Last night an old friend from Reed, who I will just call Swedish Max because that's what everyone called him at Reed, was in town and I was called to come and hang out with him. Being Swedish, Max spends a fair amount of his time in Stockholm, so that's where I expected he was visiting from. It turns out he's actually attending the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia. Remember Gordon Price, who gave a session on "Vancouverism" at the Smart Growth conference that I attended? He teaches a class at SCARP, though Max hasn't had one with him yet.
Max ended up being one of the few people who I can explain my current job to and he has some idea of what I'm talking about. He actually attended a design charrette recently, though it was only a one-day charrette and thus wouldn't meet NCI's definition of charrette, but actual charrette experience is currently something I'm only looking forward to. We dorked out about New Urbanism and form-based codes for a little bit. He managed to convince me that I should at least apply to the University of British Columbia. He ended up choosing UBC over Cornell, because Cornell's tuition was literally ten times as expensive as UBC. The attraction of that combined with the fact that I think Vancouver would be an awesome place to live makes it worth the application fee, I think, despite the fact that I don't think they have a law program.
Today I had a 90-day review at NCI. I can say it went well, as I got a small raise, and became salaried, which means health insurance and paid sick and vacation leave. Yes! I'll probably end up using my sick days this month so I can continue to get paid when I start jury duty on Monday, but it's still exciting. It's great to work for an organization that doesn't just work in a field that interests me, but actively supports and fosters my interest. They didn't have too many complaints about me, except that they cited a few things I've noticed myself, that I have trouble concentrating or being engaged during meetings or when I'm being taught one of the long software processes I have to do for my job. Seriously, this job and all the new stuff I've been learning in it has made me wonder if I should be on adderol or something. I managed to get by at Reed, probably only because I could write decently, but what's going to happen to me when I get to law school, when I can't process information aurally or concentrate on one task for more than 2 minutes?
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