service challenge met

I got my first e-mail today with regard to my graduation ceremony today.

Actually, it was the same e-mail twice.

And yes, I finished my degree last August and already have my diploma even but had a choice of walking before I was done or waiting and in deference to someone getting her undergraduate degree, I chose to wait.

It got me wondering about the First Lady’s Service Challenge and how the students were doing.  Well, as you can see, the students have met the challenge with a month to spare (the deadline was May 1).

So it’s official, the First Lady will be the keynote speaker at GWU’s commencement this year – my commencement. 

How cool is that?

Here’s the official press release.

Now I have to worry about plans for my graduation!

gw service challenge update

On Tuesday, I went to GW's volunteermatch website to record the few hours of shelf-reading we'd done on Sunday (wherein I unintentionally redid the shelves I've done before but that's another story) only to find that the website was down. I wasn't sure at first that it was the website so I did a little searching around. I confirmed that the website was down but also found the main website for the challenge which I hadn't seen before.

The website happened to answer a question that I'd had: are they in any way indicating how the students are doing in reaching the goal?

Answer: yes, they are with this handy little clock looking thing below.

I'm not sure how up-to-date the data is as shown on the clock but it at least indicates that in 4 months with 4 months to go, the students are very nearly half-way there. I'm impressed.

I hope my measly 12 hours is helping!

mission serve

I did find out that the challenge given to GW's students by Michelle Obama to complete 100,000 hours of service in return for a commencement speech in May 2010 is for real.

She set forth the challenge on September 11th as part of Pres. Obama's National Year of Service (as signed into legislation with the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act in April) and returned to GW on Veteran's Day to launch Mission Serve. In just 7 weeks, 19,000 hours had been recorded. I guess those annoying undergrads aren't as self-absorbed as I'd always thought. Go figure.

Even better - they still think I'm a student and I quite successfully signed up to record my volunteer hours to be included in the count. This is a good thing because, not being an actual student any longer, I have time for service. Looks like I have to step it up!

I may not be a huge fan of the President but I do like Mrs. Obama. How cool would it be if I were able to see her speak at my commencement?

you can find a short AP article on the event here.
you can find a copy of her remarks to GW on Veteran's Day here.
Picture courtesy of Mrs-O.

think pink

Not only did we begin volunteering at the library which is interesting and mind-numbing at the same time (an aside: I'm doing fiction and have similar issues with people not understanding the alphabet and apparently misclassified books as Will does. I've also found that I can't do it without talking to myself. oops.) but I also got Will in on one of the events that I help out with every year - ZTA's Think Pink with the NFL.

In past years, I've enlisted Will's assistance in pinning pink ribbons to cards which is a horribly boring job that makes your fingers hurt after awhile. I, in turn, have woken up at the butt crack of dawn to meet my sisters at Clyde's in Mark Center to make balloon arches and then go to the FedEx Field to hand out the pink ribbons to fans at a Redskins game. I've learned a few tricks in handing out ribbons - mostly that you don't ask people if they want them, you just stand next to the openings in the jersey walls and hand them to people while they're not really paying attention. You'll find that most people won't even think twice and will just take whatever is handed to them.



Making balloon arches is a slightly more thankless task seeing as it's early, involves helium tanks, archline, latex balloons and small specific skills. I have learned that I hate tying balloons together (instead of tying each balloon individually, we tie 2 together and then twist 2 pairs to make a group of 4 - the basic building block of a balloon arch) so I've developed a knack for stringing the arch together. Because it's early, it can be hard to get volunteers to come out and we have to make 6 balloon arches by 8am. Since we were having the condo appraised the same day, I'd decided to only do arches this year and drag Will along for an extra pair of hands. He turned out to be really helpful in retrieving lost balloons from the ceiling being taller than everyone else there.

New Adventures in Shelf Reading

A week or two ago, we decided to volunteer at our local library. Give something back by putting our spare time to good use. (Plus it gets us off the couch and away from the TV every once in awhile). Truth be told, Marcy came up with the idea and I thought it sounded fun.

Fun? Yes. I worked in a library for a few months in college, so putting books in order kinda takes me back.

When we initially inquired about volunteering, a woman at the information desk became ecstatic and assured us that our services would be most welcome. However, on our first day on the job we learned that our library has quite a few helpers and apparently most of them have shelving pretty well covered. We may not get to push a book cart anytime soon, but we'll have our hands full with shelf reading.

It seems there's a good deal of improper shelving going on! I think most of it happens when patrons innocently return a book to the wrong place, but I'm not ruling out mistakes on the part of fellow volunteers. At times, I wonder if others are using the same alphabet... I'm also pretty sure several books have been misclassified, but before I go making accusations I'd probably better brush up on the ol' Dewey Decimal system. (I became more familiar with Library of Congress classification in my college days).