Truman Pieces (3 of 3)

Please see this post explaining why I am posting this here.

Question 8 of the Truman Scholarship Application7. Describe one specific example of your leadership. (The writer of your letter of recommendation re: Leadership Abilities and Potential must confirm this experience.)

With the sand barely shaken from my shoes, I am back in Pittsburgh with a mission: design and mount a photo display in my dorm by the end of the year. It is March 2009, I have just returned from a week-long trip to Carnegie Mellon Qatar with the IMPAQT group. I had already posted my photos on flickr and blogged about them, but I wanted to reach a much larger audience: that of the 700-1000 people who walk through Morewood Gardens every day. With my beautiful borrowed camera, a loan from a CMU-Q student exemplifying Qatari hospitality, I had taken over 1000 pictures while in Qatar. With 10 people in the IMPAQT group, and most of them skilled photographers, we reveled in documenting our experience as we introduced ourselves to Gulf culture. Back in the states, the price of our documentary exuberance came due: we had to sort the photos.

I believe photos can communicate commonalities of humanity which speeches and textbooks cannot. That is why I and my team worked to choose the more evocative photos we could to help student in Pittsburgh .

The easy communication we had enjoyed on the trip started to break down as homework piled up—I found email communication was simply inadequate for the kind of group communication and compromise we needed to get this show up. I asked each member of the group to choose 30 photos to show to the group in one of our brief meetings, as I wanted the show to have a strong group vision. We ended up with 12 amazing pictures.

No one had ever tried to mount a gallery show in my dorm’s common space before. When I first proposed to use the space, its walls were covered with old movie posters and vintage ice-cream ads: no student work. As a team, we cut and spray-mounted the photos, and started hanging them on the walls. With one week until the end of school, everyone was terribly busy, but we made our deadline and the show was mounted.

It is nearly 7000 miles from Pittsburgh to Doha. But because of my team’s photo-show, CMU-Pittsburgh students have a common visual language with CMU-Qatar students. They have both seen the souqs (markets), looked at the Doha skyline at night, seen mid-day prayers. To be true global citizens, we need these commonalities.

Inspirational Quote:

“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.”–Lawrence Clark Powell

Truman Pieces (2 of 3)

Please see this post explaining why I am posting this here.

Question 8 of the Truman Scholarship Application

Describe a recent particularly satisfying public service activity (do not repeat experience described in 7).

I wince a little inside when a woman pulls her daughter away from me early on a Saturday morning. She is a pro-life protester and I am a clinic escort helping a woman walk to Pittsburgh’s downtown Planned Parenthood. I was not expecting a smile, but I am still not used to the hate in her eyes. I escort from 7:30am to 10:30am a few Saturdays a month. It is one the hardest things I do.

This morning is during Lent, and so there are around fifty protesters on a half a block of sidewalk; about 7 for every escort. I guide the older woman I am escorting into the clinic, and walk back down the line of protesters. Some pray quietly, some mutter ugly things, and the little girl swings her rosaries impatiently. There is a woman on a megaphone shouting through the clinic doors. I get to my corner and wait, chatting with the other escorts and jiggling to keep my feet warm in this Pittsburgh February. With only 10 or 15 clients on a Saturday and only the 15 second walk from my corner to the clinic to occupy me, most of my morning is waiting.

I do not escort because I am pro-choice. Something as abstract as being pro-choice (or pro-life) would not get me up at 6:30am in the morning. I get out of bed on those Saturday morning because I am a blackbelt. For 14 years I was trained to use my body to protect others, and to never be a bully. I escort because some of the protesters are bullies and I can do something to protect the women they are bullying. As morally difficult as the abortion debate is, I have no trouble choosing who I stand with outside the clinic: I am with the women being screamed at, never with the screamers. When a protester stands in the way of a woman walking into the clinic, I am standing next to her. When a protester is screaming “Mommy, Mommy, don’t kill me, Mommy!” I  am the calm voice chatting about the weather. When a protester pushes me to get at a couple, I stand firm and keep going.

As I wait, I can feel the rule of law strong around me: the first amendment protecting the protesters, the Bubble Zone law protecting the clinic and the patients, the normal laws which guard traffic and restaurants and construction. If I had to stand here, knowing the law did not support me, I do not know how long I could keep escorting. But knowing that the rules are designed to be fair and balanced, knowing I can rely on the police if someone gets out of hand—knowing, as Sandra Day O’Conner said, “what the rules are”, that makes it possible for me to escort.

It’s 10:30am. All of the clients made it to the clinic and the protesters are dispersing. The tension of the morning seems to ease away as protesters and escorts alike walk to busses and cars. I get home, put on my karate uniform, and go to teach my morning class. Escorting is the hardest things I do. Nevertheless, I escort because I must stand beside those who are without power. It is how I was trained.

