How I Came to Own the Ugliest Pair of Shoes Known to Man and Other Stories
I did so well with posting for that one week but then things kind of got crazy so here I am backing up and filling in the time for those of you who are actually interest in what I do with my time.
So about two weeks ago began one of the more stressful experiences of my academic career, or at least it felt like it. In retrospect I have dealt with worse but this was pretty miserable. Starting two Fridays ago I completely lost my life. I had a major grade point or two in every single one of my courses and most of them are actually pretty difficult. In my History of the Modern Middle East class we had a paper due over the changing influence of the European presence in the region. This was followed by an Arabic test, which was followed by an entire weekend of volunteering, which came before Supreme Court and Public Policy test and the big daddy of them all the first American Constitutional Development test.
The paper wasn't so bad but I had to do a lot of background reading for it. I was still writing at 1:50 the day it was due at 2:00 despite starting several days early. This was probably the best part. I pulled two extremely late nights to get it done and then had to spend another late night cramming for Arabic. For some reason the last chapter did not stick. I felt like I was horrifically behind and that I was screwing the whole semester up so I had to study that much more to do alright and catch up. Studying for arabic is actually pretty fun though. As I kind of implied last semester, we tend to do it in groups and languages is one of the things that this actually works really well with especially because our group has very compatible study needs. Noor learns better by quizzing people and "teaching" them it and the rest of us tend to do better actually having to recall the information. So she quizzed us on the masdars (noun forms of verbs) and had us use them in sentences and went through the vocabulary. We all learned and did well on the test as far as I can tell, and we all had a good time. Also to share a little from that: this is epic in the Arabic department lahme is Arabic for meat. It is ridiculously silly but we all break into it randomly. Warning there is a random swearing section for the easily offended.
After the Arabic test I had to start cramming for my other two classes. I was so busy going over the old cases for Constitutional Development that I didn't get to read for that Thursday. It was pretty great, because the only case I have ever messed up in that class turned out to be one of the most famous: Dred Scott v. Sanford.
This case has been covered in history class from elementary school probably. I don't think it is possible for anyone to graduate high school without know the basis of it. I was already nervous since I it was the first class I hadn't read for, and of course he zeroed in on me and put me on the spot. I completely blanked when I was asked the facts of the case and the entire class turned and stared at me in disbelief. It was pretty sweet.
After this disaster I escaped to the Clinton Global Initiative(CGI) volunteer orientation dinner. I volunteered at this thing with my friend Jacob who is hard core into Arabic and Government and MES too, so we met up and were pretty excited going in. He was officially placed as a commitments desk runner and my assignment was "CGI Stories" which I knew nothing about. Our friend Sana was supposed to do it too but she bailed because she was going home for valentines. Anyway, so the dinner was interesting. There was such a mix of people and so many of them didn't seem like they should be there. At the end of the presentation of all of the different areas the volunteers were assigned to they asked if there were any questions, and the only thing people talked about was the food. The first question was, "what are you doing with the leftovers?" They wanted to make sure they were going to be donated and given to the homeless. That was a little bizarre and then people asked when we were getting fed and what and all of these stupid questions about food.
We all went to our separate groups but when we were done we walked home and laughed our asses off at the crazy people. Things had basically just gotten worse when they groups split up because it involved the CGI employees interacting with the Texas volunteers. The CGIers were very very very stereotypical New York hipsters. They attempted to incorporate their own slang terms, telling Jacob that he should check out an end-table "totales." They name dropped a lot, wanting to clarify over and over again how glamorous they were. One of them told us about three times that Clinton complimented his salmon tie so now he wore it every time he saw the President, it was a little excessive and I barely restrained from telling him that the President probably complimented his tie because he had no idea who he was and wanted to make him feel good and important, because that is kind of what politicians do hoping to make people like them. A lot of the CGI staff seemed extremely ill placed in their jobs, the most bashful and awkward being in charge of communications for example. It was interesting. But Friday is where the real fun began and the event started.
