Round 1 DONE!

Earlier this week my policy group and I officially completed the first round of lab.  It was definitely a tough haul but everything worked out in the end.  The process itself is very interesting: we spent several weeks going in one direction on the project, but then had to shift and go in another direction – two weeks before we had to present to the client.  With the deadline looming, we re-worked our entire analysis, even to the last minute.  After our briefing, we went to work on the analytic brief, adding information that didn’t make it to the briefing, filling in spots that the client requested, and clarifying key points.  Five people working on one document – not a party.  The whole thing was stressful, time consuming, and very irritating.  The result?  The client is very pleased.

Lab really is one of those experiences that helps you grow as a student, as a professional, and as a person.  Yes it’s stressful.  Yes it’s time consuming.  Yes it’s irritating.  But it’s good for the soul.  And I really do mean that.  Depending on the group you have, you can build very strong bonds with your group mates.  That 12-hour analysis session of yesterday will be the nostalgic joke of tomorrow that you all laugh about.  You learn to work with people.  You learn to compromise.  You learn when to lead and when to follow, when to speak up and when to shut up.  It’s tough, rough, and not fun by any recreation standards.  And it’s all worth it.

On Monday I’ll get a new group and a new policy issue.  And it will all begin again.

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Quality Time

We’ve just closed out the first full month of the semester, yet it already feels like we’re two months in. Exams and briefings are coming up, and the last vestiges of rust from the long winter break should be shaken off by now.  Today is a holiday, but that’s only in the technical sense. Holidays are like weekends in grad school: you don’t have any classes, but that’s just an opportunity for your study group to meet.

My  lab group spent several hours discussing our policy issue on Sunday, drawing a complicated flowchart all over the blackboard in a classroom we commandeered.  We even had colored chalk, which was quite exciting (yes, colored chalk will excite you in grad school).  Today and tomorrow we’ll be at it again, and I anticipate another  set of marathon meetings.

When you’re in the thick of things, sometimes it’s good to take a moment to relax or do something enjoyable.  On Saturday evening I was convinced to procrastinate my quantitative methods studies and instead hang out and watch the NBA All-Start activities.  Although procrastination is not a good thing generally, I think it was a good decision to chill.  I had a great time with a good group of guys, talking laughing, eating pizza, and watching basketball.  Saturday evening reminded me that it’s important to maintain human contact that doesn’t involvement policy analysis.

With the aforementioned briefings and exams coming up, I don’t expect to have many more opportunities to hang out.  I do expect, however, to spend a lot of “quality time” with my lab group. Between the policy lab and quantitative methods (and the demands of grad school in general) I expected to be extremely busy this semester. I also hope to find some quality time to relax and keep perspective.

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and now for the biggest group project of all…

I’ve been “teasing” upcoming developments at Milano here for months.  I wanted to wait to discuss this until some sort of more official, clear, “ta-da!” announcement was made and I was clear on who had been told what, and so I wouldn’t be saying anything that incoming students wouldn’t know about.  What can I say? I wanted a clear conscience. Given that, the following is now not “news” but it will affect those of us who are new or continuing students.

Milano’s programs will be merging with the New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs (GPIA) thus forming a new division of The New School (to be named soon).  How this affects your program, how any of us feels about this, etc. is diverse, as you should expect.

In the short term, we can cross-register for courses at each others’ schools/programs.  However, many of us have been doing so already for awhile, so I’m not clear on how this represents a change at this time!

There are also two (I would say three) cultures coming together here from the students’ perspective.  Having spent more than five minutes of time in two and quite a bit more in my home Urban Policy program, I can tell you that these are three distinct communities in certain ways, and as much back and forth and cross-pollination that occurs, there are certain specific experiences or philosophies binding each of us.  For Urban part of it is Lab; I don’t know what my colleagues in other areas would say, but since part of creating community has to do with a shared experience, I’m sure they have a sense of that as well.  Part of the process of joining these groups together, then, is figuring out how these merging identities will work and how much of what is most valued for each will be maintained.

I’m not heavily involved in that larger structural conversation.  As to the rest: it makes for fascinating observation in terms of group dynamics on many levels.

That doesn’t mean I’m “opposed” to this; far from it.  I’ve taken courses at GPIA and find their course offerings as well as the incorporation of more global perspectives to our work a great complement to the expertise being developed by those of us planning to work in policy (or management).  So from an academic, intellectual perspective this is absolutely an exciting development.

