Century ride

Happy Birthday to 4ever Jung!

This morning began the second round of interviews with mentors, and we had seen presentations from The Cleveland Foundation, The Knight Foundation, and the Multiple Sclerosis Society, but there were a few for which I held a vested interest. I first came to know about the Knight Foundation's work during my time at NYU, when I had fond fantasies of someday becoming a well respected journalist, or at the very least, a published writer. Having accomplished that (see the link above) and garnered attention from the likes of Impre.com, I'm not entirely certain that a syndicated column is necessarily the objective any longer, but more the promulgation of ampliatory effects for the foreign language journalism industry in this country as a whole. Unfortunately, I did not warrant an interview with them, though I did manage to slip a business card (with a cue towards my writing) into Damian Thorman's hand, and I felt this to be a positive interaction, especially since he spent a goodly amount of time speaking on the foundation's work in developing foreign language media after I pressed him on it.

The one organization that did, in fact, express an interest in my abilities was the Multiple Sclerosis Society, where I imagine that I might be able to find a happy home; their newest initiatives relating to developing a diversity council, creating a curriculum for interpreter training and development, as well as being able to readily deploy the program to different locations around the country, produce, direct, and capitalize on web 2.0 media, etc, sounds as if there is a definite possibility of deep connectivity in terms of what I might be able to offer them. Both of us mentioned this during the interview. This could, in effect, be quite beneficial for all concerned, because I would get to remain, as Miguel says, in the center of the universe, and I would also be able to finally bring to bear the totality of my breadth of experience and education in a position where every last one of these skills is appreciated. Let's all of us keep our fingers crossed. But, as Miguel is also wont to say, this is only the second round, and we've managed to see a total of half a dozen, out of a total of 42 total mentorship opportunities, some of whom are looking for multiple mentees. We shall see.

Two exams coming up this week and an op-ed analysis is due for Devitt's class this week in the middle of all of that. This past Wednesday, during the several hours break in between Devitt and Mitchell, I went to the gym with one of my classmates, and after days upon days of sleep deprivation, working out pretty hard, and then not having eaten very much during the day, I suddenly felt as if my mind was short circuiting, and had to sit down as I drank my extra large gatorade. After that I fell asleep atop a pile of folders in the lounger area of the 8th floor, and woke up approximately 30 minutes later. It was surreal, as a linguist, to feel as if my language skills were failing (perhaps this is just my personal neurosis, after spending so long hyper-focused on discreet meanings and semantical analysis of particular phrazing - I should post the diagram of Groucho Marx's now famous "I once shot an elephant in my pajamas..." for the rest of the class to see,)

and then the last year in translation and interpretation, if I feel that the message escaping my lips isn't exacting in diminutive detail, or if I sense the language centers of my brain shutting down due to lack of sleep [because I was up til odd hours trying to finish readings for PAF 9103 AND 'Question of Intent'], I'm immediately frustrated, and this in turn worsens the problem, even if it doesn't seem that way to the radio audience... But, it seems I didn't make any egregious errors, and that, in itself, is pleasing. Tonight is hammering away at the above mentioned David Kessler book, and trying to put something together for Communications. Tomorrow is pancakes and an editing session involving Dr. Dre, presumably June, Dante, and a few others, and pancakes. Lots of pancakes. Tonight, possibly in between Communications and Public Affairs, I need to clean. Amusing how little things like that go by the wayside when the work you're doing is seemingly so much more important. Maybe I need to investigate finding a place with a dishwasher next time.

Schroedinger's cat

One of the great examples that Neil Bennet, our phenomenal Statistics professor keeps sharing with us is his supposed 'Neil's black box' in which is contained the totality of a given population, from which a simple random sample (SRS) of sufficient size can be selected. I asked him last week, if that was not somehow representative of Schroedinger's cat, being that the population of Lilliputians may or may not exist at any one given time, though the supposition that they do is the driving force behind the grandiose theorizing that we were undergoing as a result of this class. He got a chuckle out of it and really, that's all I was after...

The process of certification for NYS teachers is a similarly exhausting experiment in logic. One must send funds, frequently the evaluators of the applications are temps who simply check over files for correct entries, and you can never get anyone on the phone. There is an online system in place, though the atrocities committed in logging on, logging back on after a certain amount of time, being able to find the correct information inside the online system, are voluminous. My experience was thankfully somewhat streamlined, though this last piece has been quite the stomach turner. I had submitted the length and breadth of my experience to the New York State Education Department nearly a year ago, more than sufficient time for them to review my qualifications, the fact that I'd been tenured in NYC, my 12 years of full time work, my Master's degree + 30 hrs, my continued professional development in AP Language and Literature, QTEL, SMARTboard, pick a thing for Foreign Languages, I've done it.