So I got out of class at three on Friday and headed over to CGI to help check people in and decide who got to go into the plenary with Clinton. It was pretty amusing because I pretty much turned on my customer service smile and attitude and the staff guy was floored by how nice I was being. I helped people put on bracelets and smiled and generally did Pappadeaux proud. It is pretty much an instinct and I basically can check out in that mode, just repeat the same thing over and over again. That was pretty amusing, and once the plenary session began I got to go in and watch. It turned out that one of the key speakers had come and talked to me before hand and had no idea who he was. This guy created Tom's Shoes, a business that is built on this guy's discovery of the importance of shoes in peoples' lives and how much it means to give a pair to people who don't have any. In South Africa, for example, a child can't go to school without a pair of shoes, and in Ethiopia there is a mossy foot disease that pretty much ruins the life of anyone that contracts it, because they get horrifically swollen and misshapen feet that they cannot function with and the shoes prevent the contraction of this disease. His whole idea is that as a business they sell shoes and for every shoe someone buys they give a pair to someone who needs them on a one to one basis but he makes a profit and provides a product to the buyer so it is a business and not a charity and that is why he says it is so successful. Toms Shoes is one of the only footwear providers that is still growing and improving during the recession apparently. I have to say I kind of call shenanigans on his being a genius though and some great humanitarian. These shoes he supplies are ugly as hell and expensive as well. The cheapest pair I found was $48. They are extremely basic, and through any kind of mass production they would probably cost around $2 a pair to make. Throw in the cost of their portion of the flight to drop the shoes off and the stay there, and I would say make $6 But $48 for two pairs of some of the crappiest shoes around is extreme and they go up to $78 a pair. I have bought many many pairs of shoes for less then this, even ignoring my $2 walmart flip-flops. I almost think it is wrong for the creator to be held as a hero at a global change conference because its like he is using charity and a humanitarian cause to hide his selfish goals.
Check it Out:
http://www.tomsshoes.com/
Anyway so President Clinton and Natalie Portman and some random Dell guy were also at this opening plenary and it was interesting. Seeing Clinton trying to be cool was amusing, and Natalie Portman made me feel better about myself, because she gets horrendously uncomfortable and nervous speaking infront of a large group of people. She is apparently very into micro loaning which is a very interesting process and idea to me. Apparently these small loans help people get back on their feet and change their lives for the better and they almost all pay back the entirety of their loans in the specified timeline. It was also interesting to learn that Natalie Portman is Israeli and is actually from Jerusalem apparently. Her real last name also isn't Portman, but I was apparently the only one who wasn't surprised by that.
The Dell guy was a little awkward because basically he was there talking about what every major corporation does. I didn't find their philanthropy to be anything special, and in fact found Rohm and Haas' high school art contest to be more creative and original then anything they said they did. I know I have heard of almost identical efforts being taken by Exxon and other major corporations.
Well after the opening plenary, people dispersed a bit and it was a little awkward because half of the attendees didn't go back for the second plenary because they were too jittery or bored. Jacob and I went to dinner with his friend Allie who was an attendee and we had a pretty sweet time. She got an internship with the State department this summer and speaks arabic as well. She studied abroad in Palestine and Egypt and has a thousand hysterical stories about it. We went to this place called Arpeggio that actually has fantastic Arab food and I had my first willing falafel and it was actually fantastic (Dad I'm sure yours is too if I had, you know, had an open mind before). I don't know how good for you it is but it has to have at least some value...
Saturday was Valentines Day and one of the longest days I have had in a long time. I had to be at the convention center at 7am and ended up getting there and finding out that I didn't actually need to be there until 12 and that my lady just hadn't specifically told me that. I was already there so I just stayed and helped out, doing everything from checking badges at the door, to tracking down boxes full of computers, to finding extra boxes for people to pin things on and everything in between. At noon I met the lady who told me what we were going to be doing for "CGI Stories" and it was definitely the coolest job out there. There were three of us who got "facebooks" with pictures and names of people who's stories we wanted to get for interviews. It was extremely cool because we got to meet all of these people that have done so many different things for the world. I met the creator of UNICEF for example and an author who actually lived in a squatter slum for two years to write a book. And a couple of semi celebrities like Myron Rolle the football playing Rhodes Scholar who is apparently going into the NFL in 2010 after he finishes his studies and Luke Russert, and NBC correspondent.
