One Year in One Post

Time to catch up on my blog. It has been over a year since I wrote a post, and a lot has happened in that year. Here is a condensed recap, month-by-month:

December 2010: I did not get the job. It was for the best, but I was pretty upset. I had to reorganize my finals so I could take a family trip to California for a funeral. Christmas was pretty standard- just the way I like it.

January 2011: During the Fall, I was connected with a student at the UO who wanted to talk with me about creating a program for foster alumni on campus. We started meeting regularly to figure out how we could do this, and we were able to pull our resources together to create an advisory team on campus. The advisory team consisted of department heads and major players on campus and our first meeting was in January.

February 2011: In February, I took the GRE. I also spent a significant amount of time meeting with legislators about the tuition waiver bill OFYC drafted and dropped in January. There was a problem with the OFYC chapter I was running in Lane County, so I separated the two groups and called the chapter the Foster Care Advocacy Team (or FCAT).

March 2011: I spent most of March working on FCAT. We planned to host a Sock Drive in April for Child Abuse Awareness Month, and a Foster Care Conference in May for National Foster Care Month. I also bought a new car.

April 2011: The Sock Drive took up most of this month. One of my key FCAT members was supposed to take the lead on the Sock Drive, but she disappeared in the middle of the month after she found out she was pregnant. She married her boyfriend and dropped out of school. I haven't heard from her since.

May 2011: The conference was pushed to June since I spent all my time on the Sock Drive. In May, I heard back from all the schools I applied to and I was accepted to every single one. I thought I would choose the University of Oregon since my whole life was in Eugene, but I ended up choosing the University of Utah.

June 2011: I spent most of June wrapping things up with OFYC and FCAT, and looking for a job and an apartment in Salt Lake City. Our tuition waiver bill passed- a perfect way to retire from OFYC for me. I also hosted the conference during June, and this turned out to be a huge success as well.

July 2011: There were a lot of parties in July. I spent a lot of time at my boss's house since he has been a huge influence in my life over the past 5 years. I worked a lot during this month and applied to a number of jobs in Salt Lake City.

August 2011: I moved to Salt Lake City in the middle of August. My boyfriend and I broke up, as planned, and the transition was really hard for me. The climate in Utah is really dry so I had violent bloody noses for the first couple weeks. I accepted a position in Special Collections at the University of Utah library.

September 2011: I spent most of September at school and at work. My classes aren't very stimulating since I took these classes as an undergraduate, but my classmates are a little bit more intriguing.

October 2011: I decided to apply for a PhD in educational policy and leadership through the U so I could focus my research on retention and higher eduction among underserved youth (especially foster youth and orphans).

November 2011: I went home for Thanksgiving, of course. It was a long drive and exhausting but it all worked out. I enjoy spending time with the family now that I know what to expect. My good friend from high school is getting married in March, so I spent some time with her to talk about the wedding.

I am very happy with my decision to move to Utah. It's a beautiful state and my apartment has a fantastic view of the city scape. The weather is a little colder than what I am used to, but when it snows it's perfect. I'm excited for all the opportunities ahead of me in Salt Lake City!

Until Lambs Become Lions

I totally forgot I keep a blog...

My last post mentioned an amazing job opportunity and that amazing opportunity has turned my life upside-down. A part-time temporary job was offered to me and the plan was that I would work through my summer break and the job would be finished by the time school started. I had the option to apply for the permanent position and if I was chosen, I could go to school part time and work.

It's November 12th and I am still at this temporary job. Not only am I working 25 hours a week, I am also going to school full time so I can keep my research job (which I need to keep in case I don't get this permanent position). What a pickle. They probably won't have anyone hired until the end of November, but I wouldn't put money on it.

I wanted to work extra hard because I wanted them to see how much I wanted the job. I also didn't realize it would take then entire term to hire someone. On top of two jobs and full time school, I've also opened a chapter of OFYC in Lane County.

This has been extremely humiliating but I'm glad it finally got started. We've only seen adult supporters at the meetings and I have been trying to spread the work but I have had no time for recruitment, and any attempt I've made at recruitment has failed. I'm wondering how much more I can take before I give up. Until lambs become lions, I guess!

