Tripod: Messages from the Staff

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src="../../../img/nav/www_subdomain/pods.gif" alt="Pod Map" width="170" height="18" border="0" align="top" ismap></a></td> </form> </tr> </table> <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" width="170">  <tr><td></td></tr> <tr><td align="CENTER"> <center> <a href="#"></a> </center> </td></tr> <tr><td align="CENTER"> <center> <a href="#"></a> </center> </td></tr> </table> <center><form name="FreeShop"> <table border="0" width="120" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr valign="TOP"> <td align="center" valign="TOP" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="120"> <a href="/"> </a></td> </tr> <tr valign="TOP"> <td align="center" valign="TOP" nowrap bgcolor="#ffffff" width="120"> <select name="FreeShop" onchange="self.parent.location.href = "http://www.tripod.com/bin/accipiter/tripod_adclick?CID=0000232a0000033200000000&overrideURL=" + this.options[this.selectedIndex].value;"> <option value="">Pick a Category <option value="http://tr2.freeshop.com/pg00013.htm">Computing <option 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value="http://tr2.freeshop.com/pg00025.htm">-& Sports <option value="http://tr2.freeshop.com/pg00029.htm">Completely <option value="http://tr2.freeshop.com/pg00029.htm">-FREE Offers </select></td> </tr> </table> </form> </center> </td> <td valign="TOP" width="100%"> <basefont size="3">   <p> <p> <p> <img src="../../../tripod/letters/img/www_subdomain/letter.top.gif" alt="from tripod..with love.." width="401" height="124" border="0"> <br> <p><blockquote> <b>From DeWitt Clinton, Software Engineer:</b> <p> Hello, all. <p> Working at Tripod has offered me one of the greatest tools for life imaginable -- a chance to test-drive my future. <p> Perhaps I am the embodiment of all that Tripod represents. The transitional entity, dynamic to the point of delusion, I exist in a flux, a fluid range of experiences bounded by the traditional (the elementary to secondary to post-secondary to corporate-career trajectory) and the radical (the sudden displacement of locale and the forfeiture of comfortable predictability). Like so much of Tripod's readership, my life seems to span the gamut from the maternal warmth of knowing-in-advance (the hearth, the next meal, a mother's certain love, the track from womb to grave) to the impenetrable unknown (the doorway, the last meal, the never-certain love of a another, or the grave itself). <p> Just moments ago I was a child. Now I stand at the precipice of adulthood -- nay, I have already leapt. What Tripod has offered me is the free-fall, a chance to renounce my childhood and enter into a partnership with all that is corporate and (dare I say) fatherly. Tripod has hired me away from academia (and my Political Theory Major future, tenure fights not withstanding) and offered me a beta version of The Real World complete with Non-Disclosure Agreements and Stock Options. <p> Lest I regress back too far into the language and rhythms of my histories, and to remind myself (and my self) that my very "I" has changed, I should offer an explanation, in a dialect much more faithful to my Computer Science Major (alter)ego: <p> "Tripod hired me for one year after a summer internship. I was slated to be a senior at Williams College this year, but I decided to accept the position after carefully weighing the impact of postponing the completion of school against the opportunities presented to me at this time. I believe that this is a unique chance to have first-hand experience in a growing and exciting industry, working in close proximity with energetic and intelligent co-workers. The financial incentives were such that it made strong fiscal sense to seriously evaluate Tripod's offer. After the evaluation, I have come to the conclusion that it would be in my best interest to take a year away from Williams College and accept the position Tripod has offered me." <p> Who, then, is Dr. Jekyll? Am I a pretentious liberal-arts-college snob? A post-modernity-slinging, coffee-drinking, Baudrillard-reading, big-word-using scoundrel, suited only for a 6x6 office in the Department of Highfalutin Holier-Than-Thou Thinkers building? Or am I the 30-at-22-year-old, Acura-driving, condominium-living, gin-and-tonic-sipping, Mr. Hyde whose true face has finally been revealed in the green glow of a few measly dollars? <p> The answer, of course, is both and neither. I straddle the worlds between the college and the workplace in a daily schizophrenic whirlwind of crossed paths and inter-relations. Tripod physically exists just seconds from the College. My rock-and-roll band plays on the weekends and my friends are all still in town (and they are happily enjoying the tortures of theses and exams and just being seniors). So, corporate me is not so different from academic me. Or, as my girlfriend has said (and she is really my strongest tie to Williams right now), they are just two halves of the same dog. <p> "Haroot, a whistle blows, and all the sooty men with galvanized lunch pails put down their hammers, raise up their visors, and take communion together -- white bread and lunch meats. The blood of our Lord flows black as coffee at noontime." <p> So when I rush forward and greet the future -- and I am inevitably yanked back by some sort of umbilical bungie-cord -- I should sit and ponder, rather than attempt to sever, what is perhaps the last predictable source of nourishment in my universe. All I have to do is remember how to go back (Hint: it's the button on the top-left on your browser, kid). <p> Love and kisses, <ul> <a href="/">-DeWitt</a>, (11/1/96)</ul> <p> <hr width="330"> <p> Read more "Letters from Tripod" in the <a href="../../../www_subdomain/tripod/letters/archive.html">archive</a>. <p> <hr width="330"> <br> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> </body>