The whole process was fun but draining and really the whole conference was. The impression I left with was essentially that it is a weekend long contact race. Every single attendee had a "committment" they made and essentially an almost established non-profit organization with an agenda they wanted to push across as many people as possible to get funding and advice and merging and a thousand other things. It was like a gigantic whack a mole game but with resumes and business cards instead of a mallet. By the end I just wanted to tell the attendees to shut up, because in a lot of ways it seemed like it changed something that should fundamentally be good into selfish displays because 90% of these people turned their cause into just another opportunity to talk about themselves and how great they are. For some reason I just like the idea of helping people because its what is right and because its what you personally want to do, not because of how good it makes you look. I understand that this is probably naive because you can't exactly launch a major effort to change anything on your own and you need money and support but so much of this seemed like it was individually motivated for their own self interest. That is one of the things I liked about Ali when I met her, was that she was truly uncomfortable with talking about herself and her work to increase education in the Middle East. They way she put it was that she thought of talking about herself and her project as a waste of time because it isn't what is important and every minute she wastes talking about it is another minute she could be using to learn and to help people. She understood that there is a place for networking but truly did not like it and want to deal with it if she didn't have to.
One of the amusing things that took place was the volunteer's constant strategies to get pairs of Tom's Shoes. They gave a pair to each of the attendees in an extravagant gift bag and all the of the volunteers coveted the bags. They turned out to basically be the normal junk, CGI branded pens, bags, and hats with a bunch of fliers and then Tom's but they were coveted because the volunteers were told they couldn't have them. Jacob got a pair early on, but I was denied, and had to wait until the end but I got some eventually and it was ridiculously anticlimactic. My pair is all white canvas, which I have to say is the dumbest idea for a shoe. The things got dirty walking four feet in Lauren's living room when I tried them on. And incase we forgot they are the ugliest shoes known to man. I have a feeling these don't look loved with dirt like average sneakers do, I think they probably will just look dirty and never be able to be cleaned.
Well after I got my shoes I went and sat in the closing plenary but just had to get out of there. By this time it was 6 and I had been there for eleven hours so I just said goodbye and headed out. THis is when the true fun of the week begins, because me, Lauren, and Zayna planned on having a single girls' valentines dinner so I picked up Zayna, we went to Laurens, and before we were even 10 minutes into the movie I passed out on her couch and woke up feeling like death. It was great. A ton of pressure in my head, a sore throat, a fever, and I was so tired I could barely move. Needless to say I was a great valentines date. When I got up for dinner I couldn't taste a thing. We had some breadsticks and the only sense that functioned was feel so I only got the texture of bread, not the smell or the taste at all. This made studying for my last two tests that much better.
I was still really sick on Monday when I took my Supreme Court and Public Policy test. I am pretty excited because I know I horrendously bottched up at least 1/6 of the short answer questions. I confused classes since they both deal with constitutional law, which wouldn't be a big deal as long as I got my facts right and could apply it well, except that Constitutional Development starts with the foundation of our government and Supreme Court and Public Policy started with Brown v. Board in the in mid 1950s (1954 I believe). So using Barron v. Baltimore and saying the BIll of Rights doesn't apply to the States doesn't work very well when it was rules 130 years earlier. I talked to my TA though and let him know what I did and he said I shouldn't be too badly off, and at least he thought it was funny so hopefully he is going to be lenient and I definitely learned not to study for both at the same time, especially when sick.
The Constitutional Development test was yesterday and that one was a gem. I honestly have no idea how I did over all. I got an 80 on the multiple choice part but the essay is what will make or break me and I have no clue. Essentially everyone got to the main essay with 10 minutes to spare and had to outline it rather then writing a full essay which is perfectly alright and even preferred if you get your logic and cases right. I have no idea if I did though. He gave us a hypothetical situation to apply the cases we were to study to in order to come up with arguments for the parties, and then figure out how it would be decided under the Marshall Court and under the Taney Court. Inshallah I did well but I won't know until next week. And that is about it... Other then that... my illness is apparently some intense allergy to something in the air, I filled Zayna's dorm room with balloons for her birthday sometime in there, and have completely screwed up my sleep schedule. Oh and for some reason the last few days, Arabic has just clicked. After the test, this chapter just has just worked and my confidence just increased exponentially over night. Its actually pretty sweet.
