Interviews are Lined Up

In two of my courses I have interviews that need to be done. Thankfully, they are both scheduled next week: regarding the Eastside Streetcar will be on Tuesday and then regarding Active Transportation in East Portland will be on Thursday. I feel incredibly lucky with both of these; I was practically handed the interview for East Portland, and Sy, my professor in History & Theory, pointed out City of Portland employees that had graduated from the MURP program and would thus be amenable to assisting current students. It does mean I will be busy getting questions ready for the interviews, and then the post-interview analysis, however I will not need an extension on the due date, which I would imagine many of my colleagues will require.

Since I am a forward looking guy, I have identified which classes I will be taking next term. Here's how it looks:

USP 510 Sustainable Transportation
USP 535 Planning Methods II
USP 541 Dynamics of the Planning Practice
USP 549 Regional Planning & Metropolitan Growth Management

This will be a total of 13 credits as opposed to the 12 credits I am currently taking this term. The only class that might get changed is Sustainable Transportation if I am advised that I ought to take other transportation related classes first. I am excited about the first and last course mentioned, not so much about the middle two. I am only taking those because they are required. My hope is that these courses will help prepare me for an internships this summer and next year.

Speaking of internships, Annie's dad and a long range planner for the City of Bend are coming up to Portland for a conference in a few weeks, and I will get a chance to meet the long range planner. Ideally I will make a contact in the field and potentially use that to get a job or an internship, even if it's short term. My Uncle Bob works in the construction field and knows people that would be beneficial for me to get in contact with, however despite his repeated offerings of asking around on my behalf, he has never gotten back to me with anything.

I feel slightly less overwhelmed with school then I did about a week ago. Getting the interviews in place was a big part of my feeling of relief in this regard. There's also something about knowing that soon I will be signing up for next term's classes and will thus being making significant progress in completing the program.

Phase 1 of the Family Activity Study winds down

Phase 1 of the Family Activity Study that I am a research assistant for is drawing to a close. The last day of data collection is November 7, and the last day for people to go out and pick up equipment from the families is November 8. I have been trying hard the past few days to squeeze some more families in, but it's been difficult since we are down to only 20 prospective families for the 3-4 remaining slots. This may sound like a lot, but most of the remaining families have been lingering in our prospects list for a couple of months and haven't called back after as many as the eight or nine messages I have left.

With the end of this phase means that what I do as an assistant will markedly change. Tomorrow will probably be the last day that I work the phones and try to recruit families. What will probably happen next is that I will help input information from the completed surveys into a database. That task is going to be extremely tedious, although it sounds like they will try to pay some hourly undergraduates to do it. They may have me be part of the crew that audits street segments to quantify how walkable and bikeable they are, or I may get shifted over to a new project and a new study. I would like to stay on with the study, but would be happy with a change too.

Interviews galore

This most recent week of school has brought a new challenge: finding people to interview. For History & Theory, I need to interview an official with involvement in the recently completed plan for extending the Portland Streetcar, and in Methods, I need to interview a tenant in East Portland. Both of these tasks are rather vague, particularly the second one, where it's pretty much all on me to find the appropriate people, ask the right questions, and draw some coherent, meaningful conclusions. This is challenging for me since I have never liked having to cold call people for something they may not want to do. I am not nearly as uncomfortable with the idea as I once was; between calling for a political campaign and recruiting families for the Family Activity Study, I am more experienced with that sort of thing now. The problem with this is that unlike those other tasks, I don't have a readily assembled list of people that are amenable to the task at hand.

Regarding the Streetcar, I started off with Portland Streetcar Inc., the non-profit the city contracted with to run and operate it. Unfortunately I quickly ran into a roadblock, the person there I was directed to talk to has already been interviewed by my other group members. I shifted gears this afternoon and emailed Metro, the regional planning organization that is involved with the potential project to extend the Portland Streetcar to the affluent suburb of Lake Oswego. Hopefully somebody there can make some time for me and offer a different perspective.

With the Methods interview, I need to interview a tenant, i.e. somebody renting in East Portland, about their views on active transportation (cycling and walking). East Portland is a huge chunk of the city, and renters make up about 40% of the population, so in theory most people qualify as interviewees. My solution is to try and get in contact with the head of a neighborhood organization in East Portland, and see if they could put me in contact with a renter that is active within the group. My thinking is that if they are active in their neighborhood, that they will see it as an opportunity to make their concerns regarding active transportation known. The sorts of questions I need to ask for this interview are less clear than the other one. Thankfully, the report on the interview is due in about four weeks and the professor should give us better guidance in the mean time.

Ponderings

I have decided for myself, that I need to continue to read for leisure, and not essentially give it up during academic terms as I have done in the past. This serves multiple purposes, for starters, gives me something to help me wind down at the end of the day. My interest in mostly reading non-fiction is probably puzzling to most people, however I do thoroughly enjoy learning more about my other interest areas, which right now are primarily U.S. politics and space exploration. I love urban planning; but not so much that it should crowd out my other interests. I will need to get on top of my required readings in order to not feel guilty when I do my leisure reading. To that end, I will try to be proactive like I was this week and get on top of the weekly reading right away so that it's done and over with.