Today, fully 4 days before my initial certification was set to expire, and now that there are statewide layoffs of roughly 8,000 teachers expected for this year (6,500 of which are expected from the city alone, while at the same time Bloomberg Eduaction, Inc. has managed to find money to open more charter schools, fund the induction of new teachers, as well as the Teaching Fellows program, and the city's involvement with the Teach for America initiative, but I digress) the Professional Certification arrived in the mail. I think I'll frame it and put it next to the cherished photo of my friend and I at the Yankee Museum during our trip to the new Yankee Stadium during its inaugural season, or perhaps file it under 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams.' I wonder if they'll count studying for a Master's in Public Administration as appropriate professional development to maintain my certificate...?

Ichi go, ichi e

Today was the first day of interviews with mentors that are accepting fellows for the current cycle. I purposefully inserted myself into the list, being the aggressive swordsman, and knowing that I had not initially been selected by any of the three organizations initialy, but having strongly caught the interest of all three organizations that were selecting candidates. Perhaps, in hindsight, I should have inserted myself into the third list, if only to preserve my position in the "center of the universe" as Miguel calls it - NYC, but, then again, you don't come here because you want to be comfortable. You come here so that the process will change you. I am prepared for that change, and though it will definitely be outside my normal purview, that's particularly why I came here. I desperately need to acquire wide reaching, universally applicable skills. My first interview today was with Southern California Leadership Network, and I think that there some real themes on which we can make a great deal of difference and then pattern wider reaching lasting evolutions in social policy and Administrative rules with significant benefits for the general population. That and I sincerely think that Kevin Cottrell and I managed to develop an excellent rapport during our brief but very informative interview session. We seemed to be on the same page in some key areas of mutual interest and have, if not similar visions, at the very least similar passions for directions to take the agency. Stay tuned here for all the latest.

Public administration? How do we feel about that?

The question in the title was one that our Intro to Public Affairs professor posed at the outset of his class. Most of the fellows took it as something of a humorous question, but after some careful reflection, I've come to realize that he's ingeniously managed to frame one of the key problems we'll have to continue to solve for the extend of our public service career.

How do we feel about that?

The problem indeed becomes, 'how do we feel about that?' Is it just a job, is it , or is there something deeper. Amusingly, the Woodrow Wilson paper that we had as homework was an excellent comparison of values: are we just a cog in a wheel, or are we passionate Administrative policy making difference engines (and yes, I know the artificial intelligence statistical analysis variant of that term)? Are we the comfortably insulated bureaucrat, or are we the functional, boots on the ground, troop directing field officer? Interesting problems to have, and none too light to consider with a deeper sense. According to our instructor, we're training to be bureaucrats, but then, has the definition of such changed over time? And would we necessarily be involved in a change agent program if we were simply going through a tool gathering mission to arrive at a carefully arranged, comfortably insular place? I think not, and so, bureaucrat, supposedly, must not have as decidedly unseemly a tone as it might have once had. Or I miss my guess.

Public Administration?

Any decently trained public administrator, or one that is effective at creating Administrative Policy changes, are those that bring with them passion, interest, and skills to effect the changes in society that they are desirous of creating. To that end, statistical analysis is crucial, and indeed, essential to the mission. How are results of administrative policy showing up in the population? How are people utilizing the benefits which administrative policy makers are putting into place? Amusingly, the precise areas of statistical analysis that we are covering in the course that we're relentlessly plodding through currently are the very same ones that were a gap in my understanding during my waning years at NYU. Had I but known that invariable utility of a z-score during my doctoral seminars in language acquisition and linguistics, how much better might my analyses have been? If only I'd comprehended the determinance of a standard error calculation, what might have changed in my perception of intake versus uptake? I jest, but, in reality, these are the precise questions playing out in the back of my mind while the professor is busily questioning the other students what the probability of random samples selected from his 'little black box' having income ranges from $25,000 not known, but then, how could I? I had never been in a class that explicitly covered it, it had been nowhere in my electives or required coursework up until then, and I hadn't specifically sought out the knowledge, but neither did I know that I had a need. There is an aulde maxim in education - 'thou shalt not test that which has not been taught', though, experience is a cruel and unforgiving mistress, for she gives the test first, and the lesson after.

Special thanks to the fine gentleman from Atlanta who has affectionately come to be known as 'Dr. Dré' for providing me with this particularly useful Latin proverb: post hoc, ergo proctor hoc
After this, because of this... meaning essentially, if I play the harp every morning just as the sun is about to rise, the doesn't rise because I play the harp.

