Author: studentservices

These days, my day starts roughly between the hours of 3-5am. My cat B.B. gets up and generally thinks, with his 5 and ½ month old brain, that if he’s up, we must want to be up. So I generally hit snooze on the alarm clock on my phone until almost 7am, roll out of bed and start the shower. It takes 5 minutes to heat up and so do I, so I hop back in bed. After the shower, there’s a whirlwind of coffee and early morning lunch making and litter box changing and reading last minute stuff before hopping in the car to go to school. If we’re in separate cars, I’ll try to race Martina to school whilst taking the scenic route. I lose every time, but then I get to listen to a podcast for 10 minutes or so. Freakonomics is my favorite, but This American life is just as good if the former still has to download. I try to get to school within 5 minutes of the change of classes to maximize my chances of snagging a student parking space. Otherwise I’m changing spots every 2 hours until the early afternoon. And then of course it’s something; I’m in class, I’m in a meeting, I’m at work, and I’m coordinating club events and activities. I find a certain kind of satisfaction in what I would call “good busy”, which basically means my day is tight – very little time to lollygag in the middle of the day leaves even less time to follow my wanderlust for adventure. I tell myself we’ll have time to recapture those moments in different ways soon enough and I keep my head on straight in the inbetween time. My day winds down around 9-12 at night, leaving just enough time to end the day right. Dinner, dessert, dessert, dessert, and family style cuddles before hitting repeat in the morning.

That’s a day in the life.

My day cannot start without that first cup of coffee, lovingly brewed in the French Press that has managed to stick with me through 4 countries, six cities and 14 moves. The ritual of putting on the kettle, grinding the coffee, and preparing the French Press, then hopping back into the warmth of my bed for a few minutes while I wait for the kettle to whistle, provides the perfect amount of time to contemplate my plan of action for the day.

And oh do you need a plan of action at MIIS. Having worked for 10+ years traveling frequently between the US and field offices I thought grad school in a small, coastal town would be my opportunity to slow down, take some time out and focus. Ha! Grad school is like having five bosses (or schizophrenia) – you’re mind constantly moving from one subject to the next, pumping out projects that, in the real world, would be implemented over the course of a year or two – not a matter of weeks. Yet despite the frenetic pace I love school. Your primary job is to learn what you want – it’s one of the rare occasions in life when you get to be fully selfish.

After coffee I’m out the door, rushing to get over to CSUMB for my 8am meeting with the Service Learning Institute to discuss a partnership initiative in Costa Rica that I will be focusing on for my MPA capstone. On the drive I marvel at the coastline, the sun glittering off the water, casting its rays through dramatic cloud formations as the morning fog recedes over the rugged hills and sand dunes. I roll down the windows to breathe in the sea air – morning commutes don’t get much better than this.

At CSUMB the Director of the Service Learning Institute and his Associate Director, have another pot of coffee ready as we catch up on new developments and excitedly discuss the work ahead over the next several months. Despite the early hour I feel energized. I wish I could spend the rest of the day here but it’s time to get back to MIIS for my 10am Data Analysis class.

At noon I consider lunch but then remember I have a Skype call with Alfredo…then a group meeting to go over case studies for my 2pm class with Kent…and oh shoot I’ve got to move my car! Lunch may just have to be that bag of trail mix in my glove compartment again…

As I sit down with my group to prepare for what promises to be an intense discussion on power dynamics with Kent Glenzer – we all smile knowingly at each other as we pull up the case – this was a tough one and we’re all a bit sleep deprived but ready to dive in. Donna pulls out her lunch and offers me some – she knows I haven’t eaten. I gratefully accept. This is the best part of the grad school experience – your classmates who quickly become your family and most importantly, your sanity. As we begin to pick apart the case I’m grateful for this feisty, intelligent and passionate group of people, not just for being my friends, but for what I know they will contribute to this world.

As class ends at 3.50 pm my mind has already moved on to the 50+ emails awaiting me in the Frontier Market Scouts inbox as we come to the end of another record application cycle. Working for the Frontier Market Scouts Program has been one of my most rewarding experiences at MIIS. Aside from working with one of the most fun and entrepreneurial teams on campus (you know who you are!), I get to see inspiring social innovation in action, everyday, all over the world.

As I respond to the last email it’s 6pm – just in time to catch the sunset at Asilomar beach – a just reward and needed break before the next round begins….

I seem to always wake up before my alarm goes off. Does that ever happen to anyone else? I always want those last 5 minutes of oblivion before having to face another day. If it’s the weekend, I usually try to lounge about and have a relaxed morning in my bathrobe getting breakfast and tea ready and just enjoying the fact that I don’t have to run off to class somewhere, or a group meeting, or even check my email. If it’s the weekday I am usually running around down to the wire leaving the house 5 minutes before class is supposed to start just because it’s that much harder to get up and I like to give myself 10 minutes just to lay in bed and wake up.

Other than my mornings, one of the things I like most about being at MIIS is that every day, weekday or weekend, is different. Of course there are always classes to go to, group projects to work on and getting outside to do some exercise or go to the garden are always a must. But beyond that every day is different in big and small ways; I never know who I am going to run into on my way to class, what speaker we’ll have on campus, or what new thing I’ll learn that day. I do have the habit of keeping myself pretty busy on a regular basis whether it be with the various club and student activities (Peace Corps, Zumba, MIIS Martial Arts Club, Yoga Club, Global Majority, Gardening, etc.) or just by having to keep up with my email. But lately I have been trying to also make time to just relax and be in the moment.

And then, as if something sensed I needed some (ok, a lot) help with learning how to relax and be present, I met Arnold. I was looking at the SPCA website, as I sometimes do to see which dogs are up for adoption because I really want one but can’t have one right now, and saw a posting for a tortoise that was found wandering around by the road. His picture showed a small round-shelled guy with the most inquisitive face I had ever seen on a reptile. When I told my friend Tanya about him, she was even more excited than I was at the prospect of becoming the proud parent of a tortoise so we went to go visit him. As soon as we saw him wandering around his Rubbermaid container, completely relaxed and oblivious to us being there watching him, we knew he was a keeper. Now I make the time to relax every day by bringing Arnold to the garden at MIIS and just watch him exploring his newfound habitat while I work on my plot. You also have to watch him because he is extremely fast for a tortoise and is perfectly camouflaged with the woodchips and dry grasses around the garden.  I never would have thought that a tortoise would be fun to have as a pet or even painfully adorable to watch but next time you see Arnold in the garden, bring him a dandelion flower and he’ll chomp it to bits in the cutest way possible.  Sometimes we need a reminder to slow down and take a moment, whether its to literally smell some sort of flower or watch a little tortoise navigate his way through different garden plots until he finds his favorite flower. Grad school and all the things that keep us busy are important but the spaces that we make for ourselves in between all those busy moments are the ones that will help us figure out what really is important in life and who we are now and want to become.