I'm back!

February 18, 2006 – 6:22 PM – Ho!

Not bad, it took me more than 7 months before I really lapsed in updating this blog. Let’s see… what’s been happening here. My latest endeavor has been to create an internship for high school seniors at the Nitijela, i.e. Marshallese Congress. I talked with a senator who is also interested in the idea and she agreed to employ two outstanding seniors as interns in her office. We talked about the details and then launched the program. I wrote an application and distributed it to the seniors. About 10% of them applied, not a bad result considering we gave them exactly three days to complete the rather lengthy application.

The applications were very very impressive. Both the senator and myself, along with my field director who also read the applications, were extremely pleased with what we read. We invited five of the applicants back to interview with the senator, myself, my field director, the Nitijela clerk, and a UN consultant who also works here. The interviews were even more impressive than the applications. We asked some hard questions, all in English, and the applicants all responded with a lot of composure and maturity. In fact, the applicants were so outstanding that we decided choosing two would simply be criminal. Therefore, while the students were anxiously waiting outside the conference room for the pizza dinner we promised them, we decided behind closed doors to hire all five applicants and split them between the senator and the UN consultant. We announced this to the applicants over dinner and they were flabbergasted. They were extremely grateful and enormously excited. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more content in my life than when I was watching those students celebrate.

I guess the moral of the story is that education in the Marshall Islands just scored a victory. Students now (and in the future, hopefully) have something to work towards which gives them incentive to attend class and complete homework. Moreover, the experience itself is very valuable and will improve their skills and make them more employable in the future. And of course, they experience what it means to apply for a job and be interviewed.

What else… I’m in the school play. I am the one man chorus of Romeo and Juliet. My lines are in both English and Marshallese, a fact which my students really enjoy, especially when I practice in front of them. It’s actually my first ever attempt at anything dramatic. In all of my prior geekiness, I’ve never tapped into that realm of geekdom.

Man, I must be one of those job-oriented people because all I ever write about is work. You’d think that I don’t do anything else here. Heck, maybe it’s true. Either way, I like what I’m doing so I won’t be too concerned about it. I only have 11 weeks of school left. That almost seems like a lot except it means that 25 weeks are already behind me. Wow.