I am, though, feeling a bit wistful as so many of my friends and colleagues have their graduation ceremony in a few weeks, in small part because I wonder if my diploma will be different from theirs–and we will at least nominally have been separated into two incarnations of this school.  That rather disrupts my own personal feeling of community, doesn’t it?  So when it is time to return to the [school to be named later] this fall, we will have an exciting new sense of ourselves and will be seeing how much–or how little–change this does mean for us.  In the meantime, for a few weeks, I’m getting a little emotional about the fact that so many of the people who have been important to my experience here are leaving soon, or have left already.  It really is (oh, god, cue the cliche machine) the end of an era.

The new one for me is going to be dedicated to my work, the pursuit for which continues to be my first priority.  Milano has given me a good set of skills, and I’m eager to apply them out in the field.

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middling

So sorry to have disappeared for a couple of weeks, but [yadda yadda yadda] life happens!

Last week, immediately upon returning from spring break, I had a Quantitative  Methods midterm for which I’d studied for quite awhile.  That preparation didn’t completely assuage my nerves but getting on with the test did, as I was relieved to find that thanks to preparing, I didn’t encounter any nasty surprises.  That old tip really is true in my experience: when it’s time to begin, just start moving your pen/pencil and working that test. (Why I mention this in a blog whose likely readers are nearly professional test-takers is beyond me, but for those of us mainly educated in the Pleistocene era, testing is not so innate a process).

On the matter of Quant, I feel it is important to report back regularly because (no doubt for a number of reasons) this is a course about which I’m asked many questions.  My earlier sense of Quant stands: if you keep current with the reading and homework (or, certainly, within a couple of days’ time, realistically) you will find that the course moves quite logically and things really will make sense even if you haven’t seen this material before.  We’re also completing some basic SPSS exercises as a part of the course, which likewise have thus far been more fun than not, and hopefully useful as well.  I’m not sure that this material or SPSS work will end up rendering me any sort of expert, but for a novice they work well as enough of an introduction such that your “numbers work” in policy will be much more coherent.

As Quant proceeds, my other course this term has embarked on a group project (quelle surprise!) for a client, so as usual I don’t think I can say too much about that aside from this: compared with Policy Lab, the amount of time we have to complete this feels astonishingly long.  Now that we’re nearing the more creative portion of the work I’m  excited to come up with some terrific marketing materials with my colleagues.

Also this week, it’s time to select classes again.  (I KNOW.  This semester is flying by nicely, no?)

I’ll be writing more about that later this week, because doing so dovetails with discussing imminent changes at Milano.  For the moment?   It is back to other business for me, and Quant this evening.  Also, as goes my job search, in the words of another unemployed blogger, I’m really looking forward to heading into a job where I want to be very soon.  Fingers crossed.  (I’m continuing with other more proactive job hunting techniques, but you know what I mean!)

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Spring Break Spells R-E-A-D-ing Break (or Not)

During the undergrad years ‘anticipation’ was the keyword associated with spring break, even if you weren’t going anywhere for break you looked forward to the stories from roommates/suite mates on their return. Leading up to break there were fliers for ‘cheap’ Caribbean all inclusive Sandals Resort stays, as well as the usual suspects of South Padre Island (TX), Daytona Beach (FL), Cancun (Mexico) and of course … the Big Easy so the possibilities existed for the cheap to the extravagant. I only had one opportunity for a true spring break and it turned out to be a disaster. I ended up driving for roughly 20 hours with several friends to Florida only to get to the hotel (okay — more like a motel) to find out we had no room. We decided to spend the night on the beach (which I would learn is illegal) and look for a hotel room in the morning. Not long after being roused by the police our merry gaggle of gals decided to split up. Some made new (male) friends and crashed on a hotel floor of a severely overcrowded room, two went on to drink the night away….and I called my parents for help which came in the form of wired money for a bus ticket home. I learned a few things with my failed spring break attempt, so I can’t complain overall.

In the subsequent years I saw spring break as an opportunity for reacquainting myself with my friends and family and less about the moviescape of the MTV spring break myth. During break I would hang with friends who decided not to go to college and instead were already in the work world (both the blue collar and white collar varieties), cousins and friends who went further away to school or instead joined military academies (VMI), and those who found themselves with kids earlier than anticipated. Post break I always found myself with food for thought…who did I want to talk to post college? who would I miss most if this turned out to be the last time I spoke to some one? Post college many of my classmates grappled with reconnecting with pre-college friends and while I had cultivated many of my pre-college relationships  I found myself equally concerned post-college defining community.

