Letter From My Blog

Dear JanetheWriter,

Usually when you’re really busy and can’t post to me, your blog, you send a letter to fill me in and let me know what’s keeping you out of the blogosphere.  In an effort to ease even that burden from your shoulders, let me try to write it for you…

I know that you’re up to your eyeballs with school work…you’ve got a paper due tomorrow and a group presentation next week.  But look on the bright side:  the paper’s finished (you submitted it via email tonight) and everyone in your group showed up for today’s 5:30 p.m. meeting to divvy up the work for the presentation.  Good progress on all fronts…

At 633, where you became the foursquare mayor yesterday and unlocked the local badge today, you’re busy doing preliminary research for a new article for Reform Judaism magazine.  You’re also writing lots of correspondence for your boss and for the upcoming Biennial (when does the countdown clock start?), as well as random proofreading and editing “on demand” for others.

In between work and school, you’re managing to fill your time with tons of other things.  Last night, you checked in at temple for an Adult Education Committee meeting and next week you’ve got another one—this time the Festivals Committee.  Between the two committees, the minyan and kabbalat Shabbat services when you’ve got a yahrzeit, you’re getting to be quite the regular up there at 79th and Second. 

And there’s plenty more on your plate, too.  You’ve got to register for the FORCE Conference, make flight and hotel reservations, schedule a haircut (you’re starting to look like what your grandmother used to call a vild Indian, well before that term was deemed less than politically correct), get all your tax paperwork to the accountant, water your orchid, back-up your hard drive, arrange for pre-certification for your upcoming MRI, and place an order with freshdirect.

Whew….no wonder you haven’t got time to write to me.  In any event, I hope you find some time soon.  I always like to hear from you, and I miss you.  I’m sure you’ll get everything done in good time and that the tight grip on your time will ease up shortly.

I hope you’re well and that we’ll be able to connect soon.

Very fondly,
Your Blog

Glass, China and Reputation

Dear Baruch College,

Again and again and again, you’ve proven yourself to be the school I love to hate, and yesterday was no exception.  On my way home from an appointment across town, I stopped in at the computer lab in the library building to print the syllabus and first reading assignment of the new semester, which begins for me on Thursday, February 3rd.  I figured that now would be an especially good time to get a jump on the reading.

The computer lab was nearly empty, and before too long I’d logged in, located the articles I needed, and sent each one to the printer.  The trouble began, though, when I attempted to log in at the printer station to retrieve them.  After entering my username and password (the very same ones I'd used to access the articles in the first place), I received a message that said something along these lines:

The system cannot locate you in the database.
If this problem persists, contact the Administrator.

Ever the optimist, I tried several times, even moving to a different printer and attempting yet again, all to no avail.  In a last ditch effort to get a hard copy of the reading assignment, I stopped in at the HelpDesk office where the following conversation ensued:

HelpDesk Techie:  Help you?

Me:  Yes, the system won’t let me print.

Techie:  Are you enrolled in the winter session?

Me:  No…..

Techie:  Spring semester officially begins next Friday.  You’ll be able to print then.

Me:  Even though the professor’s already posted the syllabus and reading assignments for the first class?...

Technie:  Next Friday…

Me, dripping with disdain and sarcasm:  Great…thanks.

And so I trekked home where, ironically enough, I found this blast email from the registrar’s office:

Dear Student:

Welcome back to the Spring semester!

Please note these very important details before the start of the term:

1)      Classes begin on Friday, January 28. If you wish to withdraw at 100% refund, you need to do so by the end of the day on Thursday, January 27.

2)      If you want to drop/add classes starting Friday, you need to use the REPLACE button to avoid incurring charges.

3)      Check your classroom assignments again, some have changed.

4)      Make sure your tuition bill has been paid!

Baruch, I believe your registrar forgot one other very important detail:

5)  Even if your professor has posted reading assignments on Blackboard, you will not be able to print them until Friday, January 28th, the first day of the spring semester.

Thanks, Baruch, for yet again upholding the reputation you have, from my perspective, so justly earned.  As Ben Franklin so rightly quipped:  “Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked, and never mended well.”

See you soon,
JanetheWriter

Letter to My Blog

Dear Blog,

I haven’t forgotten about you. And, although I know this is no excuse, I’ve been sooooooo busy that I haven’t had time to “percolate” any posts. If it’s any consolation, I haven’t written for RJ.org in the last few weeks either.

Interestingly, shortly after one of my recent posts appeared there, I received a letter from the rabbi at my new congregation inviting me to bless the candles in the downstairs service (where new members sit) on Kol Nidre. Although I’m sure that the blog post and the invitation are unrelated (the letter from the rabbi was written before the blog post), I’m still feeling a bit chagrined at having written it in the first place. But, it’s a done deal now…and still an accurate reflection of my experience in the synagogue that night.