Hotel California

It's a strange feeling, being a leader in a group of other leaders. That feeling is multiplied existentially, temporally, and cross-sectionally as we come together for more events, study groups, and cohort wide projects. One thing has risen to the top, however, and that is the fact that we all need to work together - we live and die as a team, and we leave noone behind. Tonight's study group was an exercise in precisely that, with those of us stronger in the statistical analysis of data doing everything we could to maximize the two hours we had scheduled in order to bring those with less understanding up to our level. We ended the night making a priority list of items about how the next study sessions need to be run, and delegating responsibilities for the warehousing of resources online, orchestrating the bringing of snacks, etc, to several key members. I so should have done this earlier.

NUF love!

This first week of NUF experience has been quite the affair. Meeting and interacting with the 42 other fellows in this cohort gives me a renewed sense of purpose, almost as if all the crazy ideas about how to forcibly evolve the system I've been having during the rather long trajectory of my professional career suddenly have a springboard from which to leap. Before going much further in this journal, knowing that a few people will likely be reading it, I have to recognize that previously I used this blog as a teaching tool, and so the posts below this initial NUF 2011 spot will be webquests that I designed for my Spanish classes.

On to the details:

Graduation date is 28 July 2011, provided all goes exceedingly well. I predict that, now having read the stats book assignment (partially) that everything else will be, though rigorous, manageable. The welcome week/orientation was also quite pleasant. Many of our questions were answered in terms of how to navigate the very murky waters of financial aid in the university, and Baruch's peculiarities as a business school. The dean of the school wherein our Public Administration program is housed gave a speech which not only left me with insight into where our lives will be guided during the next 14 months, but also his own character, and the fact that I may actually need to spend more time listening to his words, or perhaps at the very least tracking down some of his publications.

Breakthrough leadership is one of those things that as a concept I noticed a while ago, but was entirely unable to completely articulate. As David Mensah kept saying, 'you all already know all of this, you just never strung it all together." In effect he's right; we inherently have all of these fantastic communications tools already bread into us as we acquire language, utilize language, create language, re-imagine language, watch/hear/read/speak about other people using language, we have intake and uptake (Mim is laughing about this right now, I'm sure) regarding the principles inherent in this Breakthrough system, but we just never put them into practice until someone or something creates the necessary stimulus, takes us past the tipping point, or produces an evolutionary event in our internal linguistically programmed productive schemata.

Other than that, I'm of the opinion that alternative revenue streams are in dire need of prospecting with the purpose of creating a separate endowment fund so that the fabulous breakfast and lunch spreads we had during the initiation/orientation week can be continued throughout the 10 weeks of course intensives, and again once we are all back in town for the capstone experience. I'm not entirely certain how many people are going to agree with me on this, but I'm just sayin.

During the holiday weekend, we've met up and shared a few rounds at local venues, and I'm thoroughly impressed by the level of immediate camaraderie in our group. It reminded me of one of the other professional organizations - that of Judicial Interpreters and Translators, - which was so instantaneously filial once we were all introduced. I'm fairly happy about it, and I'm looking forward with great anticipation at the year + alpha that is to come.

Trotsky, Frida, Rivera

Diego Rivera was a Mexican muralist who produced work at the same time as José Clemente Orozco, and David Álfaro Siqueiros. His own pieces had decidedly Socialist themes, since he was a known leader of the Trotskyist Socialist movement in Mexico. Rivera was also married to renowned surrealist painter Frida Kahlo.

Read the following biography (en Español) of Diego Rivera.
1) What time period did he live in that overlaps with the time period of the novel/movie?


2) Click the ‘Trostkyist’ link above and answer the following question: Why do you suppose the Socialist movement so important in Mexico?


3.) Click on the pictures of “Detroit Industry” in the Wikipedia article, and view the larger high resolution pictures of the murals. What do the pictures communicate about the artist’s ideas about work?


4.) Follow this link to the photo of his mural entitled “Man: Controller of the Universe”. What is he communicating by his decision on the image of the man in the center of the painting?


5.) What was the controversy surrounding this particular painting when Rivera attempted to paint it at Rockefeller Center?


6.) Where does the painting sit now?


7.) View the series of pictures here of Rivera’s work entitled ‘Pan-American Unity’. What issues do they represent that we might address in this class? Use the keys to probe deeper into the mural’s significance.


8.) How do Rivera’s works compare to Orozco and Siquieros works?


9.) How could we represent similar themes in our mural that are related to your experiences?