End of the Semester Crunch

The end of the semester is in sight, and I have a lot of work to do. I don’t foresee myself writing in the blog very extensively in the next month. I’m going to do a rundown/update of what I am working on now and what’s coming up.

Postcard Project -Everything is moving along well with the postcard project. I will be in India at the very end of May through mid-July to deliver the postcards that Santa Antia La Union in Guatemala wrote to Sanjukta Vikas Cooperative in Darjeeling and collect responses. The fonts problem is fixed. Once I actually got the fonts and put them in the right support folders, everything was good to go. Maral Minassian, a Design & Technology graduate student, is designing the booklet of postcards with the translations. (Congratulations to Maral for receiving an OSI fellowship to do design work for an NGO in Kyrgyzstan this summer!) The Parsons Student Senate and the Eugene Lang Student Union are funding the printing of the booklets in anticipation of events at school about the project in the fall. The programming, including an exhibition and a panel discussion about community oriented arts and media projects, is being planned in collaboration with the student group Paper Planez, which runs youth photography workshops locally and internationally.

New Orleans Chase Competition – The report is due in a week. We have designed and developed a financing plan for a mixed income residential building in conjunction with an NGO in New Orleans. I have been in three to five meetings a week about this for the past month as I am the main liaison person. I am excited about this roll after switching gears following our first trip to New Orleans. I am learning about project management as I help coordinate groups of people who are working very differently from each other on components of the same project. We have the finance experts, the graphic designers, and the architects. Everyone speaks a different language and works on a different schedule. (The architects are my favorite. sh… don’t tell anyone.) I am impressed with everyone’s work. The financing is amazingly complicated and successful. A lot has to be compensated for given the terrible condition of the economy. The architects are doing their thing, working nearly non-stop to develop imaginative and innovative systems that are responsive to the environment in New Orleans and the diverse population the building will serve. The graphic designers are making the report look light years better than any of the previous reports. Competition is stiff. We’ll be presenting in the final round (provided we make it, which we will) in the first week of May in New Orleans.

Student Government – I have been heavily involved in student government this year, both at the level of Parsons and at the university wide level. There is so much going on with this I don’t know where to start. The bottom line is that the New School is shaping up to have active student government bodies across the university for the first time anyone remembers. Elections are happening right now for next year’s session of the University Student Senate (yes, I’m running). For the remainder for the semester, we are focused on changing the constitution based on our experience this year, developing a budget plan for next year, planning a graduate student social, and celebrating our victory at securing 24-hour access to the main computer labs for a longer period before finals this year (usually it’s only one week of 25-hour access, which is just plain inconsiderate). Through the Parsons Student Senate, we have made amazing progress with the murals petition. The University Curatorial Committee is taking on two students members, and we are confident that they will be able to convince the committee to change out the murals for other artwork by the beginning of next semester. Parsons Student Senate will be holding a publications meeting to address the large number of applications to the senate for funding of print publications. There are also a few events in the works, like a concert and a catered study break.

History Thesis – Still working on it. :)

Those are the big ones. I am trying to get my summer plans together, as Ethiopia and Brazil are on the slate as well as India. I’ll keep you posted on that as things develop. Now, I’m off to show that history thesis some love.