Not surprisingly once I had learned of my acceptance to Milano I recognized the community I built post-undergrad would be equally effected by my decision. I told most of my friends that while they would lose me for fourteen or so weeks (at a clip) that I would be around for spring break. After two snow days (and a class cancellation due prematurely to weather), two papers down and an awful lot of grad school reading under my belt…..I was looking forward to hanging with friends and enjoying the city once again. BUT at Milano there is a preoccupation with group projects (and sitting in circles), so I will be spending my spring break with my new school community instead of with the community that’s sustained me post-undergrad. I have a group for every class and two of the professors have made it clear the group process counts as much towards the grade as the end product. I will be spending my days focusing the broad group projects (diversity within a specific nonprofit, fundraising), deciding tasks, and of course …. more reading. As it stands if I am lucky I will leave this spring break with a fantastical 24-hour period to party like it’s 1999 …. and caught up on all of my group work and class reading.

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honest confidence

This week we began to work on our client project in one of my classes. I knew coming into this course that we would have such a project for a client, and given my still-complicated feelings about how Policy Lab “worked” last spring (see, oh, many posts from Jan-July 09), I was a little anxious about embarking on this for reasons I could not quite identify.  Even reassured that this “wasn’t going to be Lab”, I did not know what to think.  All along, one personal challenge for me at Milano is being confident in my abilities and work while (particularly in this blog, or else what is the point?) being honest about what challenges me or gets in the way of really experiencing that confidence positively.  (Understand, confident does not have to mean “being an arrogant ass”.  There ARE distinctions, people!)

My anxiety about another group project was gone, or perhaps I should say, properly reconfigured, after we met our client as a class.  The thing about which I was most concerned: the amount of time and pace of the project requiring so much of it, will be working differently this time.  Given that, I delighted in realizing that since I’ve been using similar processes to those we’ll be using in the social marketing realm, I can best use this time to fine-tune how I engage with this kind of work, to determine how I can refine what happens as we’re working for a client.  It feels good.  So I am looking forward to the actual work involved with this, and hoping that it does help broaden my skills–which is a better feeling to have as we’re getting underway than vague dread.

Client work is challenging the first few times you do it because even though you’re sitting in a classroom or operating as a student, you have to suspend that reality and play the role of a professional consultant.  You won’t be given a syllabus listing your assignments and work requirements; you have much more agency and flexibility you must use in problem solving.  I’m sure this is precisely why such project work is a good thing to have in policy or management programs–it definitely shakes up your own self-defined role, scope of behavior, and notions of oneself as a “student”.  Those elements are what push you to grow personally as you learn how to perform as a consultant.  Even if, for now, it is mainly able to show only in program-based client projects, I have become so much more confident at handling projects with many moving parts thanks to Milano.  I know which elements I enjoy most; I know what kinds of strengths I can bring to the work, and what kinds of growth I still want to experience.

Or, at least, I know how to act like it.

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a trial, with your peers

First off, Laura brilliantly beat me to this (see below, we’re posting nearly simultaneously tonight, because GREAT MINDS), but : it is registration time around here, so if anyone has BURNING questions (or any other kind, I suppose) please feel free to reach out and let us know.  We are happy to help.

On that note, for students in policy analysis, Thursday evening begins The Trial Round, a/k/a, the long, anticipated slide into, for most first years, a spring spent in Lab. I’ll have more to say about Lab proper as we get closer, but as I’m going to be one of the Lab Assistants (or TAs, or GAs, or Helper People) in the Trial Round, and later in the Spring, for Lab, I thought I would offer a few brief notes as we enter the first phase of this. My apologies if you are in either of my teams and I get repetitive.

1 ) Opening night may feel very strange. Opening night is Thursday, and I’m sorry I sometimes slip into theater lingo when discussing all of this, but honestly for me this whole process is vaguely reminiscent of prepping for a play. So I’ll also say “rehearsals” about the briefing, and if you are a real, live present or former theater person, I’m sorry if you don’t do likewise, and it doesn’t mean that I am not taking this seriously.  (I took plays plenty seriously too!)

