At some point midway through the year I think I forgot about my blog, although on the other hand I don't think that my writing can really capture what my life has been like for the past ten months. I recently put together a video for our end of the year debrief, which I think captures the dynamics of Blue 3 pretty well and expresses how I feel about this team better than I could by writing. So, here I present us, condensed into just over 14 minutes:
http://www.vimeo.com/13718046
Today is my last day on campus, I'll be flying home tomorrow morning at 6AM, arriving at about 5PM Eastern time. It's been sad watching everyone leave campus a few at a time, and I'm continually contemplating how I'm going to deal with the sudden lack of such a large community when I head home. I think it's gonna be a difficult transition, I fell in love with the people we've worked with and the team that's become like a second family to me. This year has been great for me, and I know I'll hold onto the connections made and lessons learned for life. Thanks to everyone who made this what it was.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Beginning of Round 2
Yesterday Blue 3 arrived in Green River, Utah after a day and a half of travel. Upon arrival in town a few cars driven by the people at Positive Action Community Team(PACT) surrounded our van and escorted us to the Boys and Girls Club while waving American flags out their windows. It was quite the welcome, and I feel like our presence is much more significant in this community than it was in Los Angeles. We met with the people working here (including several Americorps VISTA members and a former NCCC Corps Member from the Sacramento campus) and were told it was about time to pick up the kids from school. We walked a handful of elementary school students from their school to the Boys and Girls club and played with them until five, when Karate lessons started. At that point we were fed dinner and then sent over to a community hall meeting. It was really interesting to see the local politics in effect and to see the mayor and the council dealing entirely with tangible issues, rather than the vague promises and ideologies that seem to be more prevalent in larger governing bodies. After the town hall meeting we were finally given access to our housing, which is a really small two bedroom apartment, roughly the size of the apartment I had to myself back at RIT. Once we set up the place I crashed pretty much instantly.
Today, after our usual 6A.M. PT, we started a full day of work, which entailed us working at the Baxter Building, a run down building that they're trying to renovate into another office. I spent the majority of the day shoveling discarded parts of a layered tar roof that they'd recently pulled off into a dumpster. I was frequently up past my ankles in mud and was really grateful for all my personal protective equipment, as I got hit in the face with wood and found a roofing tack in my shoe while working. The wood was actually my fault, I threw a plank into the wood pile in such a way that it hit another one, causing it to come flying back at me. I don't think I've ever met such a vengeful pile of sticks before. After lunch half of the team left to work at the Boys and Girls club, but I stayed at the Baxter building to do more physical labor. After work we made dinner, finished setting up the apartment, and I'm currently writing this from inside the Boys and Girls club (we have unlimited access to this space too).
My first impression of the town is that it's a struggling, very tiny community. I think they don't really have the population to sustain a lot of business, so as a result a significant part of the community is unemployed. This further adds to the problem, because the town looks rather run down due to all the empty buildings, which probably further repels potential businesses. They do get by on what they have, which is commendable, but I definitely see why we're here. I feel like any work we put into this town will benefit everyone, which is very different from our first project. The town subsists primarily on agriculture and tourism, so they're subject to a lot of external factors as well.
Other random thoughts about our living: It's currently extremely muddy all through town; I doubt I'll be wearing my normal sneakers anywhere while I'm here. Food is really expensive here, so we'll have to be extra careful with our budget (we accidentally went way over today while grocery shopping). Having access to the Boys and Girls club is wonderful, because it gives us space to go away from the rest of the team in that very small apartment. The stars at night are amazing; I haven't seen them this clearly since I was in Maine. It isn't nearly as cold here as I thought it'd be, it feels pretty much just like being back home (not that home isn't cold, I was just preparing for worse). The people we're working with are awesome, they all seem really knowledgeable, funny, and mellow. I'm not ready to say that I'll like being here quite yet, but for now it seems livable and like our work will be appreciated, so I think it'll be rewarding in the end.
Today, after our usual 6A.M. PT, we started a full day of work, which entailed us working at the Baxter Building, a run down building that they're trying to renovate into another office. I spent the majority of the day shoveling discarded parts of a layered tar roof that they'd recently pulled off into a dumpster. I was frequently up past my ankles in mud and was really grateful for all my personal protective equipment, as I got hit in the face with wood and found a roofing tack in my shoe while working. The wood was actually my fault, I threw a plank into the wood pile in such a way that it hit another one, causing it to come flying back at me. I don't think I've ever met such a vengeful pile of sticks before. After lunch half of the team left to work at the Boys and Girls club, but I stayed at the Baxter building to do more physical labor. After work we made dinner, finished setting up the apartment, and I'm currently writing this from inside the Boys and Girls club (we have unlimited access to this space too).
