A Day In The Life

            For our final post of this period, we are to write about a typical day in the life of our internship.  To me, the typical day is the great thing about my internship; there is no typical day!  As I explained in my earlier post, my co-worker and I are here to work on any project that the Alliance needs us to do.  It is looking that this is going to provide us with quite a variety. 

            To be honest, the internship has started out a little slow, but that was to be expected.  We are piloting a brand new program, and we are kind of making it up as we go.  The first couple weeks were spent relocating, getting settled, and acquiring the equipment and tools necessary for us to begin our work.  (Fore example, it took a couple weeks for us to get computers in the newly refurbished office) 

            We know that we are going to be spending majority of our time working with the cities of Santa Monica and West Hollywood, and the plan was to meet up with city managers and planners as soon as possible.  However, life always seems to happen and our meetings were delayed as understandably, those cities do have other pressing matters that needed their attention.  Because of this, the first couple of weeks were spend doing odd research jobs, and attending community meetings.  This past week however, we were able to meet with the city of Santa Monica, and we are meeting West Hollywood on Thursday.  These meetings have been encouraging, and our work is starting to take off.

            The general idea is for us to do work/research at the California Center office two days a week, and use one day each week to shadow/sit in with city administrators in various departments.  This will give us an inside view as to how the cities are run.  I personally am most excited to be around and observe the city HR managers.  I know that most people roll their eyes when they think of HR, but it is something that really intrigues me.  HR is often given a bad wrap, but perhaps such an education will help me be an asset to HR departments in my future employment to avoid some of the common mistakes. 

            While the three-day plan is our normal outline, we will be also doing special projects for the Alliance that will create a lot of variety in our work.  For example, our first one will involve a large conference that that the Alliance holds every year that invites urban planners and city managers from all over the country.  It should be quite the ordeal as it encompasses the whole Halloween weekend.  And yes, we are also including a Halloween Party!  So for the first time since I was 12, I have to find a costume.  In other words, stay tuned, it promises to be an interesting ride.

Internship Decoded

            Well, I believe that it is about time I expound on what exactly I am doing here in California and what my Internship is all about.  To be honest, it is a rather complicated connection of different organizations and acronyms.  To understand what I am doing, you must understand the relationship ASU has with a non-profit organization called the Alliance for Innovation.  The Alliance national headquarters is located in Phoenix in ASU’s School of Public Affairs.  The Center for Urban Innovation is ASU’s operational link to the Alliance, and supports the programs and publications of the Alliance by conducting research on innovative practices in local governments and the factors that contribute to innovation.  Four Marvin Andrews Fellows are chosen each year from the ASU MPA program and are employed in the Center, assigned to conduct research for the Alliance.

Now that you understand what the Alliance is, I can explain where my job comes in.  It all began in March, when ASU obtained a large office space in Santa Monica, California to serve as its alumni center for Southern California.  The Alliance for Innovation is also partnered with the new California Civic Innovation Project (CCIP), and this new California Center gave the Alliance’s president an idea.  With the new CCIP, as well as the Alliance’s other California interests, why not send two “fellows” to California to do work similar to what the Marvin Andrews Fellows do in Arizona.  So, ASU’s president gave permission, and me and one other MPA student were sent here to California as Santa Monica Fellows, working out of ASU’s California Center.  We are here until Graduation next year, and will be working on projects for the Alliance and the CCIP.  As the program has started to gain some traction, I am extremely excited to get going. 

Here are a couple links if you wish to know more about the organizations:

http://urbaninnovation.asu.edu/alliance-for-innovation

http://ccip.newamerica.net/dashboard

Traffic, Traffic, and more TRAFFIC!!!!

So, last night I pounded out this blog post, but decided I would wait until after a good night sleep to post it.  This was mainly due to the fact that it was not a warm fuzzy type of post.  But after reviewing it again, I have been able to tone it down a bit. 

                As I have now been here for almost a month, I believe that I am transitioning nicely to my new life in California (car break-ins excluded).  The large multi-cultural city is nothing new for me, and in many ways makes me feel more at home.  There is an abundance of places to explore, restaurants to taste, and entertainment to enjoy.  However, there is one thing that I have not been able to adjust to – Traffic.