Children First for Oregon was put in the Oregonians 2010 Season of Sharing Wishbook, which meant that OFYC was featured. Which meant that I was featured, since nobody showed up to the last-minute meeting I threw together so the Oregonian could have something to take pictures of. If I don't blame the Oregonian for being so last-minute all the time, I would be extremely discouraged. I even bought cupcakes! I really need to learn what is worth the time and what isn't, because I almost made cupcakes and if I made cupcakes for a meeting that nobody planned on coming to, well-- I don't even want to think about it.

In a nutshell, I've been pretty busy and extremely stressed. All I want right now is more time in the day and foster kids to come to the meetings and at least pretend to be members of OFYC. Is that too much to ask?

The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Oil

This summer has been so strange! I feel like it has been an extension of Spring, because it has not been warm at all, I haven't gone camping or anything outdoors and I have been in school since last week. All my friends are starting their Fall semesters while I am just beginning to plan my first Summer camping trip!

The most exciting part of the summer has definitely been my trip to Maryland. I took a week off in July to visit the East coast for a variety of events. It started out as a quick presentation for the youth involvement from Oregon with the planning and implementation of the National Youth in Transition Database (or NYTD). Every state was allowed to have three representatives come to the conference, and I made the cut! I tried to pass off the project to the OFYC coordinator, since she actually gets paid to do these things and was more likely to fit it in her schedule, but it didn't work out so I ended up traveling out of Oregon despite my vows to never get on a plane again.

Since I was going to be in the area, my mentor suggested I fly in a day early and attend the all-day forum for Independent Living coordinators. I agreed since it was just one day and it seemed like a good idea at the time (and Mark Courtney was rumored to make an appearance, which he did!), and then our friends at FosterClub heard I was going to be around. They took advantage of this opportunity and swung me an invite to the Senate Caucus on Foster Youth which was happening a couple days earlier. I was really pushing my limits when I agreed to go to this meeting (I would be insane to pass it up!) and I ended up taking a red eye to DC and literally leaving the airport straight for the caucus. I freshened up in the airport bathroom. Classy.

I think I got a total of 8 hours of sleep for the entire week I spent in Maryland. I was with the Fosterclub interns for most of the time, and I bounced from friends houses to friends hotel rooms while there. We ended up getting VIP tables at a Gala that week, where the Jacksons performed and Quinton Aaron attended. I met up with a lot of colleagues from Oregon and even a couple others I have met from other states. Mixing the work with the play was rather difficult, though. One night, a couple of us ditched the conference to spend about two hours at the Capitol, but it wasn't near enough time to actually enjoy it. Needless to say, I am definitely going to work my persuasive magic in convincing my parents we need to take a nice long family vacation to the East Coast!

I was happy to come back, though. I had to finish school and Saif's holiday, Ramadan, was about to begin. I decided I don't want to live on the East coast; the metro system is not for me and it's so humid and muggy. But I could settle for traveling their direction every now and then.

In more exciting news, I think I will actually graduate instead of apply for the PPPM major! The idea of it makes me so giddy and I just can't think about anything else! In a nutshell, an opportunity I could not refuse came to me a couple weeks ago, and if it all works out, I could graduate and move on to the next chapter. I would get to stay in Eugene and continue my OFYC chapter and my new mentor program, and I would be working in the field I love with the people I love. I won't know anything for sure until October, and there are a lot of risks, but I have faith that this will work out. I should know a little bit more by the end of the week!

Until then...

What Would You Do If You Knew You Could Not Fail?

I must have been pretty ambitious when I promised a bi-monthly update; perhaps a quarterly goal is more realistic.

There has been no biological family drama to be updated on, thank goodness! It's easier to be separated from the chaos when everyone is in their own state, and those who are in my state are pretty quiet. This just means that I need to prepare for whatever is coming next... Hopefully everything stays calm until at least after the holidays. I don't think I've had a drama-free Christmas since I was 18!

As of OFYC, well, it's kind of tense right now. I know that not running for a leadership position last March was the better decision because I have started my own projects and I am keeping myself busy in Eugene, but I still wonder whether it would have been much different if I kept my previous position. Most of our supporters still come to me as the group's leader, and I think that makes others uncomfortable (hence the tension). I still travel just as much and participate in the same way as I did before, and everything was fine until I left Children First last June. I don't know if I just didn't prepare myself for the loss of the control or if it is just a strange transition for everyone since leadership elections are such a new development for the project. Either way, I have decided not to enable anything and let the places fall where they may. And I've decided that I will talk to my mentor on Tuesday about the approach I should take.

