The anti-hero

Another Social Studies teacher friend of mine sent along this video of Jay Leno at Universal Studios in California. It brought tears to many of us...

Today we're turning in the memo format book report on Little Pink House - the novel style history of one of the most famous eminent domain cases in the history of the country Kelo v. New London, to which I've alluded in a previous post. Tomorrow is the Stats final, I'm a bit sorry to see it go, I keep repeating this at the end of each session to whomever will listen: had I but known all the statistical manipulations we just learned during my first graduate school experience, how much better would my analyses have been, how much more would I have possibly understood about the research I was reading, and so forth. Ah well. In the end, given that we've just completed quite a bit of deliberating with Prof. Mitchell who, like me, enjoyed making the crossover between stats equations and Public Affairs, in regards to economic development, its effects on children's education, tax abatements and their direct relation to businesses being able to afford to stay in town, and thereby also weakening the tax revenue pool with which to fund school systems, (which historically are the critical things that large corporations go looking for in terms of criteria to stay in a location, because they need excellent schools to train an excellent workforce, in order to maintain a leadership position in their respective fields. So, you see how cyclical this becomes) there's this rather amusing equation to be extracted from the vast waste fields of data (both good and bad):

AGERICH(hat)= 3.141527 - 2.5 SMOKING + 10CEDUC - 8HTMES + 0.6802SMOKING*HTMES

And that said, let us not forget to always pronounce "chi" as [kai], and not "chai" [tshai] which is a very heady, fragrant, flavorful tea from the far East, made incredibly popular by coffee house franchises the world over *shudders*.

Tomorrow brings more mentor presentations, and hopefully an interesting look at a few local organizations. More on that probably this weekend, after the actual interviews happen. Stay tuned.

How to gain friends and influence people

Just got finished with the 'Little Pink House' memo for Prof. Mitchell's class. Today's been a bit wild: it started with getting the clothes clean while watching the Argentina-Germany match for a stunning loss that eliminated El Albiceleste, and had the entire Twitterverse claiming that Mick Jagger was somehow responsible for four of the most devastating losses in the past week.

We've started our PAF 9140 Budgeting class with Prof. Sermier, whose extensive list of accomplishments and impressive titles is enough to give anyone pause. Having worked in 'all three sectors' private, non-profit, and public, he brings a wealth of information and training to the class that will likely end up benefiting us in whatever position we find ourselves. That said, learning to read a balance sheet while adopting his way of thinking is an interesting and unique exercise. I am quite shocked at the flexibility of my own mind - prior to this program, I had come to believe that there was only one set path for me, and that was one entirely strewn with words, their significance, their manipulation, and how that might be turned into a marketable product. Now, after having survived the majority of statistical manipulation, and for the most part comprehending the mathematical computations in the budgeting class, I'm beginning to wonder if I hadn't pigeon-holed myself into a language based thought pattern early and simply never ventured outside of it for some irrational fear of leaving the comfort zone. It should be interesting to see how this all unfolds.

I skipped a barbecue today in order to complete this assignment, but the folks let everyone know that I was working steadily on homework and deadlines. Tomorrow is one I cannot miss, though I'm fairly certain that I should be alright between waking up early and working on the spreadsheet all day. Then all I have to finish is Stats and readings, and I should be back on track. Thankfully, we got paid this week, though Paychex managed to somehow delay our disbursements by a day, which had the entire cohort in a tizzy. But, now with money in hand, bills are getting paid and food is in the fridge. Phew!

Las piramides de parangaricutirimicuaro

This past week has been quite the adventure. We received our midterm exercises (2 midterms and a paper) graded, and it turns out I managed above 80% on everything. Going forward, I'm fairly conscious of where the differences were in what the professors were asking for, and what I did so that when finals time comes around, I'll be better prepared. This week's main focus is getting started with Sermier and budgeting, and turning in the communications paper on Wednesday, which will likely take up the entirety of my schedule on the morrow.

