The Blurgh

On Fridays, I have a nice 2-hour block between classes.  Usually I use the time to either pass out or do some emergency cramming, but last week when I exited Posvar Hall I saw a big crowd of SSP kids waiting at the bus stop.  I asked them what was going on, and they said they were going to a city council meeting downtown to lobby for SSP’s new Open Doors initiative.

The initiative is focused  on making it easier for students and recent grads to enter careers within the city government, which right now is a pretty time-consuming and complicated process.  First you have to go through their online system and create an account, then see if you have to take the civil service test.  If you do, count out even being able to apply for at least a month.  After you finally get to apply, you have to wait for the gears of bureaucracy to work, and you may or may not get a call for an interview in another month or so.

It’s a process that in the end up takes several months, and because of that lot of good candidates end up in other professions. SSP feels that the city should be the employer of choice in the region and needs to be doing a better job of recruiting talented applicants and getting them through the system as fast as possible.  The plan is to team the city with the OED to place interns in different city departments, which could fast-track them since they would then already be in the system, and then for a study to be done on how to streamline and revamp the HR process.

Mayor Conway is apparently a big supporter of the idea, but there is some pushback from the council, so we’ll see how it goes.

If you have nothing to do tonight, head on down to the Blank Walls in East Liberty. They’re having a live graffiti battle, and the winner will get to do his or her magic on one of the new public art walls being put up by the city. There’ll also be a band and refreshments, and it starts at 8 pm.

This is the second time that Blank Walls has held this kind of event–the first was right after the public art walls (which were Mayor Conway’s idea, btw) were approved by City Council 6 months ago. They are still in the process of being constructed, but the idea is to provide a place for graffiti artists to show their creativity in a safe and beneficial way rather than forcing them to do it illegally. Every month the walls will be painted over, and a new set of artists will be able to put up their work. Blank Walls and a few other galleries around town have volunteered to host events to pick the artists, and so far they’ve been a big hit.

I’m getting ready for finals, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it yet. Drop me a line if you’re planning on going though…it just might persuade me!

Yet again, it’s that joyous time of the semester where I need to start planning what the hell I’ll be doing in the spring.  Unlike like last year, though, I’m actually excited about it.  There’s a couple of internships I’m going to apply for that I heard about at the Office of Entrepreneurial Development (OED), and I’m also pondering asking Dr. Lemley if I can do a directed research project with him.  That way I can knock off my last upper-level class requirement, and Dr. Lemley is also awesome as hell.

It occurs to me now that I never wrote about my trip over to the OED.  The office itself was really nice–it reminded me a lot of the Study Abroad office.  There were books with information, several “Who’s Who” type of directories, and ample sitting areas.  I was a little nervous, so I whipped out my computer and sat on one of the couches before going and talking to the staff.  I noticed a good number of people coming in and out of the office–around 5 in the 10 minutes or so that I was stalling…I mean waiting.  It seemed like a lot of the people were students like me (i.e., liberal arts majors), and they were just checking in with the people who work there (who I overheard being referred to as counselors).

After I rehearsed what I was going to say, I gathered my courage, went up to the front desk, and totally blanked.  I think my exact words were, “Hey, ummmm, my name is Frank, and ummmmmmmm, I was just wonderin’ if, uhhhh, you know…I could…”

The person at the desk just smiled as I was doing my Mario Lemieux impression, and then interrupted and said, “So, this is your first visit here?”  I guess they get that all the time. We talked for a while about my majors, my interests, etc., and then I made an appointment to speak with Ms. Devali, one of the counselors there.

I went to the appointment the next day, and I was a little less nervous, but still unsure of what to say.  The truth is that I really don’t know what I want to do with my life after I graduate, and I don’t feel so great about that.  Most of my friends knew what they wanted to do for a long time, sometimes it seems like they knew since they were born.  I’ve had a lot of ideas, ranging from environmental engineer (whatever that means) to high school history teacher, but nothing ever seemed to stick.  All I really know is that I want to do something I care about, and I want to do it well.  Anyway, that’s what I told Ms. Devali.

She listened as I rambled on about that, and after I was done, she said, “Sounds good, let’s look at some options.” I was expecting her to send me away to think about it some more, so I was pleasantly surprised.  We looked at some different companies and organizations that were offering internships, and a lot of them looked interesting.  There was a really cool community development organization in Homewood, there was a marketing and design firm on the South Side, there were several online magazines…I was amazed by how much there was.  Ms. Devali also said the the OED does not advertise internships that solely involve making copies and doing busy-work, which is something I was afraid of.

The companies that really caught my eye, though, were the ones in the renewable energy field, which ranged from biofuel manufacturers to innovative recycling firms.  One, however, really stuck out: Community Renewables and Recycling (CRR).  This company combined three elements that really interested me–cutting-edge green technology, low-tech implementation, and community outreach.  Building off of Mayor Conway’s original idea to implement renewable energy solutions residentially, their approach is to work with local community groups and grass-roots organizations to develop neighborhood-wide green implementation plans.  They also get down to the actual installation level, which interests me a lot because I love getting my hands dirty!

I applied there as well as some other places as backups, but I’m really banking on CRR, which I should hear from in about a week or so.  After I left Ms. Devali’s office, I realized that going to the OED was one of the biggest single things I’ve done so far to address what I’ll be doing with my life post-graduation.  I’m really glad they were there and so helpful, even for someone as clueless as I am!

I haven’t mentioned anything so far about the mayoral race that’s been going on, but that’s mostly because no one in their right mind is planning on voting against the incumbent, Mayor Conway. Since her victory 8 years ago, the amount of stuff she’s gotten done makes it hard to believe that she’s slept. She was the real driver of the initiative to get the city’s books back in order, she cracked down on improprieties stemming from Pittsburgh’s casino and riverboat gambling operations, she worked with the former SSP members on the council to pass the Family First and Foremost policy (which went WAY beyond the federal Family Medical Leave Act), she pushed for city-run child care centers to provide support for families who couldn’t afford private child care…the list really goes on and on.

Her biggest success, however, has been what she’s done to “green” the city. Pittsburgh has been known as a haven for green building for a long time, but most of that has been focused on large new commercial buildings. It was Mayor Conway’s idea to partner with Duquesne Light and other energy providers to provide incentives for people to remodel their houses for both efficiency and renewable energy. And, believe it or not, Pittsburgh neighborhoods were perfect for it. The plethora of row houses made it easy to install large arrays of solar cells, the many hills became perfect platforms for small, efficient wind turbines. But above all, the people loved it. It also didn’t hurt that most of the breakthroughs in renewable energy products were coming from local firms spun off from local universities.

Dr. Lemley likes to compare the emergence of renewable energy as a big industry to what the steel industry used to be like for Pittsburgh. It encompassed everything–it permeated the air, and you could taste it in the water, and it was people’s livelihoods. Now, you can’t walk down a street without seeing a solar array on a roof or a advertisement for new green products. Unlike steel, however, it’s permeating people’s lives in a much more healthy way. I’m just glad that Mayor Conway had the foresight to see the impact it could make, although she has admitted several times that she’s surprised at how important to the city’s prosperity it has become.