1st written reflection

How has your first few months of being a VISTA been as you expected?

Since this is my second year serving at Millersville, I pretty much knew what I was getting into when I started in August. I have the same office, live in the same apartment and have been working with the same staff members. Although I am working with some new programs this semester, I am still working on many of the same ones from last semester. It has been so helpful to have the experience I gained last year to the events that we’ve coordinated so far this year. Our main Freshman Orientation Service event, Day of Caring, was so much easier the second time around! Even though I did a lot more of the planning this second year, it went (or seemed to go) much more smoothly than last years’ event. We also held our first annual Volunteer Fair here at Millersville this October 5^th. We had over 30 local agencies and 10 student organizations and departments in attendance and all the feedback that we’ve recievced has been really positive. I am so excited about how this event went.

How have your first few months of being a VISTA been different than you expected?

The only big change that we’ve had this year has been adding more responsibilities to what I’m doing with the after school tutoring program at McCaskey High School in Lancaster. We were supposed to have a student coordinator working with the district on the actual implementation of the program this fall, but he quit unexpectedly and I took over his duties Monday-Thursday afternoons at the school. I am glad that I have these extra responsibilities because they bring me closer to reaching my VISTA service plan goals for this year, but since it was an unexpected change, I had to move around some of my other obligations and it’s been a rather hectic few months. We’ve also made contacts with a counselor at Phoenix Academy, the alternative school for the School District of Lancaster, who was actually the PACC VISTA at Millersville 4 years ago. She asked for some help implementing a life skills/counseling type piece to occur weekly at the academy and we recruited the athletics department at MU to focus on wellness and goal setting and similar topics. Since this is the first year we’ve had this partnership, we’re kind of playing it by ear right now, but I am confident that it will be successful once we get all the kinks worked out.

What is one lesson that you have learned about yourself so far?

One thing that I have learned about myself from everything that has gone on this year is that I work really well under pressure. When we have a large, impending event I am able to make sure that everything is done efficiently and correctly without losing my mind. I have also had the pleasure of working with several people who have different work styles and personalities than me and I have tried my hardest to avoid conflict and continue to get things accomplished. Before I started working as a vista, I don’t know if I would have described myself as a patient person, but after seeing my progress working in these two facets of my job, I now know think that I would be able to describe myself this way.

Love, Audrey

the life of a vista is always crazy

yikes i haven’t written in AGES. lots of things have happened and i will try to fill you in on most of them

after school corps- we started a partnership with the school district of lancaster to try to get more students in to tutor elem, middle and high school. we started small with summer school tutoring, but we are planning to have a huge recruitment in the fall of MU tutors to send into the city schools! YAY actually accomplishing something on my workplan!

we lost our scholars in service to PA program here this year. phennd decided that they had stronger universities that could use our spots rather than us. suck it hillary kane. i don’t really mind, i loved working with my scholars last year, but i hated the administrative side of the program.

i had my VISTA pso last week. i got to meet all the new vistas, plus i got to see the other returning vistas as we gear up for another year with AMERICORPS! meghan had the second years plan and lead workshops for the group so that we could be a wealth of knowledge and hopefully be less bored with material that we were hearing for the second time. i did the “leadership compass” with bethany and it was a lot of fun. that is my favorite workshop and bethany is awesome to work with, so it was a lot of fun. i’m going to miss last year’s PACC PANTHER group, but i already have a lot of love for my WOLF PACC.

ugh, day of caring is practically upon us and i feel like i have a handle on everything, but every time i say that, i get bombarded with more tasks to complete. i hope that this day runs really smoothly, espcially since we have an extra 75 students to coordinate this year– yikes!

howard is back and working in the office. things are going better. we don’t know what is going to happen with him not having a license yet, but he’s here and working (kind of) and for right now, i have no complaints.

more updates are coming soon!

audrey

my first registration

so i did my first internship registration today. i was all alone in the office this morning because diane and kathy were at a meeting and sue was out. so i take the girl upstairs and run through everything, and i thought that it went relatively well. until i realized that i forgot to have her sign the paper before she left, so we had to call the earth sciences department to ask them to tell her to sign it before she left. that paper is like the whole point to the registration. i’m such an idiot.

howard quote of the day: ” i’m trying to talk to as many people as possible about this without making a big deal about it.” on the phone to someone at the campus greenhouse about the project he’s working on.  um, if you’re not going to make a big deal about something, you probably shouldn’t be talking about it.

loveaudrey

i’m losing it

If I hear howard suck snot back into his nose one more time I swear to god I am going to fly off of the deep end. I mean it. and he’s fucking humming again. please exterminate me right now. put me out of my fucking misery because I really do not think that I can take this anymore.

