Update

Students still don't know what.how.where.when to recycle (even in my progressive tiny dorm).

Over forty kids on and off campus want to help me recycle strangers' trash every week, paid or unpaid.

I'm digging through your trash, unscrewing lids and emptying your water bottles even if you aren't.

Chegg.com is G*d.

Environmental geology is my new favorite scholarly topic.

Here goes....

So Whittier officially has beurocratized the **** out of my little recycling gig, and my eerie-looking spotlight on the cover of The Rock mag really doesn't hide the fact that we have 6 recycling dumpsters and not much else.

Happily enough, I am glad to be back, tackling private loans and the on-off plumbing in Wardman Hall (and changing the storage locks on the stoner losers down the hall-- oops). I am getting chills similar to my canvassing days knowing I'm waking up to inform a hefty batch of new freshman (redundant?) about our "solid" recycling program tomorrow morning... even though we should be tackling food waste, water and energy consumption, and so much much much more in one conversation-- luckily I'm unsupervised and especially honest in the month of August.

Guh... the life of a covergirl consists of cutting out business card-sized info packets for freshmen, drinking ample quantities of wine, and lazily watching lots of Arrested Development episodes with Em... the night before chaos breaks and shatters and finally, perhaps my job may be useful and less nagging and quarrelsome.

I must confess, however, Poet pride is tingly and ever-flowing through my alcohol-soaked veins. If the Financial Aid office decides to hand me the 7 grand I need to pay for this school year and give me some effing credit that really counts for what I've done all summer... I may convert to Quakerdom, honestly.

P.S. I need more friends on last.fm... oh, and the Dodgers to stop sucking?

Bureaucracy continued...

This week marks the first time I've been able to get up off my laptop to talk to someone(s) I don't work for: Pepsi Co.

Their trucks were strewn every which way all over campus this morning as I walked to Res Life and in a half hour I'll finally take a stand. They need to clean up their mess on campus. They need to promote themselves through our recycling, not through water polo banners and crap "the poets way" gear.

I get to shove the National Recycling Coalition's "Toolkit for Change" in their faces, not that Whittier acts like it can afford membership with the NRC or anything... and I'm lucky if I get a face to shove it into. I can't wait to get to the crux of all our problems! I can feel I'm getting closer as faculty and administration begin to become obstacles or allies in my plight against waste.

Here goes nothing!

Nevermind. Della rescheduled the meeting three times. I had to write up a proposal to leave behind and skip meeting anyone. I feel like I'm getting paid to stay indoors and lose my mind... albeit great for my resume.

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

The bureaucracy of being Recycling Manager is beginning to dull my sanguinity. Obama backlash, budget proposals, Shaq's freestyling, George Carlin's death, and the ensuing gradual blindness and carpal tunnel from sitting behind a laptop 20 hours a week... none of this would have gotten under my skin last summer, while standing upright, approaching strangers in the scorching August heat to chant hymns of ambition and hope.

I have .docx lists and PDFs galore; a successful facebook group and many new friends from colleges all over the country; hoards of ideas for change and post-it checklists cluttering my screen. I sit still, curious, alone.

Nice to know...

...that Whittier's Dean of Students thinks that my job is a joke.

Getting deskside recycling bins and outdoor three-section 120-gallon containers is going to be a lot harder than I thought.



Please join my group, I need all the feedback I can get!!

P.S. Obama succeeded again in making me cry like a 3 year old last night, anyone else?

Sasha is my new favorite!

These next couple weeks I'll be posting brainstorms for the new WC Recycling Management Program... if I'm not too busy loitering and yelling at Jeff Van Gundy in Havana House.

And a great piece on the resurgence of the Vlade flop (now the Fisher Flop):
""Flopping is not basketball. Nobody flops in pick-up basketball, because it is the antithesis of competition. Competing means pushing back, not falling down. Competing means focusing your efforts on defeating your man, not playing to an official. And yet the NBA has allowed this spectacle to rob the game of its excitement. [...] It's a disgusting practice, and it has had the same affect on the game as the European introduction of smallpox to Native Americans. Sure, flopping existing before the Euros came over, but it reached new heights under the teachings of Professor Vlade Divac and his bizarrely bearded disciples. Kudos to the NBA for making an effort to put an end to this. If they do nothing else right this off-season, I'll applaud them for this."

I still miss you, you halftime chain-smoking, relentless beard growing Marlboro man.

Iz in Rancho Santa Fe, home of the ninnies

So absolutely thrilled to get my first internship, let alone an on-campus management position that will really test my eco-capabilities.... I couldn't imagine a summer better spent.

I'm pretty much speechless, but I'm in scary North San Diego and conservatives that heavily populate the area are scaring me into learning their lingo. If I can conquer them, what's stopping right wing America from becoming sustainable?

Louisville, KY?

Also, on the newsfront, I'm thinking of investing in a Canon Rebel Eos... so I can photo-journalize betterer.