I HATE being stuck in traffic.  Everyone is used to getting caught in the occasional rush hour traffic.  But here in Los Angeles, rush hour seems to be every hour.  This is what my life has been reduced to:

As the traffic has been bad, my annoyance boiled over last night as I drove to a community council meeting in Hollywood.  The location was 9.2 miles away from my house.  Two weeks before, it had taken me 45 minutes to drive 5 miles in the same general direction, at about the same time of day (6 PM).  But those 5 miles required me to drive past some large freeway on and off ramps that are notoriously bad, as there are a very limited number of streets that allow you to cross the freeways.  Since these 9.2 miles would not take me near any freeway systems, I figured if I left one hour and 15 minutes early, I would be able to get there on time, maybe even a little early.  Boy was I wrong.  I reached the meeting just over an hour and a half after I left my house, an absolutely ridiculous time frame.  9.2 miles…..IN 1 HOUR AND 37 MINUTES!!! 

As time passes by I have begun to realize just how inefficient this city can be.  Because of the constant traffic, there is a limit on the amount of tasks that can be accomplished in a day.  Where 10 miles seemed used to be a short 15 min drive, in LA 10 miles is an activity that requires 3 hours of round trip commuting (this of course does not count the 10 minutes it takes you to find parking within a half mile of your destination).  As I meet more people here, it becomes more apparent that most of the people in LA live within a 5-7 mile bubble.  That is, their life is centered around that 5-7 miles, and the rarely ever leave it unless they are going on vacation, or an occasional special event (Lakers Game, Concert, etc).  When I worked in the credit card industry in Utah, I used to commute 92 miles round trip each day for work, which took less than two hours of my day.  Here in LA, I live 2.9 miles from work, and it usually takes me a half hour to get there: 20 minutes to get passed the freeway, and ten minutes the rest of the way.  I know that my complaining does not change anything, but I just had to get this off my chest.  Sometimes, you just have to vent!  I will however be very interested in hearing the plans these cities have to confront this ever-growing problem.  

Welcome To LA

So I thought I would relay an experience that happened to me a couple weeks ago.  Just a couple days after I moved into my new place, I left the house to notice that my car had been broken into.  I was kind of shocked as we live in a nice little neighborhood, and there are Porsche's, Mercedes', and BMW's parked all up and down the street.  Yet, my car, the second cheapest car on the block (only my roommates 95 Camry is worth less) was broken into.  My stuff was all tossed about, and it seemed that the thief had been in quite a hurry.  I took inventory and found that my iPod and charge cord were gone.  My wallet was gone, and my Bible was gone.  But other than that everything was still there.  Now, my iPod was one of the original series old ones, and can’t really keep a charge for longer than 10 mins if it isn't plugged in, so I was not to broken up about that.  The Bible had been in a carrying case, and so I thought the thief must have hoped it contained something more than just a bible.  My wallet had a bunch of contact/business cards, a few seldom used credit cards, my PADI dive license, and two gift cards.  The gift cards did total about $50, and a replacement PADI license also cost about $50.  So all in all, I was not out much, and I thought it a fitting welcome to the great city of Los Angeles.

Now, even though I wasn't out much, there is always a feeling of violation whenever someone has illegally invaded your personal space.  But here is where the story gets interesting.  About 10 hours after discovering the break in, one of my two roommates was having some friends over for dinner.  The first two guests to arrive remarked that three houses down there was a Bible, carrying case, and loose papers strewn all over the front yard.  Me and my roommate looked at each other and then quickly went down the street to find that the thief had discarded my Bible, carrying case, and loose papers all over the lawn.  He must have started going through it and figured that it did not have any monetary value and just chucked it.  But as interesting as that may be, I could not believe what happened next.

I first need to preface this part with a Facebook complaint.  Did you know that when you check your messages in Facebook, there are actually two message folders?  There is one that has your normal messages that you see, and then there is an "other messages" folder.  The problem with this is that when you get a message that goes into your “other messages” folder, Facebook does not alert you.  I just found this out on Friday, 13 days after my car was broken into.  I happened to be reading a message from a friend, and noticed that I had 67 messages in my "other" folder.  When I opened it up, I had messages dating back 2 years.  Some were from early childhood friends saying things to the effect as "Hey, are you the Travis that was in my 3rd grade class in Egypt?"  But the two most recent messages were from the day after my car was broken into, and they were from someone on my street who had found my wallet in their front yard.  So I contacted the person and they still had my wallet.  I went and retrieved it and found that the only thing missing was the two gift cards.  Everything else was there.  Of course, I had already spent $50 to renew my PADI license.  Had I known about the "other messages" folder, or had Facebook sent alerts for my "other messages", I could have saved $50.  So the moral of this story is to frequently check your "other messages" folder in Facebook.