Went surfing with Jed again on Saturday and he had this surfism:
There are some days when you won’t catch a wave.
The waves were feisty and big, unlike a few weeks ago when they were nice and accomodating. Needless to say, it wasn’t as easy, but it was nice to use my new wetsuit.
I was eating at a restaurant the other day — location, occasion, name of restaurant are irrelevant — and I was kind of offended by their menu. It was a diner kind of restaurant that served breakfast foods, grilled burgers, salads, wraps, etc.
The menu was plain with a plain font, kind of mediocre in design, but it served its purpose. And then I noticed in the salad section that the “Asian Chicken Salad” was in a completely different font from the rest of the menu. It was in that “Asian” font. You know what font I’m talking about… the kind that looks like Chinese characters but it’s writing out English letters.
What were they trying to do by making the “Asian Chicken Salad” have a different font from the rest of the salads? Was I supposed to believe it was more “Asian” because of it? Were non-Asians supposed to feel like they were getting something more exotic because the salad’s name was written in an exotic font? Were Asians supposed to feel like the “Asian chicken salad” was more authentic because of the font?
And what exactly constitutes a chicken salad that is “Asian”? Just because you throw in mandarin oranges, almonds, crunchy rice crackers, and rice wine vinagrette does not mean it is “Asian.” And what part of Asia are they referring to anyway? I’ve been to, lived in, and eaten at several countries in Asia and never have I experienced an “Asian chicken salad” quite like the ones here.
Then I browsed through the rest of the menu and noticed the “Mexican Fajita Wrap” written in a “Fiesta”-esque font.
Sigh.
Americans are ridiculous.
Internalized racism? Or me being sensitive?
I love the weekends. Jed, Karla, Bern and I went to Pacifica on Saturday to go surfing–it was Karla’s first time so she wrote this huge epiphany-laden post about it (read it here).
That’s Karla and Jed walking into the water and up ahead to the right is me. It was great to just be able to get out into nature, even though it was freezing cold and my hands and feet were swollen red after I was done. Somehow being one with the water made it OK. Going to invest in my own wetsuit soon because I’ve been renting this whole time and that’s been racking up quite the surfing bill.
Got free tickets to the SF Giants baseball game vs. Cincinnati Reds, so Jed and I took a little afternoon trip to AT&T Park to watch the game.
We got there at the 3rd inning because our bus was 45 minutes late, and then we grabbed some delicious ballpark food (I had the chicken tenders and garlic fries, and Jed got a hotdog and coke). The only thing I wanted to do was go to the game, eat, hang out, soak in the environment and then take a couple pictures. So we did that, and then left at the 7th inning and went across the street to Borders to read magazines. What a chill afternoon.
Jed, my new roommate since my brother moved back to Vegas, told me that my energy was being sucked away because my bed was facing my mirrors and behind it is my window. Direct vortex of energy-suction.
Could this energy-sucking vortex be attributed to why I’ve been so low energy lately? Hmm, could be, but it’s probably also because I haven’t been to the gym and have been eating crappy food.
So anyway, to alleviate the situation, we moved my bed to where my desk was and vice versa, and with my snazzy new camera, I took a picture for your viewing pleasure.
Changing where I sleep is just a little part of how I’m going to make a change… any other ideas?
Last week I literally put my whole entire life on hold for work. I somehow got it in my head that my program would not work unless I devoted my whole entire week to it, night and day.
What a mistake.
But to my own credit, I didn’t have a choice. It was either let the program suffer or do the work necessary to make it work out. I chose the latter because I am dedicated to my students and my only reason for being at this organization is for the students.
However, recently I have been confronted with a new concept: work/life balance. I don’t really understand what this means, but slowly, since some of my coworkers are all about it, I am learning more about it. See, I come from a working culture where everyone works 100% all the time to accomplish a goal no matter what the price, and on top of that people were not paid, it was all volunteer. And now I am getting paid for doing what I love to do, and although it is pretty much in the same vein of what I have done before, it is different because I have to take staff work/life balance into consideration.
And to top it all off, I have to take my own personal work/life balance into consideration. Being surrounded by libras (my parents, Jo, Jed), I know all about balance, but need help in achieving it.
This was my last 2 weeks:
8/7-8 – 2 days of Business Boot Camp for our juniors
8/9 – 1 day of working on logistics for the week after
8/10-13 – off to 4 days of College Summit (days that started at 7 am and ended at 2 am)
8/14 – right after that I had a training day for our Executive Leadership Circle
8/14-18 – followed by 4 days of Business Boot Camp for our sophomores.
My last 5 days started at 6 am and ended at midnight. I was on all day long with no breaks, barely any time to eat because I was supervising 45 students every minute with barely any help. When I got home, all I wanted to do was vegg, but I had to prepare for the next day or the day after that.
What suffered:
I didn’t get to go to the gym at all
I was eating horrible food
I wasn’t replying to work or personal email
I was barely replying to phone calls
I came home every day emotionally drained
I came home defeated after listening to staffmembers give feedback about how to do it better (and all I could hear was “This sucked,” “It was bad, this is how you can do it better,” etc.)
I broke down, not once, not twice, but yes, three times
This is the first time in a whole year that I’ve ever felt like I couldn’t do this job, and that’s not right, especially since 11 out of the 12 months that I have worked there, I have rocked at it (to put it humbly).
Moral of the story: It’s OK to love your job (because I still do love my job). But when your job and you start to have a codependent and hurtful relationship, it’s time to change something up.
So I’m going to change it up a bit. How? I don’t know yet. But I will.
I got this from Eric’s Chinese Restaurant:
Reasonable people endure; passionate people live.
How appropriate.
I just interviewed 8 candidates back-to-back for our Incubator Program Assistant and E1 Program Assistant positions through Public Allies (an Americorps program), and I swear… if you don’t have passion, you need not apply. Passion is so important when you’re applying for a job and for when you’re actually working in the job.
I don’t know how people can live life without being passionate about what they are doing. It would eat away at the very core of me if I were to do that.
That’s how I feel after last weekend’s College Summit workshop at the University of the Pacific. It was phenomenal.
I’ll write more later because staying up past 1 am doesn’t help with the “physically tired” part…
College Summit time!!! I’m headed to the University of the Pacific in Stockton, which is about 1-2 hours away from San Francisco.
And this time I am a Writing Coach Coordinator, instead of a Writing Coach. Yes, the student has become the teacher. Well, no, not really. The teacher has become the teacher of the teachers, which should be an interesting new role for me.
Slowly I’m transferring my teaching to the adults in the work that I do. Here’s a sneak peak at the epiphany I had with BUILD and our need to change “business models.” I’m titling it: “Building high-touch into the BUILD community.”
In the past, only a few staff members were given the responsibility to build strong relationships with the students. That coupled with the small amount of students, and the small staff to student ratio, meant that high touch was a natural effect and model to follow.
As we grow in the number of students we serve in the Incubator and start to consider the scalability of our Youth Business Incubator model, we cannot continue to serve the students with the same “high-touch� model. I propose that we build the high touch model into the BUILD community.
Building high touch into the BUILD community would mobilize and equip students and mentors to work better with each other and use each other as resources. Staff would be involved in a more management and facilitation capacity. Not only is this model more scalable, it is a necessary shift in logic for the Incubator program to work with the amount of students that we are aiming to successfully serve.
Deep, I know. I’m creating a whole presentation and “lesson” for my staff on it. Facts and data are on their way!
Off to Stockton tomorrow! Peace
Go watch it. It’s really good.