Ahhhh busy busy busy!!

Obama at graduation was amazing and inspiring, though.

I spent the weekend in East Lansing with my best friend, who goes to Michigan State. It only took an hour to get there, and I didn't even leave the state, but I felt like I was in an entirely different world than Ann Arbor. I am, ever since graduating high school, always aware that I live in a happy bubble of culture/education/community/etc, but I never really realize what that means until I go someplace different. The only differences I noticed the last time I visited MSU was that the campus was completely separate from the city, whereas the University of Michigan is very integrated with Ann Arbor. This time, however, I couldn't help but notice so much more: the huge roads, the expanses between all the buildings, the fact that we had to drive to get to anywhere significant... It's something I've been noticing more and more lately, probably because of all the urban planning I've been studying. But the biggest difference I found wasn't physical - it was in the way my friend and I thought.

For some background, my friend, we'll call her S and I, have known each other since 5th grade and been very close friends since high school. We're the kind of friends who call each other out when we disagree with each other, have no problem talking about the most embarrassing of subjects, and are the first to find flaws in each other's boyfriends. What I'm trying to say is, once upon a time, S and I had very similar thought processes. True, our worldviews were skewed towards our respective childhoods (my parents are old hippies, hers grew up in China), but still approached things the same way. This weekend, however, we got into a long discussion (argument?) over the environment, business, healthcare, and community resilience. This was destined to be a heated debate from the beginning, as I'm passionate about sustainability and she's going into marketing, but we were both doing a good job of keeping it civil and trying to understand each other's points of view. I'll spare the details of the actual conversation - it went on for quite a while, but we finished with a discussion of changes that needed to be made in the world (corporate responsibility, eating more local food, more education for everyone, caring about the environment), and how we could accomplish them. The part that struck me most, the main point I'm getting at, is for every initiative I proposed, she would counter with something along the lines of "but that's not how the system works."

This frustrated me, and I think this is how our ways of thinking have changed. Maybe it's just a product of the things we study (me: how to create effective, lasting, positive change, hers: how to effectively manage a product), but I think it has to be something more than that. For every insistence of mine that we need to do something about a problem, I felt that she would point out that the barriers were just too immobile. This bothered me - no matter how much I argued that yes, there are problems with the way our society works, we need to find a way to change society in order to fix them, she would point out that that's just not the way it is.

I'm not quite sure what I should be getting out of this. For one, it was good to get an outsiders perspective, as I'm usually dealing with my classmates, but for another it was discouraging to be so ineffective at getting through to someone that individuals can create processes that can change the world. Why am I trying to change the system while she is trying to beat it?

Part of me (and it's bigger than I want to admit) wants to write this off as evidence of the "Michigan Difference" that they're so often telling us about here at U of M, but I don't have enough evidence to support that. There has got to be some sort of divergence between her experience in the past four years and mine that has created a completely different way of approaching the world. I probably can't figure out what that is, but it's been eating at me for the past few days. If an educated, open minded, intelligent woman doesn't believe that we can make a difference, how can I get through to the rest of the world?

Now that that's off my chest, I have three crazy weeks before I can call myself a college graduate..

Obama is speaking at my graduation!

What a wonderful few weeks!

I have two new jobs! Last week, some members of a project I have been involved in for many, many, years approached me about becoming the project manager/coordinator for a new project in a local park. I am quite overwhelmed by the responsibility, but honored that they thought I was the one for the job - I'm not really sure how to do everything I have to do yet, but everyone seems confident I will figure it out so I'm hoping they're right. Also, I was picked for a job involving sustainability at my school. This one is really vague, as even the coordinators have explained that the first order of business is deciding what we want to do and figuring out how we should go about doing it.

To tell the truth, I'm a little scared about these two jobs - for one, they're going to involve a lot of self-motivation, initiative, working at home, and critical thinking. I know I am certainly capable of all of these things, but I've never had them all combined into one thing that I was actually (as in a real job, not just homework for school) responsible for. All my previous jobs have been a go-to-work-and-mindlessly-do-my-tasks kind of things. (Don't get me wrong though, I love the job I currently have - I have the most wonderful boss in the world and I am a better person for having it). I'm nervous about all of this, but excited because not only do I get to be part of meaningful and important projects now, both of these will look excellent on my resume and hopefully help me out in the future, once these jobs end. Also: not being broke at the end of the semester (as has happened in previous years when my summer job money runs out) is a definite plus!

On top of this, I still have a few weeks of my old job before it's over, I'm taking 12 credits (only three important classes and two minicourses though), and somewhere in there I have to find time to search for a real job once all of this is over.

I'm for sure not complaining though - I've never felt this involved, or like I had this much potential. Everything I'm doing right now is important to me, for now and for the future, and I'm so excited to see what happens!

Here goes last semester of college!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is coming! I love thanksgiving, it is by a landslide my very favorite holiday. There's no stress of finding the perfect gift for anyone, no guilt of receiving gifts i don't need (not that I'm not grateful for the one's I do!) and it's all about spending time with my lovely family and all the wonderful food they make. One of my favorite online stores that sells things I certainly don't need and can't afford but love to drool over anyways, Modcloth, is hosting a thanksgiving Thank-a-thon Blog contest, here, where you can write about what/who you're thankful for and then win a gift certificate! Since I'm all about Thanksgiving and free clothes, I figured I can shamelessly enter and post about it.

Anyways, my what and or who I'm thankful for go together: I'm thankful for my college education (no really, now that it's almost over too I'm getting extra appreciative), and for my dad for making it possible for me. I do tell him this, and I hope he understands that I mean it and I'm not just saying it because I'm required to. Really, I'm so lucky to have a wonderful dad and an exceptional education.

the real world

I realized this morning that I have forgotten to declare my minor. Not that big of a deal, I think, I'm pretty sure I can just walk into the office later today and fill out some paperwork. The big problem here is that I discovered this while attempting to apply for graduation. From college. Graduation from college. I don't think this is ok. For one, I love college. Yes, it's challenging, but its also wonderful and I love my life here. I'm not ready to give up my roommates and my classes and my apartment downtown. It's not that I think life will never be this good, I'm not just done with this part yet. I'm gonna have to find a real job and have a real life and be a real person, I'm just not ready! Sigh... I guess I still have six months to prepare myself.