It's time to wait for the Port of Portland

I have completed my application for the Port of Portland internship and will submit it shortly before the deadline later this afternoon. I am delaying in case the HR rep I spoke to gives me further information on who I should address the cover letter to.

Strangely enough I am not as excited about it as I thought I would have been. This may partly a defense mechanism on my behalf to keep a rejection from stinging like those that I received in June. It may also because I like what I am doing in Bend so much. At one point I had thought that I wouldn't like working at the local level in the city environment, but I am in fact enjoying the variety of things that have to be tackled. The environment is very dynamic and Damian told me he's never been bored there. The Port of Portland would be a bit different likely with less political intrigue and much more stability. My sense of the Port is only from the short time I was there getting a tour from my mentor, so I am aware that there's a good sense that working or interning there might be different than my initial impression.

I think a lot of what I have liked so far with being at the City of Bend is the culture of the office. The Long Range division is small and since everybody there knows what they are doing, the manager is very hands off. In terms of the political spectrum, it also seems like a good fit for me. They all have reasonably progressive values, but are not to the extreme like some in Portland can be. I also mentioned to Damian how I was taken aback at one of my professor's completely dismissive attitude towards any place that wasn't Portland and he actually was able to guess who it was. I am glad that I am not the only person that didn't think he was being a little pompous when making sweeping statements like he has.

I also have a much better sense of how the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) which is a state agency, interacts with the city. It sounds like the pendulum has swung a little too far in the direction of state rather than local control with some members of DLCD wanting to make all the other cities more like Portland. When I asked the staff in Bend if their frustrations meant that working for DLCD would be a bad gig, they insisted that it actually wouldn't be since a person's professional reputation is separate from the agency they work for. Plus, they believe that DLCD is in a transitional phase and that it will eventually resort back to its intended role of provided guidance rather than dictation to cities.

Diving into literature review

One thing that I would have to say about my Master's program at Portland State; it at the very least has prepared me in several ways for my internship. Right now I am doing a literature review of transit-oriented development, finding out what works and what doesn't so that the City of Bend can show the state how it will reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) with the addition of new land into the urban growth boundary (UGB). I am aware that that is quite technical, but unfortunately that's about as simple as I can make it. Literature review is a task more associated with academic research, but unlike other fields, planning academic research is actually fairly applicable to the real world. Thus I have already reviewed and read a lot of journal articles about the topic and tried to summarize the important parts so that it will eventually inform the City about what to do.

The lit review has been fine as it is within my capabilities and it is a big enough undertaking that I never truly have nothing to do. On the flip side, I would like to be involved with more meetings and tasks that involve other people or collaboration. Sitting in a cubicle for nearly 7 hours straight isn't exciting even if the work is interesting.

I had taken it upon myself to add bicycle route data for Bend into Google Map Maker since there was very little of it before and because it was something I could churn out in a few hours. I was making changes route by route based upon a transportation plan from 2006. I actually was nearly done with it before Brian decided to check with Colleen in the GIS department. She did a little research and found out what Google is looking for so that she could just upload the official data directly to them to ensure accuracy. This of course would have been the way to do it initially, but I could not find where to upload ESRI shapefiles. My pawprints will not be on the final data that Google Maps incorporates into its bicycle route and trails layers but at least I can say that I was a contributing factor in spurring it on. Brian noted that this ball wouldn't be rolling if I hadn't brought it to light and he joked that I delegated this task up to Colleen. I had enjoyed working in Google Map Maker and am just a little disappointed that it's not ultimately me dealing with Google. When it comes time for me to denote my experience on my resume, I think I can fairly say that I assisted or contributed to this effort.

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I know that a significant portion or even an outright majority of what a person learns in an internship is beyond technical skills or makes for good bullets on a resume. I am trying where possible to learn life lessons, career lessons and glean what I can from the knowledge of the people around me. Thanks to all of the layoffs everybody left in Long Range Planning has been in the business for quite some time and has a wealth of wisdom. I got to talking to Damian, who isn't quite as easy to talk to as Brian due to the way he likes to joke around, and he let me know that he's never been bored in his current job or his previous job with Deschutes County. He's been with the City of Bend for 7 years and was with Deschutes County for 10, so that bodes well for me having a career in work that stays interesting. His career also seems to mimic what I have seen from others: his first few years after school he worked in a few different positions and then after that he entered a long period of stability. I hope that my career can resemble something like that.

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The deadline for a Transportation Planner Internship with the Port of Portland is on August 5. They didn't state anywhere that a cover letter or resume was required but I decided to do both of them just in case. This is a paid position, so I assume that the procedure for hiring would be quite similar to hiring a full time employee. Updating my resume to reflect my short time here in Bend was quick; tweaking my cover letter has not been so quick. I don't normally consider myself an overly wordy person so it comes as a bit of a surprise that my cover letter is on the long side and it needs to be pared down. I have an extremely strong genuine interest both in this internship and with getting my foot in the door with the Port of Portland and I hope that that comes through in the cover letter. It's not just that I want an internship badly; I want this internship.

After my stumbles with Washington County and especially with Metro earlier this summer my expectations have been tempered with respect to my viability for positions. Regardless of what happens here, there will still be plenty of reasonable opportunities for me in the next few months that would be a good usage of my remaining time in graduate school.