Last Wednesday, as a result of no shortness of puppeteering on the part of one of our classmates who has a personal connection with the man, Puerto Rico Secretary of State Kenneth McClintock (some NY Daily News articles that include his name here and his bio here) came and spoke to our group about the island nation becoming a state incorporated into the union of the United States of America, and the benefits that integration might confer. This particular policy proposal was one that I might not necessarily agree with, and whose argument had a few holes, though I will have to argue that at a later post as I'm sitting with notebook in hand where I scribbled various thoughts and counterarguments during his conversation.

Friday was the last day of interviews on Fridays, as the school - pursuant to a directive from CUNY central as a money saving initiative - all facilities, buildings, and so forth will be closed for Friday's during the summer months. However, not to be outdone, I signed up for interviews with CH2M Hill, which has quite a few project happening on privatization of municipal services and where I might be able to infuse quite a few of my linguistic resources and be able to leverage the experience towards language access policy research. The Port of Seattle is in dire need of a fellow to develop a curriculum related to their Workplace Responsibility program speaks directly to my experience writing curriculum, especially for distance learning. New York Power Authority - whose energy sustainability projects really fall in line with my passionate drive to create precisely those types of solutions for the future (they were, after all, a huge drive behind my political choices in the elections) would likely stretch my capabilities, as that environment is clearly something that is outside of my comfort zone. The one organization that had selected me was Indianapolis Private Industry Council, whose inherent need for language ability and someone who has a clear mind of how to engage the immigrant community and develop vocationally related hard skills, as well as codify explanatory curriculums for such was clearly apparent during our conversations. That's an interesting position, and to be clear, there is likely to be a good deal of language access policy to municipal services to be written there. An interesting analysis of the process is delineated at my good friend 4everjung's blog

All of this is happening, I should note, as we're learning about simple vs. multiple regressions in Statistical Analysis, barreling towards a policy position paper deadline (see above,) and having to complete a 3-6 pg memo on the novel "The Little Pink House" which is less of a novel and more of a historical case study of how Kelo vs. The City of New London and starting Prof. Sermier's Budget class this week is swirling about in our brains. In times like these, the concept of 'zanshin' in budo: staring at a distant mountain, not so much a spaced out, disconnected vapidity, but more of an eyes on the prize sort of stare comes to mind. I'll see if I can't track down the kanji and put it in here.

And now for some PAF 9100.... wish me luck.

Don't mess with my cheddar

This past week has been full of adventures, despite the very interesting interview on Friday. Scuttlebutt has it that a pair of mice ran through a couple of our classmates' rooms in the SVA dorms, and caused quite the sensation. The young ladies whose rooms were effected summarily brought the incident to the attention of the dorm's operators, the program director, and everyone in the class. This dovetailed into a blizzard of discussions over lifetimes of mouse sightings, mouse traps, Dr. Dré's having taken turns with removing mice from his apartment with his sister while they were growing up in Harlem waaaayyy back in the day, etc. I've had to remove my fair share of intruders in my day, but not since the girls have come to live with me, and the building has been renovated (knock on wood). However, No sooner had these conversations begun than I remembered this amusing little video:

The other thing I'm rather excited about, despite the fact that I hadn't the actual coin to get into the official viewing area, is that I was able to witness the first ever Red Bull Air Race in New York City standing in Battery Park for free. Since the official viewing area was in Liberty State Park, and the planes were taking off from Teterboro, NJ, the only real obstruction to our view were the water taxis that apparently were unenlightened to the fact that an entire crowd of observers was trying to watch a string of stunt planes rip through a course at around 180 mph, and the ever present haze that manages to consume the intercoastal region on hot, humid days like yesterday. Check out the video of New Yorker Michael Goulian doing a run through the course:

In the end, I guess I'm just a bit like that little kid, who still thinks planes and things with big engines are still pretty cool. Ah well. These guys were amazing though, absolutely unreal.  And now on to Stats...

Can you spare a dollar for whirled peas?

