FINALLY things have calmed down at work so I have some time to write in here again. I don’t have any cable or internet in my room yet, so hopefully when that happens, i can get back to my regular installments. It’s the end of my first week of work here and It’s reallty as good as I could have hoped it would be. The people {chicas} that I work with are very nice and they seem very excited to have me here. I’m working mainly on Millersville’s Day of Caring on September 6 with the part time coordinator of community service here, Christina. Between the both of us, i think we have it pretty well covered. I’m also in charge of giving a seminar about alcohol to 2 sections of freshmen at orientation. I’m really considering coming in with sunglasses and a large coffee and being like, “i’m still drunk, how about you?” haha. I need to grab these kids’ attention and be entertaining, or i’ll lose them at BAC. Another project that I’m going to begin working on soon is the Scholars in Service Program. I will be monitoring 10 millersville students who have to complete about 400 hours of community service in exchange for an education stipend. I need to make sure that they are completing their hours and loging them online. It seems similar to the peer advising that i did at IUP, except the caseload is SO MUCH small, which i hope will be a goood thing, as well as the fact that these students WANT to be doing community service, so hopefully it won’t have to be pulling teeth to get them into my office and logging/completing their hours. I’m excited to meet all of them and get to know them and hopefully inspire them to continue with civic engagement and make it a lasting part of their lives, not only here at millersville, but after they graduate and begin their own lives and careers. i guess you could consider me a dreamer, haha. I’d also really like to start a program here involving the community and the issue of hungar in Lancaster County. THis winter, with gas prices on the rise and the economy going down the crapper, a lot of people are going to be struggling, and frequently that results in hungar. If there is student interest, i’d like to try to do something with Millersville dining services and the donation of leftover food to a foodbank or shelter. Obviously, this needs to be something that students are interested in, i can’t do it all myself and expect sustainability, but if there is interest, i think that this would be a great program to organize and be a part of. Another thing that I need to start working on is some programming for Martin Luther King jr Day 2009. MLK day isn’t until january, but my supervisor wants me to get started on working something out now so that we can create something really important that won’t just be thrown together because it has to be. The only downside is that sometimes MLK day falls just before or right when students are coming back from Winter Break, so that may be an obstacle for us, but we can still work with the School District of Lancaster and other schools in the Lancaster area, as well as the Lancaster County Community to celebrate Martin Luther King jr.
PACC/VISTA orientation was last week in Philadelphia. I never imagined that i’d meet so many awesome people and that i’d have such a great time. Don’t get me wrong, during the day, a lot of the lectures were pretty boring. I kind of felt that i was in SOC 101 again, getting stats and faq about poverty and homelessness, but in our free time, it was so much fun. All of the PACC vistas {25 of us} got there a day early and we all became really close and we had a lot of fun with our supervisor, Meghan. On the next day, when the other 100 VISTAS showed up, we were already a tight clique, and nobody else knew each other, so we were kind of the obnoxious assholes that everyone else probably hated, because we were at such an advantage over the other VISTAS. During the last week, we’ve been emailing each other about how our positions are going and how much we miss each other and asking advice about our projects. They told us how close we would get with the other PACCs, but i never really expected it to happen. I kind of feel like i’m in a fraternity again. I can’t wait until we all meet up again at our fall retreat in november. Another thing that was great about the PSO was that we were in center city Philly in the historic district. our first night there we went to an awesome cheap bar and we spent the other nights walking around these gorgeous historic buildings, having meetings in the historic quaker meeting house, walking down to south street for some crazy shopping and smoking at the hookah bar near penn’s landing. I couldn’t have asked for the PSO to be in a better location.
I moved into my new apartment officially on Wednesday evening and it’s pretty awesome. I still have yet to really unpack anything. But i really lucked out in my housing arrangement, especially because some VISTAS don’t get any housing at all and I have room AND board AND parking. It’s all really great…Except that there is a huge spider that lives in a web just above the main entrance of Diehm Hall, where i live. I’ve named her charlotte and I try not to spend too long underneath her.
A funny story from yesterday. I came out of my apartment into the hallway in Diehm Hall and there were two janitors at the end of it. “you can’t come out of there, the floor’s just been waxed!” They yell at me. I need to get to work ASAP so i just kind of look at them. “Um, i need to go outside…” I say. “use your other entrance!!! You can’t walk on the floor!” Well, I’m already standing on the floor and it seems okay, but i’m kind of scared of these people, especially because there isn’t really anyone else in the building and clearly, now, they know where I live. So i go back inside and cautiously exit the building from a shady dark stairwell and some scary maintenence doors that connect to another part of my room through a door i didn’t think i was supposed to open. Apparently, I do have another entrance to my room, which i thought just lead to a maintenance room and some fire doors, but interestingly enough, they do open to outside without setting off any alarms. It was kind of a good experience, because now, I know i can use those doors if i had to. I ran into the lady janitor this morning, who apologized about yelling at me yesterday and we had a good laugh about it. now at least i kind of have a friend in Diehm Hall.
I just found out that Leyna’s sister, abby {who hates me}, is pregnant with TWINS! this is rediculous. i really hope these children are good athletes.
more later,
loveaudrey