I have also realized that I am ready to join the workforce again. This won't happen for quite some time, as I am not slated to graduate until June of next year. I enjoy academia, learning and all that, however it has become clear that a career in it is not quite for me. The cost-benefit analysis certainly does not bear out pursuing a PhD in lieu of immediately re-joining the workforce once I have my MURP completed. I am getting a little tired of doing creative stuff with my finances due to my being at the mercy of slow to pay out student loans and GI Bill benefits. I welcome a regular and steady paycheck thankyouverymuch. This does not mean that I want to quit school or anything like that, it's more that it means I will be excited for the possibilities when I am on the other side.

Speaking of on the other side, I hope to put together a body of internship experiences that is both instructive and helps me build connections for future employment opportunities. The MURP program is incredibly Portland-centric, this is good and bad, good in that Portland has a solid tradition of smart planning, but bad in that there are a lot of other places that need planners then just Portland. Rather than do what some students do and primarily intern within the city, I want to get some experiences outside. I am open to living in Washington when school is over, so I think it would behoove me to get a little internship time with Clark County, the City of Vancouver, or even C-Tran. Maybe here and there I can get some experience in Bend through Annie's dad's friend in Long-Range Planning there. I could try one of the growing suburbs here like Gresham, Happy Valley, or else Clackamas County (provided they don't blow me off again). The majority of my fellow students love Portland and want to stay here, meaning that there will be fierce competition for entry level jobs. I want to differentiate myself from that and give myself more options. There is a requirement for me to get 400 hours of internship experience, some of which my GRA will count towards. I want to turn this requirement into an opportunity and in turn give myself plenty of options for when I am done with school.

Week 2 begins

Today marked the beginning of the second week of the term, although it doesn't feel like it yet because I don't have any actual classes until tomorrow.

I'm not sure where I am at in regards to how I feel about graduate school thus far - and that's probably what has me off kilter. After begin confident that this was the right, best choice, I can't help but wonder if it truly was and if I would have been better served by just working first, provided that I could find a job, or even pursued my other options harder, i.e. waited out UW on their waitlist, or stuck with the more familiar UO in Eugene. I am not sure why I am second guessing myself now; perhaps school becoming a reality has brought the possibilities that can spring from it back down to earth. I don't know.

I think part of my problem is the cultural shift. I don't ride a bike everywhere nor do I believe that solution to all transportation problems must include more bike lanes and paths. I don't alternate between coffee at local shops with water bottles adorned with stickers of self expression on them; I drink soda. It almost appears that Timbuk2 messenger bags are part of the required uniform, yet I still shoulder my six year old Targus backpack. These differences of course are largely aesthetic, but I do know that they will go deeper and may make it more challenging to find like-minded acquaintances and friends.

Academics too are a big shift. It's all about group projects here. I knew that coming in, so it's no surprise. Still, there are group projects for things that in my opinion should not be. It's hard for me to feel that competitive, perfectionist focus that made me such a good student at CCSU, when the lines between what's my work and "our" work will be so blurred. The workload doesn't seem to be too bad with a focus on short technical memos rather than large papers. It is complicated by the fact that I find the instructions on the various assignments to be confusing and it's unclear how these memos are supposed to come together. Most of my confusion and frustration are related to Methods and History & Theory of Planning. Thankfully my Econ professor thus far seems to be using a style that's much more in tune with what I am comfortable with, so at least there's that.

My research assistantship is going alright. Flyering is getting old, but it should be done Wednesday. Doing phone calls for scheduling families for the study can also wear on me if I have to go more than a few hours at a shot. Speaking of hours, I am irritated with how flexible my work schedule is. It's not entirely clear when and how long I need to be there. I dictate when I arrive and leave and how much work I do. Joe, the PhD in charge, always seems thankful for my work, however I wonder if I am doing enough work, because he and Holly put way more than their FTE hours. I am slated for .35, or 14 hours a week. Joe made it sound like that was sort of an average, that sometimes it's much higher and sometimes it's a lot lower. Call me cheap, but I like to get compensated for what I do and am not too keen on overloading on GRA hours for the same pay, particularly since it will infringe on my study (and sanity) time. Whatever the case is, I did let Joe know that I wanted him to give me some sort of framework for a schedule, that I need feedback on whether or not my amount of work is living up to expectations. It's funny how sometimes I miss the rigid and crystal clear managerial methods that my supervisors in the Navy employed.

I'll hit my groove at some point. I am not helped by the fact that PSU still hasn't certified me to the VA. Translated to English: this means I won't get paid for several more weeks, maybe even a month. It will eventually happen, but for now I will have to continue to carry a much larger balance on my credit card than I am comfortable with. Once that gets resolved, there will be some uncertainty that will go away.