If I blog, maybe I'll jinx the thing...

But I think the weather around here's starting to improve. (57 as I write this. Not supposed to dip below the high 40s the rest of the week. Yes, I know that the San Franciscan Fellows are reading this and laughing.)

So, too, the state of Illinois' legislative approach to education appears to be improving. (Warning: gratuitous plug.) It's an interesting reminder of what my organization prides itself on: delivering top-down, policy-focused, systemic solutions to problems.

I think an analysis of fellowship placements would be neat, breaking down the different varieties of partnership organizations. Direct service & programs. Advocacy. Legislative change. Work with the law. Teaching, tutoring, counseling. The way it is now, all these things are lumped together under the broad moniker of "public service". Which makes sense to a great extent, and certainly builds a multifaceted program, but it would be rewarding to dig deeper, see what exactly people are doing while Fellows, and what they are moving on to after their fellowship year concludes. Seems easy to work up using existing data and surveys. Maybe these documents exist, and I just have not read them yet...

Alice in April

The end is nigh, but the winter is over. It seems like during the winter people hibernate, resurfacing only with the first rays of that timid sun. A couple of weeks ago, I volunteered at a CARES event beautifying a park in Queens. Needless to say, the day was cold, too chilly for a day of picking up trash in a relatively clean park. It was nice though to see other alumni, from consultants to bankers (no surprise there), getting involved to get their monthly dose of community service. I met a couple of younglings just like myself who are exploring the city in hopes of finding some sense of direction. These past couple of weeks, I have come to accept the uncertainty of each particular path, each one of which we have to complete in our minds. There are so many corners in the city just like there are so many possibilities, each one obscured after so many calculated steps in our minds.

It is not hard to imagine that this draws me to another metaphor, the one of life being like a chess board. I know it sounds extremely nerdy, but I have been playing it a lot with my girlfriend. It is a healthy, competitive past time that we use to talk about our days while keeping our minds and love life active. Sound corny. You bet, but it is interesting the way in the game you have to envision the moves not only you will make but also the ones your opponent will make. Although I admit that in life there are no real opponents except idleness and pessimism, one does have to envision at least minimally the way each move will play out, taking into account a certain degree of uncertainty and surprise. It is strange to think of it in these terms but perhaps Lewis Carol’s imagination in Through the Looking Glass was not too far off.

At this point in the fellowship, I have created options, a different set of possible moves, and it is a matter of which I think will get me to a given goal. That goal of course is subject to change, unlike the game, but it is important to stay true to it when you have an interest. It is too easy to fall into the trap of doing what every other Princetonian does because let’s face it who doesn’t want to make money? Saving the world is fun while we are ‘kids’ in college, but after one has to think about food, the bills, the future. Perhaps, I have always been an oddball, an outsider even to the Princeton world, something that makes it easier to define my own space, albeit one not entirely free from the pressures of family and peers.

So here I find myself, like Alice, a little older than when I started and tumbled down the rabbit hole, only now staring at a board full of different possible moves, reminding myself that at this point in the game, no decision is too egregious. I have grown wiser; this much is true, but I have also learned to revel in the endless towers that remind me of ivory pieces, bastions representing your options and what you want to avoid. This discourse, if it can be called that, seems hackneyed enough so I will end here on a positive note. Undoubtedly it is what happens as your draw closer to your goal that makes the journey, not that end, which as Eliot once put it might not be what you imagined it to be. Oh that I shall find that Ithaca is without question but that it, just like I, will be changed is the only certainty I can accurately calculate.

P.S. I have been writing short stories now in the city in hopes of building up to a novel. Creative life persists after Princeton.

April Update

We AlumniCorps Fellows in D.C. had quite a PAC-centered day yesterday.  We began the day with our April seminar about the healthcare bill.  It was awesome!  Anu, one of the other Fellows, planned the seminar and we all met at the Dept. of Health and Human Services, only after a few minor detours.  We normally meet at the Watergate in Foggy Bottom so the change of venue was a little bit of a challenge for a few of us...ahem.  Thankfully my coworkers (Cam & Leif) were kind enough to wait for me at the metro or I'd probably still be walking around looking for this place.  A few other PACers weren't so lucky...