And here is a random music video we watched in class to celebrate the clicking:
The exciting part is I actually understand half of this.
So about two weeks ago began one of the more stressful experiences of my academic career, or at least it felt like it. In retrospect I have dealt with worse but this was pretty miserable. Starting two Fridays ago I completely lost my life. I had a major grade point or two in every single one of my courses and most of them are actually pretty difficult. In my History of the Modern Middle East class we had a paper due over the changing influence of the European presence in the region. This was followed by an Arabic test, which was followed by an entire weekend of volunteering, which came before Supreme Court and Public Policy test and the big daddy of them all the first American Constitutional Development test.
The paper wasn't so bad but I had to do a lot of background reading for it. I was still writing at 1:50 the day it was due at 2:00 despite starting several days early. This was probably the best part. I pulled two extremely late nights to get it done and then had to spend another late night cramming for Arabic. For some reason the last chapter did not stick. I felt like I was horrifically behind and that I was screwing the whole semester up so I had to study that much more to do alright and catch up. Studying for arabic is actually pretty fun though. As I kind of implied last semester, we tend to do it in groups and languages is one of the things that this actually works really well with especially because our group has very compatible study needs. Noor learns better by quizzing people and "teaching" them it and the rest of us tend to do better actually having to recall the information. So she quizzed us on the masdars (noun forms of verbs) and had us use them in sentences and went through the vocabulary. We all learned and did well on the test as far as I can tell, and we all had a good time. Also to share a little from that: this is epic in the Arabic department lahme is Arabic for meat. It is ridiculously silly but we all break into it randomly. Warning there is a random swearing section for the easily offended.
Click to viewAfter the Arabic test I had to start cramming for my other two classes. I was so busy going over the old cases for Constitutional Development that I didn't get to read for that Thursday. It was pretty great, because the only case I have ever messed up in that class turned out to be one of the most famous: Dred Scott v. Sanford.
This case has been covered in history class from elementary school probably. I don't think it is possible for anyone to graduate high school without know the basis of it. I was already nervous since I it was the first class I hadn't read for, and of course he zeroed in on me and put me on the spot. I completely blanked when I was asked the facts of the case and the entire class turned and stared at me in disbelief. It was pretty sweet.
After this disaster I escaped to the Clinton Global Initiative(CGI) volunteer orientation dinner. I volunteered at this thing with my friend Jacob who is hard core into Arabic and Government and MES too, so we met up and were pretty excited going in. He was officially placed as a commitments desk runner and my assignment was "CGI Stories" which I knew nothing about. Our friend Sana was supposed to do it too but she bailed because she was going home for valentines. Anyway, so the dinner was interesting. There was such a mix of people and so many of them didn't seem like they should be there. At the end of the presentation of all of the different areas the volunteers were assigned to they asked if there were any questions, and the only thing people talked about was the food. The first question was, "what are you doing with the leftovers?" They wanted to make sure they were going to be donated and given to the homeless. That was a little bizarre and then people asked when we were getting fed and what and all of these stupid questions about food.
We all went to our separate groups but when we were done we walked home and laughed our asses off at the crazy people. Things had basically just gotten worse when they groups split up because it involved the CGI employees interacting with the Texas volunteers. The CGIers were very very very stereotypical New York hipsters. They attempted to incorporate their own slang terms, telling Jacob that he should check out an end-table "totales." They name dropped a lot, wanting to clarify over and over again how glamorous they were. One of them told us about three times that Clinton complimented his salmon tie so now he wore it every time he saw the President, it was a little excessive and I barely restrained from telling him that the President probably complimented his tie because he had no idea who he was and wanted to make him feel good and important, because that is kind of what politicians do hoping to make people like them. A lot of the CGI staff seemed extremely ill placed in their jobs, the most bashful and awkward being in charge of communications for example. It was interesting. But Friday is where the real fun began and the event started.
