Deep in the Heart of Friendship

ChristinaL — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:38:00 GMT

Well, I am back in Indiana... temporarily! We finished up with the conference on Monday night and spent Tuesday sightseeing and traveling home... I already wasn't feeling too good, and when I woke up in my own bed on Wednesday morning, I was definitely sick! I had to take a day off and rest up, because I have just been doing too much traveling recently. But, now that I'm feeling better, let me give you a recap:

The last day of the convention was so much fun and full of surprises and special guests.

We had tons of great speakers that day!

In the morning, US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson - a Pi Beta Phi alum from University of Texas - came to speak to us! She is the only female senator ever to be from Texas, and when she joined the Senate, was one of only seven women. She talked about the importance of having women well represented in every aspect of society. Her speech was a great introduction to the two other Pi Phi alumnae who received member of distinction awards - one is a noted journalist who is the editor of an African American newspaper in NYC, and the other is a doctor at Johns Hopkins.

The day also had a strong focus on philanthropy. Pi Phi supports literacy, and we partner with First Book, a national non-profit that donates books to low-income children and schools. Kyle Zimmer, president of First Book, came to speak to us at the convention. She talked about all the excuses that people give for why they can't make a difference... and then gave examples of women throughout history who have proven those excuses wrong! She is such an intelligent, funny and passionate woman - I really admire her and LOVE her organization! I am so glad that we support it and I was thrilled to see Pi Beta Phi present First Book with $240,000 on Monday!!

We also gave $10,000 to The Ali Kemp Educational Foundation (TAKE), which was very emotional. Ali Kemp was a Pi Phi from Kansas who was murdered a few years ago. Her parents started a foundation that teaches women and girls self-defense techniques so that deaths like Ali's can be prevented in the future. We had the chance to go through the TAKE training on Monday and learn some moves! It was definitely a great experience and something that I think all women should go through... not to mention it was fun practicing my defense moves on my friend Erikaa! : )

The last part of the evening was the Wine Carnation Banquet, when the fraternity awards are given out and the outgoing national officers speak about one another. It was so sweet to hear about the friendship that our national officers have shared together. All in all, the day showed that Pi Phi is about making a sincere difference in society with our volunteer work and our fundraising... but it's also about the connections and friendships we create with one another along that jouney.

On Tuesday, the convention was all over and so we had some time to get out of the bubble of our hotel. The Gaylord Texan, where we stayed, was massive and included its own versions of some Texas highlights including the facade of the Alamo and a faux San-Antonio-style riverwalk!

But, we wanted to see some of the "real" Texas, so we ventured to the nearby downtown of Grapevine. I think some of its historical Texas charm has been amped up for tourism, but it was so stereotypically Texan that we had fun with it!

Of course, every cowboy town's gotta have a jail for the outlaws:

Overall, it was an amazing trip. I learned so much and feel inspired and ready to help lead my chapter in my last year at Butler. I am so proud to wear the Golden Arrow of Pi Beta Phi!

IN Gamma <3

My Fabulous Internship! aka "I am a real writer now."

ChristinaL — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:09:00 GMT

SPRING BREAK! wooooo. I am spending it here in good old Indianapolis, and absolutely loving it. Why stay? Well, 1) most of the people and places I love are in Indy 2) Butler is currently hosting the men's basketball tournament for the Horizon League and 3) I have some things to do in town for my FABULOUS internship.

I know I've mentioned my internship a few times, but I've never actually told you all about it, because it's such a cool story that I kind of wanted to tell it in all its glory.

So, as you may know, I am an English major, which in theory means I can do anything I want : ) But, the first stipulation to that freedom is that you have to know what you want! So, last fall I decided that I didn't want to waste another minute when I could be exploring careers and trying to figure out what I want to do with myself. I had been thinking about journalism for a while, and then I got the idea to apply for NUVO.

NUVO is one of my favorite things about Indianapolis. It is a weekly newspaper that covers the arts, culture and social justice in Indianapolis. It is FREE and available every Wednesday at all the cool places in town - Yats, Qdoba, other yummy restaurants, and of course, Butler. It's basically young, hip and tells you all the cool places to be and things to do in Indy (and NUVO's recommendations are definitely college student friendly, aka usually quite cheap). I have been reading it religiously every week since I started picking it up on campus my freshman year, so I decided that I would love to work there.

