Beginning of City of Bend Internship

If the first day is any indication, my City of Bend internship should be a lot like the one I had with the State of Connecticut - which is largely a good thing. I am more or less free to come and go when I please, just so long as Brian knows approximately which days I plan on working. He's given me three long term projects for me to look at and given me a choice of them. Here they are in terms of priority level for the City:

1. Work on "efficiency measures" within the current Urban Growth Boundary in Bend. Translation: the state wants to make sure that Bend has a plan to more better utilize space within it's existing boundaries before allowing it to develop in more land. The task given to me is somewhat complex and amorphous, so I am not quite sure how it will turn out.
2. The city currently holds the the Silver rating terms of bicycle friendliness according to the League of American Bicyclists, and for prestige purposes would like to advance to Gold. There's two years before the next round of re-ranking cities, so they'd like to find out how they can do that.
3. The city would like to designate certain street segments bike boulevards - bicycle routes along low speed, low stress residential streets so that people that are new to bicycling or don't want to deal with major roads have an alternative.

Of course among these possible projects, the less important they are, the easier for me they are to do due to my experience with city cycling while in Portland. I am not that big of a cyclist compared to the rest of my cohort in graduate school, but compared to the general public I am probably a bit of an advocate.

It will be fun to apply what I am learning in my graduate program to my hometown. There's something about the personal connection I have with Bend that makes what I will be working on that much more interesting.

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I completed my Air Transport class on Monday. My final grade was an A thanks to a 95 on my term paper and a 97.5 on the final exam. Prior to this I had figured I would be getting an an A- since that is predominantly the grade I had received on all the other assignments. I am quite pleased with the result considering how much trouble I had focusing on getting the paper done.

Working on the paper for the class made it clear that I am ready for my academic career to conclude or at the very least, a real break from school this summer. I want to be working again, making money, feeling like I can make advances with my life and not feel like I have to defer it all. Can't say that the job hunt phase has much appeal.