You know what. Every time you take a personal call during the day at work, I’m going to turn my Pandora music up? Can’t hear? Get the hell out. This is getting absolutely ridiculous. I do not want to hear about your friends and family’s personal lives. I don’t even care about you, why would I want to overhear your personal conversations? I hope that you really hate my music too. I specifically pick things that I think you won’t like.

i am not an evil person. i was driven to this.

loveaudrey.

PS- this afternoon diane saw you sitting on the floor on the phone in the lobby. she sent you an email condemning your behavior and you denied it. BIG MISTAKE MISTER.

infuriating

Multiplying the boondoggle of AmeriCorps

By James Bovard April 28, 2009

President Barack Obama signed legislation last week to more than triple the number of AmeriCorps members, from 75,000 to 250,000. Mr. Obama declared that the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act is about “connecting deeds to needs.” Ironically, the signing ceremony and a $5 billion multiyear outlay for AmeriCorps came one day after Mr. Obama called on his Cabinet members to trim $100 million in wasteful government spending. Paying people on false pretenses to do unnecessary things is the soul of AmeriCorps. Since President Bill Clinton created this program in 1993, politicians have endlessly touted its recruits as volunteers toiling selflessly for the common good. But the average AmeriCorps member receives more than $15,000 in yearly pay and other benefits. And most AmeriCorps members go on to work for government agencies or nonprofit groups. Their AmeriCorps gig is more of a career steppingstone than an act of financial sacrifice. AmeriCorps’ prestige has perennially been at war with its boondoggles.

During the Clinton administration, AmeriCorps members helped run a program in Buffalo that gave children $5 for each toy gun they brought in – as well as a certificate praising their decision not to play with toy guns. In San Diego, AmeriCorps members busied themselves collecting used bras and panties for a homeless shelter. In Los Angeles, AmeriCorps members foisted unreliable, ultra-low-flush toilets on poor people. In New Jersey, AmeriCorps members enticed middle-class families to accept subsidized federal health insurance for their children. Nowadays, many AmeriCorps programs are hailed in the media for projects that produce little more than sanctimony among participants: • In Florida, AmeriCorps members in the “Women in Distress” program organized a poetry reading on the evils of domestic violence. • In San Francisco, AmeriCorps members busy themselves mediating elementary school playground disputes. • In Montana, AmeriCorps members carried out a drive encouraging people to donate books to ship to Cameroon. • In Oswego, N.Y., AmeriCorps members set up a donation bin to gather used cell phones for victims of domestic violence.

There is no evidence that federal intervention is necessary to produce tranquillity on California playgrounds or to provide alternative communication modes to Oswego wives and girlfriends. While such programs provide AmeriCorps with positive press coverage, the nation can survive without AmeriCorps’ “volunteers” stepping into such situations. AmeriCorps is beloved by politicians because it provides ample photo opportunities of them doing good deeds. AmeriCorps headquarters encourages local programs to organize “AmeriCorps-for-a-Day” events with elected officials to help get them on board as supporters. A politician can show up, hammer three nails at a house-building project, and be assured of laudatory coverage in the local media. AmeriCorps advocates claim that AmeriCorps members spur 1.7 million other Americans to volunteer each year. At best, this is the Tom Sawyer model of virtue: some people getting paid to sway other people to work for free. In reality, AmeriCorps members have no such suasive gift. AmeriCorps routinely counts anyone who works in a project that AmeriCorps members “manage” as a new volunteer. Thus, if 20 people are already working at a house-building project where an AmeriCorps member temporarily supervises, all 20 can be counted as AmeriCorps-generated volunteers.

