.
“I’m sorry, what was that? It’s so noisy in here!” Harriet explained, hoping that Ruth wouldn’t question her that much on the previous chatter.
“Of course! So many kids. There must be a field trip. Do you want to see if we can go inside the library?” Ruth inquired, looking hopeful.
“Yeah, sure.” Harriet mumbled. The museum is overwhelming. She hoped the infestation of small children was a temporary deal, but she had a lurking feeling that she’d be fighting her way to the office every day through crowds of tiny, mid-sized, and full-grown humans.
Harriet A. Allen and Ruth M. Jillian pressed their faces up against the glass of the Library’s doors, and ended up surrounded by books, busts of old men, and paintings of animals.
Cursing their lack of Museum-official badges, the two young women were desperately looking around the library, or at least what was in range of the view while having a face mashed up against glass doors. That is, until the librarian at the reference desk glanced up, jumped nearly out of her skin upon noticing them, and got up to open the doors.
“We always get a few eager students here around this time of day,” the librarian laughed, “We’re closed to the public now, but it’s been a slow work day for me, so you both can come on in. I’m June, a reference librarian here. Would you like a small tour of the reading room, or just a look around?“
Ruth immediately exclaimed, “A tour please! I’m Ruth, and this is Harriet. We’re in the new cohort of PhD candidates in the comparative biology program. Today is our very first day! We’re on the self-guided tour portion of our schedule, and thought we might check out the library.”
Ruth gushed this out right as Harriet was about to tell the librarian they didn’t want to disturb her or her work, especially since they knew the library was closed. Harriet sighed but didn’t contradict her (hopefully) new friend and followed the librarian to the edge of the rows of bookcases in the reading room.
“I’ll give you two a little preview of the official tour we do for new students here then! The library here was founded in 1869, right at the same time the Museum itself was founded. Since then, the AMNH research library has grown into one of the largest natural history libraries in the word! The library collects everything from field journals to publications, to the sweaters that our researchers wore on the first ever expedition to Mongolia. We have a team of conservationists that have been keeping that particular item safe for half a century. We work to support the work of the Museum’s scientific staff, which is now you! We have a few collections you can leverage at your time here: our research collection, our special collections, and our digital collections. You students will have the chance to come in here and work with our materials at some point in your coursework! And if you ever need anything we *don’t* have, you can just ask me. I’m in charge of interlibrary loan.” June explained with a wink, walking Harriet and Ruth in between the stacks, “What is your focus?”
“I’m here because I really want to do mammology, focusing on canidae. That’s like foxes, wolves, canines like that! I just think they are so fascinating. And so cute, of course!” Ruth exclaimed.
“*Why does this not surprise me...*” Harriet grouched, while simply replying, “Ornithology by trade, but I’m really more interested in the side of conservation ecology.”
“Oh great! You’ll find the program here really interesting for both those fields, especially given the personalities of the folks in them. You’ll find lots of hippies in conservation, and a lot of dry wits in mammology. That department has its own beautiful archive of field journals dating back to the very first expeditions by Museum scientists. The folks at the Center for Biodiversity Conservation take a really technologically mixed approach to data gathering, which is really cool to follow.”
“Wow! Do you think I’ll get to see them?” Ruth asked, eyes wide.
“Hippies? Seriously?” Harriet asked in disbelief. “I thought I left those behind on the West coast. I even have yet to see a Whole Foods in NYC.”
“Well, the curators have keys, so you’ll probably just have to ask your advisor. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in those journals – about how the landscape has changed, and how mammals change with it. Very cool to do a comparison study with that data. And oh yeah, Harriet. It’s not just the tourists rocking the socks-with-sandals look around the Museum. Go down to 79th street and you’ll find a Whole Foods waiting for you.” June joked.
I gave her a chuckle, but then Ruth laughed.
But this laugh wasn’t your average cute-girl politely low-volumed chuckle, like you’d expect from someone with her perky, light-haired, excitable demeanor. This was a full-on snort, grunt, deep-bellied laugh that you’d expect out of a middle aged man with sleep apnea. She went on for a full thirty seconds of this before composing herself.
June and Harriet gave each other incredulous looks, and Harriet burst out laughing with her own “normal” but loud laugh, gasping air and putting her hand over her mouth to reduce noise pollution in the library. By now, Ruth was extremely confused, watching Harriet guffaw and smiling widely.
