Went to the capitol today and talked to one of my senator's staff members. It was a good bit nerve-racking since I couldn't read how they felt about the issues we presented until right at the end where they shared the senator's current priorities and what they thought might not pass.
Also my first time in a rally! Voice is kinda shot, but it was fun! God I think I love chants now lmaooo. Got me all fired up! Y'all I'm so ready to start a rally of my own next legislative session.
And in between events, I got some work done on my Japanese curriculum. I decided that I don't want to treat it like a real class, but more so a hobby I am strict on doing every day.
Here's a bit of what I have so far. So there are subjects with various lessons in them. I referenced some actual Japanese class topics for those. Then, referencing my Japanese class, I just came up with some activities that would be fun to do while trying to learn in specific subjects.
In terms of structure, I think to keep myself engaged, I might just allow myself to pick whatever subject I want for the week or so.
Journaling for the day. Highlighting new words/words I barely remember so I can go back to them later.
More conference! If I'm being honest, I originally wasn't a fan of chants. I know they're important, but I kinda thought they were a bit cheesy. This one changed my mind though. Definitely going to use it's call-and-response for the rallies I'm planning to do.
We planned a good bit of lobbying today. I need to write up my testimonial for the meeting with my senator's staff. I'll be talking about the SAVE Act and why it kinda really sucks, aiming to address a problem that doesn't exist. It's a direct attack on young voters and it needs to die. Funnily enough (not very funny but whatever), it's currently being debated and will most likely continue to be debated when I get to the capitol. Go talk to your senators y'all, especially those of you who think your legislators might vote for it to pass.
Moving on for now! There was a gala and I sorely mistook the dress code. Moments before disaster pic up there. People said it looked nice, but I felt like the lone queer guy who walked into the wrong convention. Please don't look too close lol
And I woke up a bit late so didn't get time to journal unfortunately, but tomorrow the last day of my first conference of the trip, so hopefully I'll have time on the train to actually study and get student org things down
I don't believe I've been on a train before, so I'm very excited.
For lobbying, I'm not too worried about it since my senator seems to be very open about supporting our causes. I'm more so worried about some other states.
Personally, I feel like the most important day of lobbying I did was when I spoke to a district senator that directly opposed what I was fighting for. I will always resent myself for not pushing further, as I feel like I'm too used to agreeing with people.
I need to get myself together. It never feels like there's enough people willing to do this with me, like I could be calling out the first part of that chant in a pitch black room waiting for the response, not knowing if it'll ever come.
Conference again. A bit of a long day, but we got let out early and had dinner with another student organization. Then we walked around the city for a good bit. And while the advisors took a taxi back, me and a friend rented one of those bikes that are just placed around and took that back. I have never been on the back of an electric bike and it was terrifying, especially when we rode in the bike lane.
Did some Japanese practice, though not a lot of studying. I'll have to go back to consuming more vocabs soon.
Also! One of the workshops at the conference was very motivating, so I made a new notes document and excel sheet to track attendance for my student org to see who we need to contact to send a representative. There's a lot of ways I want to improve what we have, and I only have so much time.
Goals for tomorrow:
Light Japanese studying (adjectives & sentence structure)
Finish student organization meeting notes
Talk to the marketing contact to help create a poster
Get started on the student organization brochure
Send an email to the other state's student organization
Find my headphones :''(((((
More Japanese journaling with awful grammar and the like. It's been really fun though.
I've also been thinking about my student org a bit more. There's so much I need to do before the year ends. I need people to continue to fight for change even when I'm gone. I need assurance that they'll keep trying to bring back funding for my program. Because it'll be a warm day in hell for my legislature if my baby brother doesn't get to have the same opportunities I've had with my tuition-paying program.
Planting the tree so someone else can rest in the shade and all that.
Since I am on the governing council, I got to go to a lovely 2 hour meeting that turned into a 3 hour discussion. Was dumb and forgot to bring my laptop, so I'll have to consolidate my paper notes for next meeting. I think it was the most productive meeting we've had. Props to the guy next to me who just motioned to temporarily suspend a portion of Robert's Rules for that meeting since it was honestly just weighing us down.
I usually don't like talking in those meetings until I have a full solution for whatever problem we're facing, but I really need to get over that if I want people to at least consider a solution.
Anyways, this morning I woke up kinda late. Tried to get some journaling in Japanese done for that morning, but I got distracted on trying to fix my mistakes from what I wrote on the plane yesterday since I couldn't open any dictionary.