3rd round of mentor presentations for the NUF program today. In an interesting twist of fate, I've not been chosen for any of the mentorships available for this round. I did sign up for Nexus, the company doing work to bring healthier lifestyles to school aged children in the NYC community, beginning with a beverage replacement initiative, complete with a wide range of possibilities for interaction at a great number of city government and local business/sports/health organizations. I signed up for this one, I think I have quite a bit to contribute, especially seeing as how they mentioned absolutely nothing into the foreign language markets directly where the diabetes and asthma populations are greatest, and taking into account my extensive work within the schools system. None of which, by the way includes my understanding of social media, etc. However, I'm absolutely certain that our fearless leader has a general plan for us, and he wouldn't lead us purposefully astray. And now for more stats; today it's chi-square tests and nail biting over whether or not we passed the midterm because we're not getting it back until next week. Here's hoping...

It's about the bureaucracy

Today was the PAF 9100 midterm exam, and that, in effect, was the one that held the most potential for difficulty. Whereas Research Analysis was a simple plug and chug workout which, though strenuous, produced easily predictable results, Public Affairs presented a challenge because we had no basis from which to organize our focus. Perhaps the best thing that one of the 2010 Fellows told us when they made a visiting presentation to our class was; "Write down EVERYTHING this guy says." We all were energetically working to figure out the definitions and rhetorical difficulties we had with the essay writing after leaving the lecture hall and reconvening in the lobby area. I, for one, know now that I had completely misinterpreted the term "Apportionment" and fielded the definition for "appropriations". In all likelihood, a common mistake, and not one that definitionally is not entirely incorrect. Essentially, they both have to do with allotting numbers of variables to certain categories, except that one has to do with budget dollars (appropriations) and the other with number of individuals inside of a congressional district. By way of illustration: Census Bureau Apportionment by Congressional District. I guess I'm not getting that wrong on the final.

Today we also have to turn in our rhetorical analysis of an Op/Ed piece to Prof. Devitt. I feel exceedingly comfortable with that assignment, these types of writings are a logical continuation of what it is I was doing in NYU's program, and I just hope that I can do my previous work justice with the current iteration.

It's time for the calculator

This past span of 4 days has been all about statistical manipulation. Bring me a data set and I'll force myself to calculate the area under your density curve! After getting woken up at cat o'clock, feeding the animals, and taking the general for a stroll, I was sitting on the edge of my bed holding my noggin in my hands trying to figure out how to relieve the pressure on the inside. My roommate came in and asked why I had such a long face.

"I've failed just about every math test I've ever taken." I replied. To which he countered,
"But you can explain this stuff to me! If you can do that, you'll be just fine! Besides, you're the professor!"
In reality, I almost got teary eyed; there it was again - that inherent faith that people have shown that I'm on the right path, and I have no idea what I've done to instill that in them. I told him he was right, and I went with the warrior spirit mentality - ichi go, ichi e - one chance, one opportunity, right now, immediate victory.

I managed to get through the initial run through the exam with minimal hang ups, then went back through to check the math at least 4 times. I reworked one problem set so many times I had to stop myself from doing it again after I was convinced it wouldn't yield a separate result. At the end, I was more than 95% confident that I had done a reasonably good job.

I walked out of the class amphitheater with a wave to the professor, and proceded downstairs to sit out in the sun on the patio outside of the vertical campus. As luck would have it, that was also the man travel path for everyone else exiting the exam, all of whom wore faces summed up in an excellent Spanish word: extraviada. The first to come out was C.C., and she appeared nearly on the verge of tears, but after a few minutes of discussing the problems and a few lighthearted jokes, we got back to feeling more positive. About half an hour later, the remainder of the cohort - roughly a dozen folks - swarmed out of the building en masse. A scarce few seemed to have better feelings, and several began invoking a higher authority.

If I've managed to do well on this exam (and, judging by my score of 80% on the first homework, and having done the second one also in a similar fashion,) then I will have finally conquered, for what it's worth, the computational arrhythmias inherent in my linguistically predisposed mind. That's got to account for something, no?

"Masakatsu agatsu"

True victory, is victory over self.