My first impression of the town is that it's a struggling, very tiny community. I think they don't really have the population to sustain a lot of business, so as a result a significant part of the community is unemployed. This further adds to the problem, because the town looks rather run down due to all the empty buildings, which probably further repels potential businesses. They do get by on what they have, which is commendable, but I definitely see why we're here. I feel like any work we put into this town will benefit everyone, which is very different from our first project. The town subsists primarily on agriculture and tourism, so they're subject to a lot of external factors as well.
Other random thoughts about our living: It's currently extremely muddy all through town; I doubt I'll be wearing my normal sneakers anywhere while I'm here. Food is really expensive here, so we'll have to be extra careful with our budget (we accidentally went way over today while grocery shopping). Having access to the Boys and Girls club is wonderful, because it gives us space to go away from the rest of the team in that very small apartment. The stars at night are amazing; I haven't seen them this clearly since I was in Maine. It isn't nearly as cold here as I thought it'd be, it feels pretty much just like being back home (not that home isn't cold, I was just preparing for worse). The people we're working with are awesome, they all seem really knowledgeable, funny, and mellow. I'm not ready to say that I'll like being here quite yet, but for now it seems livable and like our work will be appreciated, so I think it'll be rewarding in the end.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Transition
I'm currently sitting in a hotel room with Steve, Mike, and Scott, somewhere in the border between Nevada and Utah. Regulation keeps us from driving more than ten hours or 550 miles a day, otherwise I'm sure we'd be in Green River by now. I'm really excited to get there and see what the community is like, and it'll be nice to start working again.
The past week we'd been on base for transition, preparing our debriefing for our last project and briefing for this project, along with miscellaneous meetings and projects. It was really weird to be back on base around all the other Blue and Green unit teams (all of Gold and most of Silver are still somewhere in the Gulf Coast). I frequently still hung out with Blue 3, but also had ample opportunity to wander off and reconnect with people that I hadn't seen since training, which was nice. In some ways it made me really appreciate my team, but I've also been wondering what life would be like if even one of us was replaced by someone else. It's interesting to think that replacing even one of us would completely change our team dynamics. While back at base we spent one day working for the Sacramento food bank (I don't remember the exact name), and sorted over 2400 apples and oranges, not including the bin full of rotten ones we had to throw out. Aside from that we didn't do much aside from meetings while on base.
However, I did get a really exciting offer for life after Americorps. I've been in contact with researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory about collaborating on prosthetics research once I get into grad school. They mentioned that they're planning some very exciting research soon, and that they'd like to have an engineering at University of Rochester working with the lab that generates most of their primate data. Based on that, I'm probably going to discount Purdue and UPitt from my list of schools, since they were ranked equally with U of R before and U of R has a pretty much guaranteed research opportunity waiting for me. I'm going to visit them the end of this month, and I'll be able to say more about the position after I get a chance to talk with the researchers there.
In retrospect, I do really miss working in Los Angeles, even though I wasn't a huge fan of the city. I really grew fond of the students I worked with there, and even though I know that another team is going to be replacing us at Dorsey I still worry about how they're doing without us there. I'm not sure how I feel about meeting a whole new group of kids in Green River, knowing that I'm going to be leaving them in two months as well. However, this group should be about a polar opposite of who we were working with before, so it should still be interesting. Also, it sounds like our site coordinator is very big on using individual talents, so I might be able to put some of my more practical engineering skills to use. Green River is apparently best known for its melon crops, so I'm thinking I'd like to try and obtain the supplies to teach the kids how to assemble a melon launching catapult. Model rockets and egg protecting devices might be fun activities too. Mike keeps making jokes about how bad of an idea all this stuff is, but hey, engineering should be fun, shouldn't it? I can't wait to see what it's like out there.
As a final note, the snow and cold, crisp, clean air are very refreshing out here. I was starting to miss having real seasons.
The past week we'd been on base for transition, preparing our debriefing for our last project and briefing for this project, along with miscellaneous meetings and projects. It was really weird to be back on base around all the other Blue and Green unit teams (all of Gold and most of Silver are still somewhere in the Gulf Coast). I frequently still hung out with Blue 3, but also had ample opportunity to wander off and reconnect with people that I hadn't seen since training, which was nice. In some ways it made me really appreciate my team, but I've also been wondering what life would be like if even one of us was replaced by someone else. It's interesting to think that replacing even one of us would completely change our team dynamics. While back at base we spent one day working for the Sacramento food bank (I don't remember the exact name), and sorted over 2400 apples and oranges, not including the bin full of rotten ones we had to throw out. Aside from that we didn't do much aside from meetings while on base.