So I got out of class at three on Friday and headed over to CGI to help check people in and decide who got to go into the plenary with Clinton. It was pretty amusing because I pretty much turned on my customer service smile and attitude and the staff guy was floored by how nice I was being. I helped people put on bracelets and smiled and generally did Pappadeaux proud. It is pretty much an instinct and I basically can check out in that mode, just repeat the same thing over and over again. That was pretty amusing, and once the plenary session began I got to go in and watch. It turned out that one of the key speakers had come and talked to me before hand and had no idea who he was. This guy created Tom's Shoes, a business that is built on this guy's discovery of the importance of shoes in peoples' lives and how much it means to give a pair to people who don't have any. In South Africa, for example, a child can't go to school without a pair of shoes, and in Ethiopia there is a mossy foot disease that pretty much ruins the life of anyone that contracts it, because they get horrifically swollen and misshapen feet that they cannot function with and the shoes prevent the contraction of this disease. His whole idea is that as a business they sell shoes and for every shoe someone buys they give a pair to someone who needs them on a one to one basis but he makes a profit and provides a product to the buyer so it is a business and not a charity and that is why he says it is so successful. Toms Shoes is one of the only footwear providers that is still growing and improving during the recession apparently. I have to say I kind of call shenanigans on his being a genius though and some great humanitarian. These shoes he supplies are ugly as hell and expensive as well. The cheapest pair I found was $48. They are extremely basic, and through any kind of mass production they would probably cost around $2 a pair to make. Throw in the cost of their portion of the flight to drop the shoes off and the stay there, and I would say make $6 But $48 for two pairs of some of the crappiest shoes around is extreme and they go up to $78 a pair. I have bought many many pairs of shoes for less then this, even ignoring my $2 walmart flip-flops. I almost think it is wrong for the creator to be held as a hero at a global change conference because its like he is using charity and a humanitarian cause to hide his selfish goals.
Check it Out:
http://www.tomsshoes.com/
Anyway so President Clinton and Natalie Portman and some random Dell guy were also at this opening plenary and it was interesting. Seeing Clinton trying to be cool was amusing, and Natalie Portman made me feel better about myself, because she gets horrendously uncomfortable and nervous speaking infront of a large group of people. She is apparently very into micro loaning which is a very interesting process and idea to me. Apparently these small loans help people get back on their feet and change their lives for the better and they almost all pay back the entirety of their loans in the specified timeline. It was also interesting to learn that Natalie Portman is Israeli and is actually from Jerusalem apparently. Her real last name also isn't Portman, but I was apparently the only one who wasn't surprised by that.
The Dell guy was a little awkward because basically he was there talking about what every major corporation does. I didn't find their philanthropy to be anything special, and in fact found Rohm and Haas' high school art contest to be more creative and original then anything they said they did. I know I have heard of almost identical efforts being taken by Exxon and other major corporations.
Well after the opening plenary, people dispersed a bit and it was a little awkward because half of the attendees didn't go back for the second plenary because they were too jittery or bored. Jacob and I went to dinner with his friend Allie who was an attendee and we had a pretty sweet time. She got an internship with the State department this summer and speaks arabic as well. She studied abroad in Palestine and Egypt and has a thousand hysterical stories about it. We went to this place called Arpeggio that actually has fantastic Arab food and I had my first willing falafel and it was actually fantastic (Dad I'm sure yours is too if I had, you know, had an open mind before). I don't know how good for you it is but it has to have at least some value...
Saturday was Valentines Day and one of the longest days I have had in a long time. I had to be at the convention center at 7am and ended up getting there and finding out that I didn't actually need to be there until 12 and that my lady just hadn't specifically told me that. I was already there so I just stayed and helped out, doing everything from checking badges at the door, to tracking down boxes full of computers, to finding extra boxes for people to pin things on and everything in between. At noon I met the lady who told me what we were going to be doing for "CGI Stories" and it was definitely the coolest job out there. There were three of us who got "facebooks" with pictures and names of people who's stories we wanted to get for interviews. It was extremely cool because we got to meet all of these people that have done so many different things for the world. I met the creator of UNICEF for example and an author who actually lived in a squatter slum for two years to write a book. And a couple of semi celebrities like Myron Rolle the football playing Rhodes Scholar who is apparently going into the NFL in 2010 after he finishes his studies and Luke Russert, and NBC correspondent.