At the signing ceremony, Mr. Obama declared that “we will measure our progress not just in number of hours served or volunteers mobilized.” But in reality, AmeriCorps has always relied on Soviet Bloc-style accounting to justify itself. For instance, program defenders often assert that “540,000 AmeriCorps members have contributed more than 705 million hours of service” since 1994. Many individual programs evaluate themselves with raw numbers that mean little. AmeriCorps members are leading a donation drive for items to ship to the Pennsylvania National Guard in Iraq. AmeriCorps’ Rachel Ralph-Doyle declared: “Our goal is to collect 200 pounds of donations.” AmeriCorps has never performed a credible analysis of the value of the service that its members produce. Instead, meaningless aggregates are “close enough for government work” to prove that AmeriCorps is a cornucopia. But for politicians, the issue is not what AmeriCorps members produce but how it makes people feel about the federal government. AmeriCorps puts a smiley face on Uncle Sam. America has enough real volunteers; it does not need mass production of government-issue, bogus volunteers.

Jim Bovard is the author of “Attention Deficit Democracy” and eight other books.

AmeriCorps PACC Vista Panthers say, fuck you asshole.

Do you know how hard it is to get a job right out of college? would you rather us sit on our parents’ couches collecting unemployment and playing video games all day? i have never seen our generation as motivated over anything as they are for the barack obama campaign and this push for national unity and service. let us give something back. maybe you should ask the people affected by americorps programs if they appreciated the services we gave to them. it’s easy to make fun of the small steps that we’re taking if you have no idea what kind of impact there is. whether you think it’s worthwhile or not, at least we’re trying to do something positive, as compared to you, writing articles denoting our goals and achievements. i am lucky enough to be on a team with the 25 brightest, most passionate and dedicated people i’ve ever met in my life. we are going to do amazing things. and those amazing things have to begin somewhere.

loveaudrey

into the streets

into the streets was today. it went allright. i as not all that happy with the number of students who showed up vers the number who SIGNED up. but what can you do. it was a beautiful saturday. i might have skipped out too.

loveaudrey

into the streets is coming along. i still need volunteer spots for 20 students. fuck me. i’ll get there though. i’m not too concerned. i think.

we had some fun developments yesterday. howard got yelled at three time and then huffed out of here without saying goodbye to anyone. it was kind of funny. we interviewed a girl for the community service student worker position and she got it. i think that i will like her a lot. she seems like a really good leader and i think she will be really good for the projects we need her to work on. i’m really curious to see how she will work with us. it will be interesting.  she starts tomorrow.

in like a lion, out like a lamb

so it’s been about a month since our new coordinator started working here. things are still going about the same. he’s still acting like he can do whatever he wants and i have pretty much adopted the mentality that if you’re not going to listen to me, then i’m not going to help you out at all. i think that he’s getting the idea that i do know what i’m talking about now though. he’s down with our supervisor right now. i hope that she is putting him in his place. probably not. he invited someone to come look at the furnature situation yesterday without telling anyone. our student worker overheard him telling me and we devised a plan to have the SW text our boss to give her a heads up so she wasn’t blindsided when she came back from lunch. she was SO PISSED!!! haha it was hilarious. i told him point blank, if you do this without discussing it with our supervisor first, she is going to be pissed. he should have listened to me. maybe next time he will. i hope not. i want him to get the boot. hopefully soon.

on a more positive note, into the streets planning is coming together. we are still looking for project sites for our last group of students, but i hope that we can find something at brightside and it will be taken care of. i’m optimistic. after planning two of these already, it doesn’t seem like such a huge task anymore. everything always goes fine and it will be okay.

loveaudrey

updates

the community service coordinator position went to someone else. i told diane that i’d like to stay in the VISTA position another year, so that’s most likely what will happen. i’m not upset. everything happens for a reason, and i don’t think that higher ed is the place for me anyway. too much resentment and drama. yikes
loveaudrey

rubbish

the only things that i ever put in my garbage bin at work are food leftovers and papers that i printed out and deemed unacceptable for whatever purpose they were intended.

i feel bad for our custodial staff.

loveaudrey