Inspirational Quote:

Napoleon Bonaparte – “Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.”

What Happened with the Truman

I did not get into MIT. I wanted to. The geeky culture, the high level of excellence in music and the humanities–it looked amazing. I would have been miserable. In a pressure-cooker of empirical culture I would not have been happy as a subjective writer. CMU is so much better for me–not because I was not MIT material, but because I am a science fiction book at a business conference. Sensible cotton at a Victoria Secret. A political blog in a research university. Good material, wrong outfit.

It seems the same thing has happened with the Truman Scholarship (which I wrote about here). Even though I want it, and think it would be good for me, today I found out I cannot compete for it. Again, this is not because I am a bad leader–as my review for my work with the Poetry and Prose Performances Project shows, I am a good leader. It is not that I am not smart–my review for my work as a Developer at Stanford shows that I am smart. And I do not need outside confirmation to tell me that I will make a difference in this world–I know I will do this because it is a promise I made to myself. It is because the Truman is for a specific kind of leader, with a specific kind of bright future. I do not fit the profile. I can’t say I am not sad and disappointed. But it is just an opportunity to determine my own path.

The good new is the wonderful folks who reviewed my initial application liked my writing. And since I will be out of contact for the 4th of July weekend, I am going to post pieces of what I turned in to them. Enjoy!

Inspirational Quote:

A right is not what someone gives you, it’s what no one can take away from you. Ramsey Clark

Ideas for my Truman Policy Proposal (1 of 3)

I am planning on applying for the Truman Scholarship, and turned in my first draft of my application exactly a week ago (see this post for the debrief on this experience). The application has 15 sections, plus a policy proposal. I have had several ideas for the policy proposal in the past, but keep on convincing myself that I could do better. Here is a draft of one of the policies I would like to pitch to someone in power:

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Policy 1

Provide access to literature for all students, regardless of learning style. Good teachers know that students learn a concept best when they see it, say it, read it, write it, hear it, do it. This is not because Jonnie Lu needs to do all 6 things to understand what a poem is, but because he might need to see it, read it, and think it, while Marie O’Neal needs to hear it, say it, think it. Some people learn better by watching, some by listening or speaking or reading or doing.

When I teach Karate, I have to keep in mind that not everyone can visualize how her body should look in a stance from my verbal description, but might be able to mimic my movements. When I teach a class, I always describe a move, demonstrate it, watch the students do it, and physically correct them.

Likewise, one time I was in an English class, editing a paper for a football player. I spent an hour writing all over his first draft, and when I handed it over to him, he scanned it and did not even seem to process the hand-written notes I had covered the thing in. Instead of getting upset because he was blowing me off, I decided to try a different approach to editing his paper. When I handed him the next draft, I had color coded the entire thing with 4 colors–yellow for citation errors, pink for grammar errors, green for comprehension errors, and blue for good prose. When I gave him the newest version, he got really interested, looked through every comment, asked me questions–and when it came time to turn in the paper, he asked me to review his final draft.

English teachers don’t need to lengthen their students’ stances, or make student punch their hands to teach verify technique, but they do engage in differentiated teaching. The trouble is, with so much to get through for each class, many teachers cannot read their assignments aloud, so those students who learn through listening are left at a disadvantage. I propose we broaden and modify a solution already used by blind students: literature read-aloud.

There are three obstacles to this proposal:

1) cost. Costs for audio-books, even from Readers for the Blind (who do not seem to have a web-presence) can add up over years of school. The broader solution must be low or no-cost.
2) technology barriers. Not all students have iPods, cassette-decks, CD-players, or access to the internet. The solution must be easily transferable across formats, and accessible in multiple media.
3) convenience for teacher. Those resources which are easy to use are used. Readers for the Blind can take months, and not all requests are filled. Preferably, a good solution should surmount the above obstacles, and also be easy for either the students to access on their own, or for the teacher to distribute legally.

Thankfully, the technology and the resources exist to overcome these obstacles: YouTube and podcasting. Whether large projects like LibriVox or smaller efforts like my own Poetry and Prose Performances Project, volunteer recordings of literature which are distributed both through iTunes, their own websites, and YouTube allow students access to literature read aloud. By piggybacking these free recordings on well-developed commercial technology, all students need is access to either a browser, iTunes, or an adult who can download the audio-file and burn it to a CD. Because a teacher can simply provide her students with a URL to download the file from, this solution does not ask educators to learn a new technology, or spend time reading each piece to their students.

The issue boils down to nothing less than working to give every child the same chance at an education, regardless of learning styles.

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I hope you enjoyed my wonkishness.

Also, I am 20 and 1/2 today!!!

<h4>Inspirational Quote:</h4>

Henry Ward Beecher – “Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.”