End of Semester Scrammble

As the semester is winding down and I have been balancing fulltime work, a 19 credit semester, 2 honors projects, 2 ASU101 sections that I teach, and a 60 pound puppy with too much energy I am finding that time is a resource I just don’t have enough of. The madness of senior year was not something I was expecting and as we make one last mad dash to the end of the fall semester the stress and anticipation for the semester’s end is in full swing.

Prioritizing time for assignments has been the struggle of my semester. Unfortunately I feel that tonight it will be my blogs that suffer the consequence of being late. This is because I made the mistake of taking a lab science in my second to last semester and it has been giving me a run for my money. I forgot how demanding a lab science can be and I completely forgot to finish that requirement when I first transferred to ASU.

My curiosity is if anyone else has been feeling the strain of the semester and to know how you are handling the struggles you are facing.

Second Thoughs?

I wanted to use this free write to reflect on a few second thoughts maybe even regrets that I have about my experience. I wouldn’t say that they are things that will hinder my decisions in the future but I just wanted to write about them. So here goes. Did I get the right degree? I study entrepreneurship but then I asked myself is that my passion or do I enjoy being the entrepreneur. Maybe I should have gotten a degree in Industrial Design and pursued those ideas of things I wanted to create because with the advent of in-home 3D printers small scale manufacturing is possible. You know that has been a thought I’ve had for a while. My resolve is this. Finish my current journey, go to grad school, and start my career. Industrial Design is my passion and the technology will only get better with time. So when I have a job as a professor I will tap into my tuition waiver and learn a new trade, after that who knows because I really only want to learn design to compliment my hobby of restoring Mustangs (the car by Ford).

Second Career Services Experience

My second career services experience was learning about the Go Government webinars that they hosted although I wasn’t able to view the complete series I was able to talk with other students about them and I found it to be very interesting. I am striving to become a professor at a major research university. But the series intrigued me because I have never considered what my knowledge and experience could get me in a federal position.

I later did some more research on the subject particularly and saw that most of what I would want to do involved consulting and negotiating service contracts with various private and nonprofit organizations. I found the proposition to be exciting. I also learned how different creating a resume for a federal job is.

Organizational Strengths

I suppose my organization has several strengths depending on which aspect you look at it from. Leadership at both the university and college level beneath it would be one of the very first things I would pull from. In my opinion Michael Crow is a very unique asset to the institution. I truly believe that he brings a vision that is like no other in higher education. To ensure that his vision succeeds he surrounds him self by experts in their respective fields. In a sense this benefits our college because many of those within the leadership hierarchy that President Crow has created come from the College of Public Service & Community Solutions.

Now if I could change something about my organization there are two specific things I would change. I first made the observations these changes as a student worker where that carried forward as an intern and even as a member of the university staff. They are accountability and productivity metrics. I’m not at liberty to go into detail about the changes however in regards to productivity and accountability I will say that my experience in the private sector may have formed my expectations for work place performance.

Making My Class Worthwhile

Every time I step in front of the room to lead my ASU101 sections I make it a point to ensure that my students are getting something from the material we are covering. Whether it is showing my students faster ways to search the electronic library for research papers or emphasizing the importance of the resources they have available to them I always make sure I’m connecting with my class regardless of how much they like or dislike the course content.

One thing that I have done every semester in every section of the class was to take a few minutes with them on at the end of the very last class to have a “heart to Heart” so to speak with my freshmen. I just simply tell them that the road they have ahead of them is going to be long and stressful. There are going to be moments when they want to quit. They are going to question their decisions and will feel uncertain around many corners.

Then I tell them that I am going to share a video. It is an abridged version of the commencement speak given to the graduating class of the University of Southern California by Arnold Schwarzenegger the spring before his daughter started her freshman year. I tell my class that although his speech was given to a graduating class the lessons he shares will help them when they feel lost.

The video is below, please take a moment to watch it.

How does your organization demonstrate public service and/or urban governance?

I found that where I decided to intern was very unique because it has both the ability to demonstrate public service and urban governing. Arizona State University is a public research institution and the College of Public Service & Community Solutions is the specific area of the university that I would like to focus this blog’s attention towards.

The College of Public Service & Community Solutions demonstrates public service in several ways. One of the most obvious would have to be in its ability to produce quality graduates who seek to serve the public good. Another way that the college demonstrates public service is through the amount of solutions based research that its faculty and research centers produce for public and nonprofit organizations as well as private organizations that are mission based.

Urban governance is also demonstrated regularly by the College of Public Service & Community Solutions. This comes in several iterations of the strategic partnerships that the college, schools, centers, and faculty cultivate to either enhance the knowledge enterprise that is Arizona State University or to provide opportunities for its students. Several examples of this would include the work of the Morrison Institute, the Lodestar Center, or the Center Organization Research & Design which I am affiliated with as an undergraduate research assistant.

These are just several examples of how Arizona State University and the College of Public Service & Community Solutions demonstrate both public service and urban governance in the community. Being able to engage in the initiatives of the university has been both an honor and a privilege.

I don't want to teach ASU101 again!

I really wanted to use this blog to reflect on a decision I’ve been weighing in on for some time. For the past two years I have volunteered happily serving as an instructor for ASU101. I even seized the opportunity to coordinate the effort as my internship. But I really feel that it is time to move to the next step and to learn some more skills in the art of teaching. I feel that as an ASU101 instructor there is no importance in the class through the views and opinions of many people in the university whether it be faculty members or the students.

As a result I am contemplating the opportunities I could gain by becoming a Graduate Teaching Assistant. I say this because teaching ASU101 has become somewhat of a mundane task for me because I’m not really teaching content but rather facilitating a discussion module. As a TA I feel that because I’ll get to work with a professor that is teaching a class that is content of practicum rich I will be able to get a larger grasp of how to prepare powerful lectures and thoughtful course content that will help the students in their future endeavors.

When you're in Barrett the struggle is real!

I think that my favorite challenges this semester are coming from both of the honors projects that I have to complete this semester as a graduation requirement for Barrett. The first on I am working on is a proposal studying the success of university entrepreneurship initiatives for PAF484. The other honors project is analyzing and discussing the political spectacle that is Vladimir Putin and reporting on it based on the readings of my public service ethics class PAF460. Both projects are entirely different yet both are intriguing.

PAF484 requires me to learn a slightly new task. As I am familiar with setting up a research project I am not familiar with proposing one so the challenge is in learning that skill as it will play an invaluable role in the future career I seek to achieve. PAF460 is more of a traditional report style paper but it has a fun twist because I am choosing to write the paper in a very satirical form because I want it to be humorous. Not to poke fun at Mr. Putin but to mock how the media skews the truth of political language to create their own political truth that is fed to the public.