In a nutshell, here’s what else is going on with me:

• School started right before Labor Day and I’ve got a great class on anti-Semitism as it relates to civil rights public policy. There are only about eight students in the class but in a true, it’s-a-small-world story, one of them left SCA (where I worked from 1991 to 1997) in June, moved to New York to go to school and, lo and behold, sits right next to me! The specifics of how we made that incredible connection is a story for another time. Right now, suffice it to say that the class readings at the moment focus on the history of anti-Semitism (in medieval times, in the Middle Ages, within the Catholic Church, etc.) and although there’s a lot of it and it’s not exactly page-turning stuff, it’s not bad either. A week from this Thursday, Abraham Foxman, head of the ADL, will deliver the Ackerman Lecture at Baruch, so of course we’re required to go. Should be very interesting.
• On the work scene, Biennial food has definitely kicked in and the early mornings and late nights are soon to be the norm. At the moment, it’s all box lunches all the time. In addition, I’m doing my regular job, lots of Biennial miscellany that crosses my desk, and tracking RSVPs from invitees to one of 15 different Shabbat dinners, from rabbis who have been invited to be Shabbat morning Torah study leaders, and from lay and professional leaders invited to sit on the bema at services. Whew! If you want to know more about Biennial, click here.
• Yes, the Schmuck Parade marches on. Nothing terribly new or exciting to report here, just the same old cadre of game players, endless emailers and guys who don’t – for one reason or another -- fit the parameters I’ve set for myself. These include: Jewish, 40-something, and divorced or equally seasoned. That’s it. What’s so hard about that?! I wish I knew because the pickings are oh-so slim. Oh-so slim…
• I seem to be losing the battle against plantar fasciitis so tomorrow after work it's back to the podiatrist where perhaps more cortisone is in the cards. After that, a trip to Westchester for a shiva call to a colleague who just lost her mother. Another long day on tap…

So, that’s about all the news from here, Blog. Again, I apologize for not being a better correspondent. I’ll try to improve in the future. In the meantime, l’shana tova…see you in 5770!

xoxo,
JanetheWriter

Study Buddies Extraordinaire

When I started grad school two years ago (before Baruch became the school I love to hate), Stefani, my friend and colleague, told me that the best part of the whole experience would be the friends I’d make. Was she ever right about that.

Meet Amy and Michael, my Baruch study buddies. In January 2007, Amy and I met in Introduction to Public Affairs. The next semester, in Research and Analysis I (a euphemism for statistics), we met Michael, and the three of us have been inseparable in the halls of academe ever since. Research and Analysis II followed, and then Communication in Public Settings. Now, we’re muddling through Economic Analysis and Public Policy together on Tuesday nights. And, as if that’s not enough togetherness, Michael and I also share an independent study seminar on Thursday nights.

Reliable, trustworthy, fun and funny, they're the best. I couldn’t ask for better study buddies. Thanks, guys. And, oh, where do you want to go for dinner after class next week?!

Taking a Cue from Ima on (and off) the Bima

To those of you who know me (or have heard my I-was-a-NFTY-flight-chaperone-in-Eastern-Europe-and-my-luggage-never-showed-up saga), it will come as no surprise that I carefully plan things in advance, always like to have my ducks in a very straight line, and frequently don’t do terribly well when things veer (even ever so slightly) from “the plan.” To elaborate just a bit, I’m extremely focused and motivated, proudly hold the title “Queen of Lists” (gleefully crossing off the tasks as they are completed), and take great pains to show up on time if not early to work, school, wherever... At the same time – unlike most Type A personalities – I am not an Academy Award-winning multi-tasker (I can’t talk on the phone and do much of anything else well at the same time).

And so it is that I’m spending time this weekend researching flights from New York to Tulsa for a friend’s wedding in the middle of March. But it’s not just any weekend in the middle of March. It’s March 21, which is three days before Tuesday, March 24, the day of the midterm exam in Economic Analysis and Public Policy, one of the two graduate courses in which I’m enrolled this semester at behemoth Baruch, the school that drives me crazy. Given my self-admitted Type A personality, neither will you be surprised to learn that I’m a serious student, spending lots of time -- not all of it positive, I freely admit -- devoted to schoolwork and trying to balance the rigors of the academic world with a full-time job, a social life and, sometimes, The Schmuck Parade. In fact, both my sister and a good friend recently told me that, with the start of the spring semester just days away, “It’s time to batten down the hatches." (Yes, I’ve already requested March 20, 23 and 24 as vacation days, scribbling “out-of-town wedding and midterm exam” on the required paperwork. And, if I could, I’d start studying for the exam this weekend, but since the semester doesn’t start until Monday, that just isn’t an option – even for me.)

