Today I learned that Jeremiah makes more money than me. He asks me if I can move my not-yet-sorted-because-my-volunteer-didn't-show-up-today canned goods off of the food pantry floor and into the hallway so he can mop tonight after we've all gone home to our family dinner time. He grew up in a small town whose name I can't remember now, but begins with an 'L', near a bigger town whose name begins with an 'A' in North-Central Iowa. There were 21 kids in his graduating high-school
class, he tells me. He wasn't real smart, he says, so he's glad he didn't grow up in a large school system like Ames. But, he's worth more than $8 an hour so he quit his job at the hotel for his current gig with Story County Maintenance. I don't know how I came to know these things about Jeremiah since I only remember asking him how he was as he breezed by my office door, but I start to really wonder why after four years of higher education and a B.S. I'm only making $8.37/hr.

The answer seems simple, I guess. It's because of my chosen field, it's because of budget cuts, it's because it was supposed to be temporary until my partner finished his M.S. But I could be someone else with this job. If I were a single mom with just one child, this wage would put me at 145% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines and I would qualify for the very services
I'm adminstrating. That seems a little twisted... But since I'm an over-educated single woman living in sin with her parter and children are a long thought away, I can't really complain. Stephanie up in Hamilton County can though.