So Thursday you will be assigned to your team with whom you’ll begin work on your Trial Round project, during which you’ll complete an analysis and deliver a recommendation to your “client”.  To do so, you’ll be using the mandate and data pack (collated materials gathered by a Lab group last spring) as well as your own, fresh set of eyes and skills.  You’re going from the class where you’ve been all term to this small group, with a Lab Assistant and faculty advisor, and you’ll not be in your big class again until the end of this process.  So in some ways it might suddenly feel like a whole new class.  You may feel discombobulated.  That is understandable, and not cause for panic.

2) You may feel anxiety about who will be in your group, what your project will be, what you will have to contribute to this process; all of the unknowns which will be answered quickly over the next few days.  For now: be open and begin making peace with the lack of control you will have over many parts of this process.  For some of us, myself included, that is a challenge.  Letting go of certain things, which I kind of did by the end of the Trial Round, enabled me to hit the ground running in the spring for Lab.  Use this as your space/time to get the kinks out and figure out how you work best in this very strange, and artificial, situation.  Believe me, having done so led to a much more productive and positive experience for me during the first, “live”, round of Lab.

3)  If your T.A./Lab Assistant uses lingo that sounds slightly different from that which you’ve been using in your class, no worries; it just means they probably took Policy Analysis from another professor.  Dirty little secret, and if you disagree FEEL FREE to throw down in the comments, but we’re all doing different versions of the same thing here.  Trial Round puts you, for the first time, into the position of learning what works best for you.  To accomplish that, you use these tools in TR, so that you can better accomplish the goal of helping your oh-so-real clients in the Spring.

4)  You have a GREAT group of TA/LA’s getting ready to work with you.   We are your first line of assistance and are eager to help you complete a succcessful, and hopefully even POSITIVE experience in the Trial Round.  

Finally, congrats to Laura and her group as rumor has it the Chase competition continues for our trusty New School team.   Bravo, all!

-Kristen

 

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second verse, same as the first

I don’t want to further jinx us but I think after another round of revisions, that our Round 1 brief is finally completed.  Today my new group met with our client (also new to Round 2) and, frankly, I still don’t know exactly what day it is owing to how crazy this week has been.

One thing about transitioning to the second round: if your team was an uncomfortable group for you for some reason, this is your shot to have a good experience and that is a great thing.  However, for those of us whose teams worked really well together and had truly bonded over this intense experience, finding out where we were going on Monday night was a kind of difficult moment.  There was actual sadness, which doesn’t have to do with the new people we’re working with, just realizing that you’re really moving into a new round with all that entails.  A colleague remarked she was actually going through some grief over this and she is not alone!

Still, my new group is coming together nicely and I am excited to have a couple of people with whom I’ve worked before on this team.  It makes for a less stressful experience at the beginning, to be sure, when you’re not as worried about whether people are reliable, decent, or good at their work.  I feel as though I’ve lucked out again–not to say that I was TOO worried about that, but, yes, I was worried about that.  I can now attest that Lab is rough enough without adding a mess of interpersonal issues to mess things up.

The one sort of odd thing about this round, though, is that in terms of the topics to which we were assigned, some of us are working on issues eerily close to those from the first round.  I have no idea if this was deliberate or not, but it has been kind of upsetting for some people.  After all, when you’ve been working so intensely on something for weeks feeling that there is an “end” in sight, to open a new mandate and see familiar language, people, and context can make you feel even more burned out than you might really be!  I mean, do I HAVE anything else to offer on this kind of issue?  I am grappling with that right now and while I can say I will do the best I can, it has made my transition to Round 2 very challenging in terms of excitement and motivation.

Here’s hoping for a saner trip through Labville this time, with less sickness, more yoga, and more sleep!  Ahh, a girl can dream, right?  (Although the yoga part MUST happen.  MUST.)

-Kristen

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I think we’re in good shape!

Nature of the Problem:

Students have to prepare a thoughtful, concise, engaging PowerPoint presentation which will deliver some solutions and analysis to their clients, who were assigned 4? weeks ago.