Anyway we had a great panel of 4 people, 2 of whom were Princeton grads, who all worked either in DHHS or in some organization somehow related to the bill.  Because of their exposure to the bill in all its grandeur, they were just a wealth of information for those of us who know very little about it.  They gave us a wonderful hour-long overview of the bill and I definitely learned more from them than I could have picked up from trying to read about it. 


After a morning with the fellows, a bunch of us gathered last night to celebrate two of our fellow Fellows' birthdays, Aditi & Liz.  If you think about it, we basically started and ended our day with each other. 


It's been so fun to get to know the other PACers this year and hear about all the cool jobs they're doing.  Can't believe my fellowship is already ending in just a month and a half!  I'll definitely miss being part of the program, but I'm so excited for next years' Fellows to start their own adventures. 

Lights, Camera, Action!

Happy Spring, p55! It's been a busy and exciting last few weeks for me! Some of my recent projects at work have been coming to fruition after weeks of planning. For example, one of my co-workers and I just produced the first three in a series of "testimonial" videos. We interviewed a number of Foundation Center users who have benefited from our trainings, library, online resources, special events, and staff expertise.

I went from having zero video experience to comforably filming, editing, adjusting lighting and audio, adding in background music, etc, etc, etc. You can see the first videos on the Foundation Center's YouTube channel ( http://www.youtube.com/user/TheFoundationCenter) or on our facebook page (facebook.com/fcnewyork).

Another exciting update is that I had a great race at the NYC 1/2 Marathon last month, and I qualified for the Olympic trials! Now I get to race in Houston, TX next January against all of the best marathoners in the country to compete for a spot in the Olympic games. I have basically NO shot of making the actual Olympic team, but just making it to the trials was a big goal of mine, and I'm thrilled to have achieved it.

Also, anyone who's feeling nostalgic for spring blossoms and lawnparties should check out this website: http://countdowntoreunions.com/

I'm definitely counting down!

LSATs

Next week I start my LSAT test prep sessions. It will be interesting to see how I will integrate this into my life. The classes are roughly 3.5 hours long, and twice a week. Everyone has told me that they are definitely worth it, so I am bracing myself. The year is flying by, and it's crazy to think that my school year is almost over. I feel I am only just beginning to scratch the surface with these children, and if I don't stay on next year, it will be very difficult to see them go.

I got my LSAT book shipment the other day, and went online to complete my course introduction. It seems like a lot of work, but I'm excited to feel like a student again. The question that still remains is - will I ever feel like a lawyer? Stay tuned...

My Life Away From the Office

It’s been a while since I have posted a blog. So here is just a quick rundown of how March went down:

Week 1: I spent it in South Texas visiting my family for my cousin’s 15th birthday party. Where I come from, these parties are huge and usually start off with an over the top dance sequence. The celebrated honoree is the center of attention while her teenage friends dance around her in lockstep. For one reason or another, I assumed the role of choreographer at the very last minute. My aunt said, “Jessica, you have to do it, they are all out of synch.” I agreed to do it and found the task to be quite easy. I smiled to myself after realizing that my job has made me very good at directing a large group of teenagers without coming off as overbearing or dictatorial.

Week 2: I spent it off-site working a retreat for high school Prep for Prep students called Aspects of Leadership. The Aspects curriculum is designed to make students critically analyze the different aspects of leadership by reading historical documents and participating in various case studies. It was great to see students explore the same curriculum that I many moons ago also studied when I participated in another program also started up by Prep’s founder.

Week 3: I spent it up and down the East Coast visiting colleges with the Prep for Prep high school juniors. I was on a bus with another counselor and 25 other students as we made pit stops at UPenn, Harvard, Georgetown, and Swarthmore. We braced the elements, dealt with tight parking situations, and saw cheesy movies on the bus. Yet, it was a great experience to see the students become increasingly excited about their college prospects.

Week 4: I spent it chaperoning an Aspects retreat again. It was nice to be back in the city and to have the chance to interact with high school students as opposed to middle school students.

As this timeline illustrates, March was just a crazy month. I am excited to finally be in the office and to have the opportunity to meet with my assigned students, some of which I have not seen since the beginning of February. When they ask me, “Where have you been the last couple of weeks?,” I just give them a quick rundown of my life away from the office.

Must blog!

Haven't blogged here since January, I think! Things got crazy.