However, I did get a really exciting offer for life after Americorps. I've been in contact with researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory about collaborating on prosthetics research once I get into grad school. They mentioned that they're planning some very exciting research soon, and that they'd like to have an engineering at University of Rochester working with the lab that generates most of their primate data. Based on that, I'm probably going to discount Purdue and UPitt from my list of schools, since they were ranked equally with U of R before and U of R has a pretty much guaranteed research opportunity waiting for me. I'm going to visit them the end of this month, and I'll be able to say more about the position after I get a chance to talk with the researchers there.
In retrospect, I do really miss working in Los Angeles, even though I wasn't a huge fan of the city. I really grew fond of the students I worked with there, and even though I know that another team is going to be replacing us at Dorsey I still worry about how they're doing without us there. I'm not sure how I feel about meeting a whole new group of kids in Green River, knowing that I'm going to be leaving them in two months as well. However, this group should be about a polar opposite of who we were working with before, so it should still be interesting. Also, it sounds like our site coordinator is very big on using individual talents, so I might be able to put some of my more practical engineering skills to use. Green River is apparently best known for its melon crops, so I'm thinking I'd like to try and obtain the supplies to teach the kids how to assemble a melon launching catapult. Model rockets and egg protecting devices might be fun activities too. Mike keeps making jokes about how bad of an idea all this stuff is, but hey, engineering should be fun, shouldn't it? I can't wait to see what it's like out there.
As a final note, the snow and cold, crisp, clean air are very refreshing out here. I was starting to miss having real seasons.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Reflections on Round One
Tomorrow starts the last week of our project in Los Angeles. Being here and working with the students at Dorsey has been both gratifying and frustrating. I've really enjoyed attempting to understand the student perspective on Mathematics and helping them piece together the fragments of concepts they don't understand. They're generally receptive to my teaching style and I've learned to catch myself when my explanations get overly complex, which is a skill I've probably needed for a while. This project made me realize that so many of the concepts I consider trivial or intuitive are actually constructs created from the combination of many other ideas, and if someone isn't comfortable with all of the building blocks then comprehension will be difficult at best. I've occasionally had to resort to telling the students that the rules in Math are arbitrary and just need to be memorized, but I try to point out the underlying framework whenever possible in the hopes that they'll be able to generalize the material and develop a solid understanding of the root concepts and how they interact. I think my favorite day so far has been when Mrs. Gay gave the students a bunch of triangles and squares to play with and told them to spend their class time trying to prove the Pythagorean theorem. It was really interesting to see them try to play with the ideas they already knew and use them to solve a new class of problem. Speaking of, Mrs. Gay has tried to convince me that I should consider a career teaching high school math and said that she'll miss having my support in her class.
I'm pretty sure I couldn't teach at a high school level though. I feel like I spend a significant amount of time silently fuming at the students that sleep through entire classes, copy off one another, or just flat out refuse to do anything. From my current perspective, I find it almost impossible to comprehend the continual laziness and lack of work ethic so many students demonstrate. I have to continually remind myself that they're all still really young and have a lot of growing up to do, but it's hard to not take offence when the assistance I'm trying to provide is rejected. It's also difficult to repress some of the resentment that comes with feeling like I'm just wasting my time but I know that these kids wouldn't respond well to my typical abrasiveness, so I have to force a positive attitude toward them, regardless of what's going on.
I also find the after school portion of the program rather frustrating. Our site supervisor was initially very unclear about the expectations of the program, so for our first few weeks we just hung out with the kids and had a good time talking and playing games. Something shifted about halfway through the project though, and suddenly we were expected to come up with organized teambuilding and enrichment activities, get them to do educational worksheets, and strictly enforce the rules about not coming and going as they please. As a result, it felt like we had to radically overhaul the culture of the program in a way that most of the students resented. We saw a significant drop in attendance the first few weeks we started doing it, although the increased organization seems to have benefited the students who needed the time after school to do homework. I think attendance seems to be coming back again, but it's still a struggle to get the kids to comply with the program expectations. It also doesn't help that our site supervisor seems more concerned with grants and the quantity of students we work with rather than ensuring that we have a really solid program. There was a day last week when she knew we had someone from an outside organization coming to oversee the program, so she had us talk to students during lunch to ensure they were coming, ordered pizza for everyone, and had them sculpting clay after school, which is a far cry from our usual day. I thought it was wrong of us to try so much harder the one day someone was watching, but it really wasn't worth the effort to point it out.