The whole process was fun but draining and really the whole conference was. The impression I left with was essentially that it is a weekend long contact race. Every single attendee had a "committment" they made and essentially an almost established non-profit organization with an agenda they wanted to push across as many people as possible to get funding and advice and merging and a thousand other things. It was like a gigantic whack a mole game but with resumes and business cards instead of a mallet. By the end I just wanted to tell the attendees to shut up, because in a lot of ways it seemed like it changed something that should fundamentally be good into selfish displays because 90% of these people turned their cause into just another opportunity to talk about themselves and how great they are. For some reason I just like the idea of helping people because its what is right and because its what you personally want to do, not because of how good it makes you look. I understand that this is probably naive because you can't exactly launch a major effort to change anything on your own and you need money and support but so much of this seemed like it was individually motivated for their own self interest. That is one of the things I liked about Ali when I met her, was that she was truly uncomfortable with talking about herself and her work to increase education in the Middle East. They way she put it was that she thought of talking about herself and her project as a waste of time because it isn't what is important and every minute she wastes talking about it is another minute she could be using to learn and to help people. She understood that there is a place for networking but truly did not like it and want to deal with it if she didn't have to.
One of the amusing things that took place was the volunteer's constant strategies to get pairs of Tom's Shoes. They gave a pair to each of the attendees in an extravagant gift bag and all the of the volunteers coveted the bags. They turned out to basically be the normal junk, CGI branded pens, bags, and hats with a bunch of fliers and then Tom's but they were coveted because the volunteers were told they couldn't have them. Jacob got a pair early on, but I was denied, and had to wait until the end but I got some eventually and it was ridiculously anticlimactic. My pair is all white canvas, which I have to say is the dumbest idea for a shoe. The things got dirty walking four feet in Lauren's living room when I tried them on. And incase we forgot they are the ugliest shoes known to man. I have a feeling these don't look loved with dirt like average sneakers do, I think they probably will just look dirty and never be able to be cleaned.
Well after I got my shoes I went and sat in the closing plenary but just had to get out of there. By this time it was 6 and I had been there for eleven hours so I just said goodbye and headed out. THis is when the true fun of the week begins, because me, Lauren, and Zayna planned on having a single girls' valentines dinner so I picked up Zayna, we went to Laurens, and before we were even 10 minutes into the movie I passed out on her couch and woke up feeling like death. It was great. A ton of pressure in my head, a sore throat, a fever, and I was so tired I could barely move. Needless to say I was a great valentines date. When I got up for dinner I couldn't taste a thing. We had some breadsticks and the only sense that functioned was feel so I only got the texture of bread, not the smell or the taste at all. This made studying for my last two tests that much better.
I was still really sick on Monday when I took my Supreme Court and Public Policy test. I am pretty excited because I know I horrendously bottched up at least 1/6 of the short answer questions. I confused classes since they both deal with constitutional law, which wouldn't be a big deal as long as I got my facts right and could apply it well, except that Constitutional Development starts with the foundation of our government and Supreme Court and Public Policy started with Brown v. Board in the in mid 1950s (1954 I believe). So using Barron v. Baltimore and saying the BIll of Rights doesn't apply to the States doesn't work very well when it was rules 130 years earlier. I talked to my TA though and let him know what I did and he said I shouldn't be too badly off, and at least he thought it was funny so hopefully he is going to be lenient and I definitely learned not to study for both at the same time, especially when sick.
The Constitutional Development test was yesterday and that one was a gem. I honestly have no idea how I did over all. I got an 80 on the multiple choice part but the essay is what will make or break me and I have no clue. Essentially everyone got to the main essay with 10 minutes to spare and had to outline it rather then writing a full essay which is perfectly alright and even preferred if you get your logic and cases right. I have no idea if I did though. He gave us a hypothetical situation to apply the cases we were to study to in order to come up with arguments for the parties, and then figure out how it would be decided under the Marshall Court and under the Taney Court. Inshallah I did well but I won't know until next week. And that is about it... Other then that... my illness is apparently some intense allergy to something in the air, I filled Zayna's dorm room with balloons for her birthday sometime in there, and have completely screwed up my sleep schedule. Oh and for some reason the last few days, Arabic has just clicked. After the test, this chapter just has just worked and my confidence just increased exponentially over night. Its actually pretty sweet.
And here is a random music video we watched in class to celebrate the clicking:
The exciting part is I actually understand half of this.