At the end of February was the Beyond School Hours conference in Atlanta, which Foundations, Inc. organizes. It was attended by about 1 million people (no, but over A THOUSAND) and was a huge gig. The conference, as you might imagine, spotlights what's going on with education beyond the school day, including after-school and summer programs as well as time at home, but also focuses on how both in-school and out-of-school time can be aligned for the best educational benefit.

A huge conference strand this year was grade level reading, and the part of the conference that I helped organize overlapped with the workshops, presentations, and panels about GLR. I designed a bunch of buttons for everyone to wear, and despite my long hair often concealing the button I pinned to my jacket, people did ask me. I think my response was, "Before grade three, students are learning to read, and after, they're reading to learn. If they can't read by 3rd grade, they're at risk for falling behind forever." And that's not even much of a hyperbole.

The conference went well, the evaluations were mostly positive, and now I'm gearing up for a convening of folks from our different Making Connections sites in Providence, RI in May. The Making Connections initiative is finished this year in June, and because of universal budget cuts and personnel shifts at schools and districts, we'll be talking a lot about what may be a nebulous immediate future for a lot of folks. How can we sustain progress in getting kids to read on grade level in the midst of such change?

One thing we're developing is an "eLearning" site to keep connected virtually, and to provide helpful resources and assistance even beyond the end of Making Connections. One of the many beautiful things about the internet.

A Funny Thing Happened at the Manhattan DA

I love my job. It's interesting. it's challenging. The people are great. And, in some small way, I feel like I'm doing my part to help victims of major economic crimes. Never did it cross my mind that I would fall victim to an economic crime (albeit minor in the grand scheme of things). On my way to work a few weeks ago I followed my usual routine: Get up, hop on the train, buy a coffee, hopefully make it to work on time. All went fine. Later that day, at lunch with a friend and fellow P55er, the waiter returned to our table after we'd both offered our credit cards and said to me, "Um, miss, your card is expired." Impossible. I had just had a new debit card sent to me. I asked him to show me the card. Sure enough, expired. Over a year ago. How could this be? He was showing me an expired debit card that I thought I had thrown out ages ago. Moreover, why was the expired card occupying the wallet slot that my new, fully functioning debit card usually lives in? I looked down at my wallet and realized that not only had an expired debit card been placed in my "normal debit card spot," but also my credit card was missing (i.e. the parents' emergencies only card). Not good. Looking up at my puzzled lunch partner, I said, "Jennie, I've been robbed." Given that I had paid for a coffee with my real, non-expired debit card that morning, supersleuth Jennie and I concluded that I had to have been robbed at the office, which is to say at the Major Economic Crimes Bureau of the District Attorney's office. I could appreciate the irony, even as someone was out there joyriding with my card at Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys. After reporting the incident to my bureau chief, it took less than an hour for my cubicle to become a veritable crime scene. There was talk of fingerprinting! Sure enough by the week's end, investigators had found the thief, and luckily I wasn't on the hook for the fraudulent charges. So if there's a takeaway from this story, I guess the right one might be don't leave your bright turquoise wallet in your open bag at your unattended desk. But I think the whole episode gave me yet another reason to love my job. Yes, it's fun, interesting, challenging. But it's also nice to know you have a team of trained investigators behind you when you need them.

Book Ordering

I just finished my 9th month of work at Heads Up! - pretty exciting! In the spring, we do our most major book ordering. This has been FANTASTIC! I got to 1) revisit some of my childhood favorites 2) learn more about childhood development in the process and 3) learn what "kids these days" are reading. On the subway going from site to site, I read some of the books I order (yes, I am currently working my way through the Twlight series) because I love being able to recommend books specifically tailored to a child's interest.

I love discovering what I've missed in the world of children's and "young adult" books over the past seven years. Seven years doesn't seem like all that much time to me, but according to the publishing industry at least, I am now firmly stuck in the "adult" category. Next up after the Twlight series: Gregor the Overlander, The Hunger Games, Rules, The Percy Jackson Series, and Gail Carson Levine's Fairest. I loved Ella Enchanted in middle school so I'm excited to explore Fairest, but I think Rules will be the one to stick with me. It's about a girl who has a younger brother with autism, and the rules she makes to help him navigate a world filled with complex social interaction that he does not always understand. "No toys in the fish tank" and "If the bathroom door is closed, knock," she tells him. I have a cousin with Asperger's syndrome (which is on the autism spectrum), so to me her rules like "Sometimes people laugh when they like you. But sometimes they laugh to hurt you" are especially meaningful.