Instead, I’m going to take a cue or two, or seven or 29 or 362 from Ima on (and off) the Bima. Although I don’t know “Ima” personally, we do work in the same crazy Jewish world, are friends on Facebook (with 13 mutual friends, which, although not a huge number, is a good Jewish number nonetheless) and follow each other on Twitter. I read her blog, Ima on (and off) the Bima, and, from time to time, her other one, too. From all this e-info, I know that Ima is a married working mother of three young (and quite adorable) kids who, if I had to guess, doesn’t require a whole lot of sleep. She does however, teach, preach, read (81 books in 2008), write, parent, take lots of photos, cook, bake (she recently made a cake that looked exactly like an iPod nano!) and oh-so much more.

So, if Ima on (and off) the Bima can do all these things all the time, surely I can attend a wedding in Tulsa on Saturday, March 21 (mazel tov, Abby and Donnie) and take a midterm exam in New York on Tuesday, March 24, right?!

A Different Kind of Writing

Work and school kept me so busy last week that I didn’t have time to “percolate” or craft a new blog post—either for this blog or for the Union for Reform Judaism’s blog. Of course, just because I wasn’t writing for this venue doesn’t mean I wasn’t writing at all.

In fact, I spent quite a bit of time crafting, among other things, a one-page memo for my MPA graduate school class. This once-a-week course, Communications in Public Settings, focuses on the diffusion of innovation and the role of communications in social change. The professor, a young, energetic and enthusiastic rhetorician, jam packs a lecture, group work, public speaking and discussion and dialogue into each 150-minute session, expecting that we’ll complement it with a significant investment of time in reading, writing and thinking in preparation for the next week’s class. And, for the last few weeks I have been doing just that.

The assignment for this memo, the first written work of the semester, was to select an African country (any one would do) and, using Toulmin-style arguments (a specific, dry, just-the-facts format that includes claims, grounds and warrants), make a case for why this particular country is an ideal site for a pilot project to help it achieve United Nations Millennium Development Goal #2, universal primary education.

So, here’s my memo:

DATE: September 11, 2008
TO: Young, Energetic and Enthusiastic Rhetorician/Professor
FROM: JanetheWriter
SUBJECT: United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) #2 pilot site

Since the end of its 11-year civil war in 2002, Sierra Leone (no, I didn't use Wikipedia as a reference for this memo) has been rebuilding its political, economic and educational infrastructure, and positive activity in each of these sectors plays a critical role in making the country an ideal location in which to pilot universal primary education initiatives.

Political stability is returning to Sierra Leone. Parliamentary elections in 2007—the first since the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers in 2005—brought Ernest Bai Koroma of the All People's Congress (APC) into the presidency and returned the country to a 1991 constitutionally-mandated constituency-based system (US Department of State). Local government elections held outside the Western Area in July 2008 were conducted largely without incident, furthering cooperation between local councils and chiefdom authorities that was begun after the first such elections in 2004 (United Nations Integrated Office in Sierra Leone). Stability within a country’s government and support of its political system by citizens contribute significantly to its overall ability to provide services—including primary education—to its populace.

Sierra Leone is recovering from a severe economic collapse in the 1990s. In the mining sector, the economic foundation of the country, diamond exports have increased from $1.2 million in 1999 to $142 million in 2005 and that same year, exports of rutile and bauxite resumed after a 10-year suspension (US Department of State). On the agricultural front, where subsistence farming accounts for more than half of Sierra Leone’s national income, the government is working to provide skills training to farmers and to increase food and cash crops (US Department of State). Development initiatives with neighboring countries and passage of the Investment Promotion Act to attract foreign investors are among other economic-strengthening activities underway (US Department of State). Like political stability, a solid economic base is a key component in a country’s ability to provide adequate resources and education for its citizens.

Restoration of Sierra Leone’s educational system is ongoing, but much work remains. Although the government abolished school fees in 2001 and made primary education compulsory in 2004, 25 to 30% of children remain out of school and only 35% of the population is literate (http://www.actionaid.org/, CIA World Factbook). The student-teacher ratio is 66:1 but, because 40% of the country’s teachers have inadequate qualifications and training, the student to qualified teacher ratio is 112:1 (http://www.actionaid.org/, http://www.education-action.org/). In addition, during the war, 70% of the country’s schools were destroyed or closed; those that have reopened are badly damaged and lack such basic equipment as chairs or benches (http://www.education-action.org/). By further rebuilding its educational infrastructure, Sierra Leone will advance its recovery from civil war and reclaim its stature as a nation whose people are known for their educational attainments.

What do you think? Did I make a strong enough case? Would you select Sierra Leone as the pilot site for MDG #2? Why or why not?

Oy…that sounds like another assignment!