Although any tension with OFYC should be settled right away, I can easily go in my own direction and let it resolve itself. I started an OFYC chapter in Eugene so we can get local youth motivated and involved right here in my own back yard. I met a great girl at the University who I think is going to be the key in organizing this chapter and moving forward. I don't think I would have been able to get this all going without her.

I also have my mentor project moving forward. It stalled over the summer while most of my supporters were on summer vacations, and since I was sick of waiting for help that I wasn't sure I would even get, I decided to just move forward and see what happens. I made fliers and an application, and I have a meeting with the dean of the students tomorrow to see what kind of support the University can provide. I would settle for a website and some lanyards... but anything else would obviously be greatly welcomed.

11 Days in to National Foster Care Month

I made a deal with myself yesterday that I would blog twice a month for mental health reasons. My fear is that I will get caught up with the day-to-day frustrations, which causes distractions that I'm not going to allow myself to afford. In working on foster care policy in the last year, I've noticed that is one of two main aberrations that most child welfare professionals encounter in their work. It is so easy to be distracted by the details, so by taking a little bit of time each month to step back and focus on the big picture, I can avoid this restraint, or contention (or whatever we want to call it).

The other distraction I noticed was that there are so many adults involved in one case, that it's easy to assume one simple responsibility will be covered by someone else. The problem is that each adult is so busy that most adults assume most tasks fall under the responsibility of someone else, so nothing gets done and the youth falls through the cracks. I have been able to point this out as it happens during work groups and committee meetings, but I have also seen in happening within OFYC meetings which is something I think is really important to avoid if we really want to make a difference.

The point of this post, though, is to update my many readers (aka, myself and my foster parents in Arizona) about OFYC and the progress we have been making. The last time I posted a legitimate update was in November, and I have about seven drafts since then but none that are even close to coherent. I have gotten pretty distracted with my own life, to the point where I had to write in my calendar a reminder to update my blog... Hopefully that gives you a sense of how chaotic my life has been.

In November, I encountered some biological family drama. Any foster kid knows that drama is a very ambiguous term when it is used in the same sentence as "biological family." This incident involved an awkward funeral, and combining foster family with biological family which is risky and emotionally exhausting alone. Death is also not something I am too familiar with, and I am not sure I have even had a chance to react yet. Immediately following this drama was more drama involving the "other side" of the biologicals. I flew to Texas, which I thought would be a great place to relax and recover, but I was wrong. I'm not sure the word "wrong" even begins to encompass all that happened in Texas. Needless to say, I will not be going back any time soon (aka, ever).

I intended to post around Christmas about the holidays and my plans with OFYC, but I was too distracted and before I knew it, Winter Term began. During Winter Term, I set up an internship for 12 credits (or 32 hours) at Children First for Oregon, which is the nonprofit that OFYC is calling home for the time being. I finished out the term in March, which is the month that OFYC has leadership elections. I did not run, and I'm still deciding if that was a good decision or not. I'm certain that come Summer, I will be happy with my decision; it makes more sense in the long run because come August, I have my own projects I want to work on which I wouldn't be able to do as president of a state-wide project.

I started my internship at Children First right after this election and it has its ups and downs. I love having a full work day with different things to do, and the office is full of women who I get a long with really well. I have my own little cube with my own little desk and I do my own thing, so I feel very spoiled. Sometimes, working so much on foster care policy and being surrounded by all of it surfaces some things I have buried in the past but other than that, I love my work and all the challenges it brings.

I have done a lot of OFYC work as well. Within the last two months, I have been training the new leadership team, coordinating the National Foster Care Month events like the Duffle Bag Drive and the filmed project, and recreating the OFYC website. I have done a lot of other relatively smaller things, such as creating a workshop on Sex Trafficking in Oregon and different kinds of activities like that.

Anyway, I have a couple more weeks on this internship and then I will be back in Eugene working on classes. I have decided to apply for the PPPM major in the Fall and graduate in the Spring. That gives me a year to develop my mentor project on campus and if the pilot is successful then the timing will be perfect in implementing the project at the other major universities in Oregon.

6 Months Later...

I really need to update my blog.

Black Sheep

I always wanted to write a book...