Last project for the Swearer Centre + 3 more weeks + Russell Arben Fox on health care reform

I just got done with the second draft of my last big project for the Swearer Centre for Public Service - altering and writing prefaces for the readings in the supplemental reading packet for next year's College Guides. Basically, my job was to (a) read the readings, (b) organise them in a user-friendly way and (c) explain and analyse briefly the major issues they cover. Most of the writings were intended for an academic audience, which doesn't present a problem in itself given that I'm a recent college graduate, but making the readings relevant to what we College Guides do is another task altogether. Advising high-school students on college access is a surprisingly complex topic, and the big picture isn't always easy to see - something which tended to paralyse me when I was actually doing it during the school year.

I ended up using the scheme my predecessors had laid out, with the categories: barriers to college access, family engagement, counselling, college-going culture and student perspectives. There was a lot of interesting material on all of these topics, though the best material came from Kathleen Cushman's book Fires in the Bathroom. I highly recommend it for anyone going into education - though at this point it may be cliche to say so, it really ought to be a truism that the perspective on education that matters most is that of the students themselves, and it's good to have a resource that takes that truth as its MO by adopting students as co-authors!

It was instructive for me to try to take writings in an academic jargon in which I'm fairly well-versed and attempt to distil from them something thought-provoking and practical, with a low barrier to access but without dumbing it down. And it deserved to be done - we are talking about a project with humanitarian goals and human consequences (we are trying to equip young people who've had rough breaks with the educational tools and social capital they need to have a greater range of options in the economy and in the society). The language that we use in our training and in our service should be more humane as well. Office work doesn't compare with being at the school working with students, but I definitely felt as though I was accomplishing something here.

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In other news, three weeks to Kazakhstan, and I'm completely psyched! I've got most of my Peace Corps paperwork squared away, I'll get my suitcase back soon from repairs (again), and then I can begin packing in earnest. I'm going to need to print off all the photos I've taken, as well - I'll see if I can't start doing that this week. Also, Russian practice is proceeding slowly, sad to say... I can only take so much of Rosetta Stone's lamentable voice-recognition plug-in on any given day. The family's heading back up to the farm in Vermont this weekend to visit the extended family one last time before I leave for Kazakhstan and my sister leaves for college, so I may be incommunicado Saturday and Sunday.

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Also, what Dr Fox said. We need a plan which provides us with meaningful improvement over what we have now, because the fact that we have a system which leaves 47 million poor Americans without insurance, such that they have to go to emergency rooms for last-ditch care, is simply not acceptable. (He also makes the much-needed point that public policy is only half the picture here: as a society we will ultimately have the reciprocal responsibility to cultivate healthier and more sustainable living habits.)

I ask my readers: please donate to Health Care for America Now or call your Representatives and Senators (HCAN has set up a toll-free line for advocacy calls) to voice your support of legislation that will guarantee a humane basic minimum of health insurance coverage for all Americans.

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