Places My Stuff Has Been

I've lost count of how many places I've slept in the past two months and this is a very, very small sample of all the places my stuff has been. I'm thinking I should name my suitcases so I can say "Here's Julio in Lauren's apartment." I just can't think of good names for them.


So, only Mama Pajama is really visible in this picture, but I needed to record being at the 4-H Center in Chevy Chase, Maryland for the first time in five years--making me feel very much like a scholar. This was where I stayed January 14th and 15th.

This was all of my stuff a while later hanging out in Erika's room in Duckett at Smith in Northampton, Massachusetts on February 10th. Between the first picture and this picture I stayed in Tyson's Corner, Virginia then downtown DC then with Harris near West Falls Church, Virginia. I then hopped a plane and stayed in Enfield, Connecticut for a while, followed by some time in Tyler House and Chapin House at Smith, back down to Connecticut, then to Erika's room.

Next, I moved over to stay in Tyler between Katie and Kristina's rooms so my stuff lived in the second floor hallway. I then went with Kristina to Burlington, Vermont, then back down to Smith to spend one more night at Tyler.

Then I took my bad-self over to stay with Caitlin in Jamaica Plain.

From JP, I went down to Philly to visit with the Spellers and Rachel Brown, then up to Plattsburgh to stay with Cassie. Though this is not really a photo of my luggage, you can still see her in the background.


From Plattsburgh, I went down to New Paltz to stay with Lauren and leave my stuff in a messy pile in the corner of her yoga room. And now I am at my mom's house on Long Island until Monday when I head back up to Plattsburgh! Ooof! That was a lot of moving about. But now I have to figure out how to pack all of my stuff that I want to live with into two suitcases to bring on the train.

PYIC: an Introduction

Above is me and itty-bitty Al Gore. Seeing Al Gore speak was just par for the course during the Presidential Youth Inaugural Conference, for which I was a Faculty Advisor. I did this through the same company that I worked National Young Scholars Program for this past summer. The hours were long, sometimes allowing us under four hours of sleep a night, and the logistical planning was sub-par but we got through and I think most of us had really wonderful experiences.
I was entrusted with the education of a group of 28 high school students, most of whom were freshmen with a single senior in the mix who was a great sport. We were intended only to have two hours of actual curriculum with them--and of course a good portion of this was supposed to be spent on ice breakers. However, our site lead was really amazing and had us lead a Presidential Group Meeting on the first full day of the conference and let us pick which PGM curricula we would teach in our next two meetings. While fourteen-year-olds are not my choice age group (particularly ones who do not believe in global warming), it was worth the experience.


At our three conferences (Presidential Youth Inauguaral Conference, Junior Presidential Youth Inaugural Conference, and University Presidential Inaugural Conference) we had a total of 15,000 students. At PYIC, we had 7,500 students. In our Presidential Group/Housing Site we had the most students in any one place: nearly 800 scholars comprised the Taft Presidential Group. My co-workers in Taft were all amazing. Anytime we were out and about with PYIC, Taft was the group that took the initiative to get things done. Though a lot of people left the conferences incredibly frustrated, I think we were all proud of what we had done together. Fingers-crossed that I'll see many of them again this summer for GYLC in China. The Westpark Best Western in Tyson's Corner will always hold a special place in my heart.

(Westpark Taft image from my housing lead, Kristan Corcoran)