If you know Japanese, feel free to laugh or give advice if you'd be so kind. My handwriting and grammar are probably atrocious lmao. I was trying to see how much I remembered from when I was actively studying, so it probably reads like a caveman grunting out words without a semblance of coherent sentence structures.
Also taxied to Union Station and walked around. My picture on the right is kinda bad, but that is a Fox News building. That realization was like a jolt to the stomach lol. Like if I walked in there, it'd be bad news bears. Never had a place like that back home that would be so against my existence. Interesting experience.
And I networked quite a bit today!! Usually I kick myself after conferences for not networking enough, so I tried to do better this time around.
Actually got to sit down for a one-to-one chat with one student leader to talk about delegations and how to bring campuses to the nationwide org by bringing action from the org to the campuses.
I also introduced myself to an advisor from another state's student org which is very similar to mine! I'm hoping they can get me in contact with the leadership team of the org themselves so we can talk about our experiences and how we can help each other.
Tomorrow, my goal is to talk with some campuses that aren't a member of the big nationwide organization and ask what they would want from it.
Spring break is two weeks long for us this year! Unfortunately, I'll be at conferences for a whole week of that and at work for two more days. I'm glad I get to go, but a long break would've been nice lol
BUT! I won't let that stop me from getting things done this break.
Goals:
Read ahead for my spring quarter engineering physics class
Make some notes for my differential equations class next quarter
Make the brochure for my student organization so campuses can share it with their students
Talk with the rest of the student organization's leadership team to have a poster for the org made and distributed on campuses around the state by the start of next quarter
Draft the itinerary for the workshops I plan to do for the student organization
Get at least five digital drawings finished and ready for the art market I applied to vendor at
Get back into learning Japanese & make my own curriculum for spring quarter
Debated on whether or not to do an entry for the day since Thursdays are my very busy days and I don't usually get time to study, but thought I might as well.
I did a good amount of work on my computer science final project then sent it off to my cs partner to add whatever they wanted to. The rubric seemed pretty loose, so as long as our code works, I'm not too worried. Would preferably like to get it done by tomorrow so I mentally check it off my list.
Had our last physics lecture for the quarter today. I felt kinda bad because I was falling asleep through half of it, and I'm in the front row so my professor definitely could see it. Maybe I should reevaluate coming to campus at like 8am when I have to stay until 8. Also probably didn't help I stayed up until 3 trying to study the night before.
I'm a mess and finals haven't even started lol
I'm probably going to try to stay up (again) and get some review done for calculus. I'm not confident at all about taking normal vectors so I really have to fix that now.
Also, I have a student organization meeting tomorrow. The president has just informed me he won't be there to facilitate the meeting, so it's up to me as the vice president to take his place. I'd like to think I'm not too terrible at facilitating meetings, but it's still not my favorite thing to do. I much prefer taking minutes.
Got a few assignments done and started that morning, but not as many as I'd like. Since class was cancelled, I decided to stay in until 12 or so before heading onto campus.
I thought I'd take the bus this time as to not bother my sister. Terrible idea. Rain is pouring, wind is gone wild. I thought it was neat to have cheap, nice looking shoes bc I don't like spending money. Turns out. No. Socks are soaked in like three minutes. It's a half mile walk uphill to the bus stop lmao
Anyways, spent my evening going over physics assignments and starting on my computer science final project. I'm still in a pre-req class I need to do before a Java programming for engineers class, which means it's just fun shapes and colors and functions for now. It's a bit boring, but also a nice change of pace from whatever the hell is going on in calc III.
Computer science & physics time
fighting for my life against this wind and rain and bro's just sitting there
Also got to talking with new students about my student organization's big meeting where we discuss legislative issues to lobby for during the next legislative session. I'm very excited about that and I'm hoping to get returning students interested. The turnover rate for student positions in community colleges makes legislative advocacy a bit difficult, but we're working through it!
Probably going to stay up tonight since both my calc and physics professors are encouraging us to come to class tomorrow with questions. Happy studying y'all!
It's the week before finals, so I have only a few assignments to do. I usually sit at 15 or so, making this a lovely change of pace.
I'll probably fit some more study time in today, Wednesday, and Friday, but I do like using my long days (evening classes) as a reason to settle in at the tutoring centers to get things done.
My physics professor also comes by the stem tutoring center often, so I'll make sure I have questions prepared.
I'm feeling good about this week. Nothing too stressful, just gotta stay focused.
