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Wednesday, July 16th, 2003
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12:59a - New Job
My friend Rachel, who works for the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, emailed me two weeks ago. She asked if I would come in and help her colleague Beth with some ideas for the World Migration/Immigration theme in the center's tolerance/pluralism curriculum, which is used by elementary schools from the New York City to the Connecticut suburbs. I was only partially distracted by the view; the office is on the 35th floor of the Empire State Building.
We chatted productively for a couple of hours, about what sort of stories to use, about how we can't (because of teachers and parents) really use modern examples for examples of people who migrate because of religious persecution, about how to (and how not to) personalize the curriculum, i.e. asking "where are you from?" and mistakenly expecting the same sorts of answers from kids in the Lower East Side and Long Island.
Anyway, I've been invited back, this time for a temporary internship. I will go there, probably for 10 hours a week over the next couple of weeks, do research (largely with Google I'm sure), and come up with more ideas with Beth. This should be quite fun. Not everybody gets to work in the Empire State Building, or come up with things that thousands of elementary school kids will look at next year. Also, even if it doesn't pay (which it may), it will be great on my résumé. I will have actually done something related to my degree before I graduate.
This is of course supplemental to my more permanent position at Barnes and Noble, which, while it's not as rewarding, does pay (at least a little bit).
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8:36p - 300 blocks a day keeps... well, it does something
I am currently at Bobst. I walked here because Transnational Villagers, a book that has been useful for my summer research paper, was recalled by another library user. I only had about $2.50 in change at home (no bills until I get paid on Friday), and I had to make quite a few copies from the book, so I walked here instead of taking the bus. I also have to walk back, walk to the Empire State Building for first job tomorrow, walk to Barnes and Noble for second job, walk home, then walk back to work the next morning. Or I may ask to borrow some money. Anyway, at least the walking that I will have done from this afternoon to tomorrow morning will be about 440 blocks, or 22 miles.
It's not really that tiring, since I've been working up to it by walking long distances every day, either for work or for pleasure (yesterday I walked to New Jersey), but it has still been nice to sit down and rest in Bobst for the last couple of hours. This computer chair is quite comfortable compared to the options I have at home.
I logged into Google Answers and answered a question about children below the poverty line in New York City, but unfortunately the customer is not satisfied with census data and wants something newer. Note: this is a $3.00 question, which basically means it should be answerable with a minimum of online research. Any newer data about the number of children below the poverty line in NYC would necessarily be estimates based on the 2000 Census or be from much larger samples done in hard-to-find studies.
Tomorrow I start the research for Tanenbaum. I was supposed to start it today but I missed my alarm. This was very disappointing.
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