With both our job and within the team I've feel a bit of a conflict between acting as the person I want to be and the person I actually am. There are days where I'm absolutely determined to like everyone and do as much work as I can regardless of anyone else, but there are also days where I resent everyone else for being lazy or inconsiderate and wish I could lash out and let them have it. I want to be able to be happy and work hard all the time, but that mentality is still rather tiring and isn't something I can maintain indefinitely yet. As a result, I feel myself frequently bouncing up and down between moods, occasionally several times in a week. It also doesn't help that I often feel very alone in my interests, particularly things along the line of my reseach and education. I guess I got very complacent with the community I had back at RIT and forgot that they were far from typical. I do genuinely like everyone on this team, but for the most part they probably aren't the people I'd choose to surround myself with outside of the Ameribubble we live in. I've decided that I'm going to be happy and like everyone unconditonally, which really helps me interact with them on a daily basis. My relationships with everyone on the team are pretty positive. In particular, I feel like Steve and I have a very similar perspective on work ethic and competence and the same twisted sense of humor, Cassie and I don't really have any boundaries between us and can talk about almost anything, and Megan and I like to tease and mess with each other like she was my little sister. Despite my frequent frustration, which is something I'm working to control, I'm happy here as one tenth of Blue 3.
I'm pretty sure I couldn't teach at a high school level though. I feel like I spend a significant amount of time silently fuming at the students that sleep through entire classes, copy off one another, or just flat out refuse to do anything. From my current perspective, I find it almost impossible to comprehend the continual laziness and lack of work ethic so many students demonstrate. I have to continually remind myself that they're all still really young and have a lot of growing up to do, but it's hard to not take offence when the assistance I'm trying to provide is rejected. It's also difficult to repress some of the resentment that comes with feeling like I'm just wasting my time but I know that these kids wouldn't respond well to my typical abrasiveness, so I have to force a positive attitude toward them, regardless of what's going on.
I also find the after school portion of the program rather frustrating. Our site supervisor was initially very unclear about the expectations of the program, so for our first few weeks we just hung out with the kids and had a good time talking and playing games. Something shifted about halfway through the project though, and suddenly we were expected to come up with organized teambuilding and enrichment activities, get them to do educational worksheets, and strictly enforce the rules about not coming and going as they please. As a result, it felt like we had to radically overhaul the culture of the program in a way that most of the students resented. We saw a significant drop in attendance the first few weeks we started doing it, although the increased organization seems to have benefited the students who needed the time after school to do homework. I think attendance seems to be coming back again, but it's still a struggle to get the kids to comply with the program expectations. It also doesn't help that our site supervisor seems more concerned with grants and the quantity of students we work with rather than ensuring that we have a really solid program. There was a day last week when she knew we had someone from an outside organization coming to oversee the program, so she had us talk to students during lunch to ensure they were coming, ordered pizza for everyone, and had them sculpting clay after school, which is a far cry from our usual day. I thought it was wrong of us to try so much harder the one day someone was watching, but it really wasn't worth the effort to point it out.
With both our job and within the team I've feel a bit of a conflict between acting as the person I want to be and the person I actually am. There are days where I'm absolutely determined to like everyone and do as much work as I can regardless of anyone else, but there are also days where I resent everyone else for being lazy or inconsiderate and wish I could lash out and let them have it. I want to be able to be happy and work hard all the time, but that mentality is still rather tiring and isn't something I can maintain indefinitely yet. As a result, I feel myself frequently bouncing up and down between moods, occasionally several times in a week. It also doesn't help that I often feel very alone in my interests, particularly things along the line of my reseach and education. I guess I got very complacent with the community I had back at RIT and forgot that they were far from typical. I do genuinely like everyone on this team, but for the most part they probably aren't the people I'd choose to surround myself with outside of the Ameribubble we live in. I've decided that I'm going to be happy and like everyone unconditonally, which really helps me interact with them on a daily basis. My relationships with everyone on the team are pretty positive. In particular, I feel like Steve and I have a very similar perspective on work ethic and competence and the same twisted sense of humor, Cassie and I don't really have any boundaries between us and can talk about almost anything, and Megan and I like to tease and mess with each other like she was my little sister. Despite my frequent frustration, which is something I'm working to control, I'm happy here as one tenth of Blue 3.
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