Underlying Issues:

Susceptibility of bodies to prolonged virus exposure; crowded space/working conditions; having more issues to discuss and analyze than hours available to do so; fatigue; emotional stress; anxiety over different professors’ different ways of doing things (even though we’re all doing the same thing)

Related Issues:

value of graduate education, length of commuting times to Queens, New Jersey, Brooklyn, malfunctioning MTA/NJ Transit/PATH/MetroNorth, desire for a graduate nap room/infirmary/kitchen/bar, expense of graduate housing, anxiety over any and all employment prospects

Recommendation:

You got me.  Keep on keeping on, and for god’s sake keep some patience and humor. 

********************

You know, if I had mad skillz I’d craft a matrix for you all, which would just serve to get an ooooh and aaaaah from people like me, who, when a prospective student, assumed that somehow by the time this whole “Lab” experience took place, I would feel so transformed and competent that I would say that while challenging, Lab is like that annoying computer problem at work–something to be dealt and dispensed with, and no big deal.

Instead, we’re worried we’re not where we need to be, then get excited thinking we’ve Figured It Out (HA! behold our brilliance!)–and then we cycle right back to worry.

You do a first rehearsal of your presentation, and then the questions begin, and there are many.  Right then is about when you panic, or stall, thinking  why was that again? and YES we know we have to fix that typo (insert bratty eyeroll from KD, yes, I own it and I apologize).  Meanwhile, if you’re me you have just hacked up nothing good on a raw throat and are so tired you don’t remember the contents of your own iPod, much less why That Great Idea is So Great.  I had some idea as to what I was personally saying, but mostly kept thinking, I’m not “there” yet–I still need to rethink and chop this some more, to get to the essence of the point, and also, frankly, I WANT TO SIT DOWN.

After this first run through, which takes a long time, you go back and start from Slide 1, and work your way through.  Right now that’s what we’re doing, and while on the one hand it is in the realm of telling a story, a process that I love and understand, on the other it’s about data and analysis and the technical side of policy analysis with which we engaged last term.

I am just in no place to evaluate what is happening procedurally right now.  But I can report, happily, that in the midst of a lot of frustration and hard work, we are laughing a lot as a team, too.   Which is good, because if I had to stifle the wacky for this long under these conditions, things would be quite miserable.

-Kristen

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sick and tired…

Yes, my friends, that is where your faithful pals and colleagues have been in policy-land: sick and very very tired.

Word of warning: there are now so many rhinoviruses (sounds more menacing than “germs”, doesn’t it?) floating around the Milano building that I would not blink if the heretofore unaffected started sporting scary spaceman outfits, so as to avoid the pestilence.

Maybe my perspective is skewed (entirely plausible, since I am really going only on personal and anecdotal evidence, as well as, you know, Facebook) but first we hit the wall of tired, and then fell limply to a pile of kleenex.  Or something.  Basically, we’re all working 24/7 with our groups, assembling research (even when you know that you don’t have time to do more, there are always these tantalizing reminders of your project, everywhere you go, all day long, prompting you to KEEP GOING past the point of reason) and hopefully analyzing/preparing briefings/assembling our many future documents.

I don’t know.  It’s hard to sum up in any sort of interesting way, because frankly, I’m resisting the temptation to talk more about MY project right now, but we really have gotten to a point where we’re breathing this, and dreaming it, as well as hoping that our solutions are going to be useful in some way.  This is the sort of thing that leaves you very drained, but hopefully feeling very proud about too.  I’m joking about the sickness going around because it’s to be expected under the circumstances, and also, what better bonding moment can you have than diverting attention from The Project to fetch more tissue/handkerchiefs, more tea, and share home remedies?  I’ve just learned about one involving tea with raspberry jam and some sort of liquor, and if it weren’t for the person’s grandma who makes it living all the way in the Ukraine, I’d totally be swilling it by now.  I mean, doesn’t that sound good?   Someone else swears by Sudafed, which makes me so crazed that I’d talk even more than I do now, and now?  Now I talk too much because that is what happens when I’m tired–I babble.  It’s truly unfortunate, and I have apologized many times.  In that sense a sore throat is a small blessing for others because I can’t do it. 

I am enjoying an evening of obsessing over finding some graphics that are really specific (oh, believe you me, I know what I am looking for, internets) for…I’m not even sure.  Just in case.  Whatever.  I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of it during our late night meeting tomorrow.

Carry on, ya’ll.  And to our friends Out There??  We do miss you.  And we will see you…well, honestly probably not until Spring Break or May, depending.  But when we’re not dreaming about Lab, we’re totally thinking of you.  Honest.

-KD

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