“It wasn’t *that* funny, Harriet. No offense, June!!”
“I’m sorry, something just tickled me” Harriet grinned, looking at June with knowing eyes.
“But in all seriousness,” June started again “There are some seriously amazing people here. And we all work together.“
“I know, I’ve been following their publications and field studies since applying for the program, “ Harriet replied.
“I am just so excited to meet my advisor and get into the meat-and-potatoes of natural history work. I want to go out in the field and see some cute canids up close for myself!” Ruth proclaimed.
“Well you know, our field expeditions are carefully thought out. Don’t go into this thinking you’ll get to pet these wild animals. I’ve heard of people getting into dangerous situations with carnivores in the past.“ June warned.
“Oh, I know, I’ve been in the field before. Growing up the suburbs I used to pet the wild foxes all the time, but my advisors beat that out of me. I can’t help it! I love their fluff!” Ruth declare with the excitement of a five-year-old being able to pet a stranger’s puppy on the street.
“This is why I stick to mostly birds, or maybe some small mammals,” Harriet interjected, “No real threat of harm, unless you deal with cassowaries. Hell no thank you. Those demons are pretty much dinosaurs, and look like them too!“
“So, what made you girls come to New York City? Did you live here before and want to stay, or come from out of town? “ June asked, innocently.
Ruth, as always, answered first. “I’m from Boston so not that far away. I visited the city a bunch when I was in high school and college, and decided I wanted to do *some* coursework here eventually. I just happened to get good scholarships for being an in-state resident in Massachusetts, so I ended up making the goal a PhD in New York City.“
Just as the two women turned to hear Harriet’s answer, she abruptly changed the subject, instead asking “So June, how long have you worked here?”
“Oh, about ten years now. I started off on soft money from grants and was just recently promoted! I’m now 100% officially on the AMNH payroll.” June proudly gushed.
While Ruth and June continued to chatter happily, Harriet’s mind wandered off, and with it her eyes. Scanning the stacks for an interesting book to check out once her badge had been issued, she zeroed in a book, whose title was too far away to see. Almost as if possessed, Harriet briskly walked over to the stack and stared into the spine. “*The story of the land by Harry Stevenson and Farida Springer. Wow, 1951. This is pretty cool*”
The heart pangs were back, with the vengeance of 1,000 scorned enemies. Harriet turned quickly around so the other two women across the aisle couldn’t see her stagger and clutch her chest. Her ears started pounding. “*What the frack is happening to me?!*” she frantically thought, looking around for any sign of the source of her shakiness, and bracing on the conveniently waist-height bookcase. Her eyes bore into the book. Trying to collect herself, she closed her eyes and stood for a moment in silence, willing her body to settle itself down. And suddenly, despite her vertigo, she reached her hand out for the volume, as if holding it would make her feel better, even if it was just a moment.
“Oh, honey, be careful! That’s a first edition.” A voice reached out to her, grasping her and pulling her out of her disequilibrium.
Harriet snapped to attention. “Oh I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize. It just looked to interesting” She recovered, putting on her most sugary smile for the librarian.
Ruth shot her that same knowing, compassionate look from this morning's ordeal. “We should probably go, Harriet! We only have an hour and a half.” She looks at June, “Thank you so much for showing us the stacks. We’d love to come back and see the special collections! I hope it’s on our official tour.“
June smiled kindly, “Yes, I believe it is. Feel free to make an appointment with me if you have specific questions.”
After a round of “thank you” from both women, Ruth turned up the aisle towards the exit. As Harriet started to follow her, June gently touched her left shoulder.
“If you have *any* specific questions, please, come back.“ She whispered to Harriet with some urgency.
“Ok...thanks.” Harriet confusedly murmured back. “*What was that about? I hope she didn’t notice my weirdness. It’s nothing. Maybe there’s a gas leak in this museum. Why does this always happen to me.*” Harriet hurried up the aisle to meet Ruth at the doors.
“Sorry! I just had a quick question for her.” Harriet apologized, smiling in the hope she didn’t weird out *yet another* person of her small cohort of colleagues.
“No problem! It’s so cool, huh? So interesting to see the history of work we will be building on, hopefully!” Ruth gushed, leading Harriet back down to the elevators, hitting the down arrow.