The problem was, when I went on the NUVO website to get information about becoming an intern, it said they were seeking journalism students. I am not a journalism major, nor did I have any experience in newspapers. But, I do like to write, and I have been the yearbook editor at BU... oh yeah, and I write for lots of people to read on the internet every week. So, I decided to email the editor anyway. I mentioned all of those things and explained how passionate I was about NUVO and Indy.

His email back to me went something along these lines: You uttered the magic word - internet. Go ahead and send me your resume and some clips.

From there, I directed Jim to read some of my blog posts from this fall in Spain. Jim liked them, and hired me.

Apparently, NUVO had just launched a new website and was in the market for a bunch of web-saavy interns to fill it with fun content.

So, my dear go.butler.edu friends, this blog landed me my dream first internship. Thanks for your help!!

The irony is that although I was hired for supposedly doing cool things on the web, I have spent almost all of my time doing old school interviewing and writing. This is totally fine with me - I LOVE all the assignments I have had.

Jim, the managing editor, intern-overseer, photographer-directing, NUVO man-of-many-hats and my fabulous boss, somehow figured out that I might work well with the green beat, writing stories about all the efforts to make Indianapolis a more environmentally friendly place.

So, my job has basically become an excuse to meet all the extremely innovative, passionate and cool people in this city. The first full story I wrote was about celerystreet.com, which is an online shop full of earth-friendly gifts. It can be a little pricey for a college student but they have some really cool stuff, and it makes me so happy to see all the cool products that can come from recycled items (Side note:I am a recycling nut. Don't EVER throw out paper, aluminum cans or plastics 1 and 2 around me. I will probably cry. Ok, not really, but I will give you a short lecture about how you are hurting my (and the earth's) soul and then dig through the trash and take said object out to recycle it.) The couple who owns Celery Street, Evelyn and JD Guinn from Zionsville, are very very nice people and made my first interview so fun.

The story that's been taking up a LOT of my time lately is about the Indy Food Coop, which is an effort to put a grocery store in on the near east side of Indy that will sell organic and local food. Currently there are 40,000 people and NO full-service grocery store in that area, and since many people in those neighborhoods don't have cars, they have to buy junk food from convenience stores or fast food. Bad news bears. So, the Indy Food Coop is trying to put in a store that will basically be like a 7 days per week farmer's market. It will be a great way to bring healthy food to the east side and support local farming.

I have gotten to attend some really interesting events for this story, including a documentary and discussion that was held in this downtown arts center. All these people who are passionate about fresh, local food were in this room, talking with their friends and neighbors about how we can solve this problem in Indianapolis. If any of you out there are Gilmore Girls fans, it totally reminded me of a town hall meeting in Stars Hollow (minus the crazy mayor)!

Last week, I went to a Food Security Summit at the Earth House, which is a very cool new coffeeshop/art gallery/community hangout. The Summit was basically people from a whole bunch of groups interested in these topics who wanted to get together and share their different perspectives, pool resources and ideas and work on some concrete solutions to improving the local food situation in Indy. I loved listening to all their ideas, and I got to introduce myself as a writer, and I even got a press pass once. Those sort of things make me feel very grown up! haha.

So, why do I love this internship so much?

1 ) The more stories I work on, the more I fall in love with Indianapolis. This truly is a city with SO many passionate, creative and interesting young people who are doing ridiculously cool things to change their community. It is so inspiring and exciting, and I love being a part of it. There is nothing like living in a city.

2) It is so great to see people of all ages and backgrounds coming together to talk. We may live in a big city, but it's not too big for neighbors and communities to come together, and I love that.

3) I have learned so much! I have definitely become more concious about my eco-friendliness and eating habits since I've started working on these stories.

4) I take what I learn from writing NUVO articles and bring it back to my English classes! Writing professionally definitely improves my literary writing... and the concepts transfer as well. I came up with a great idea about how Moby can function as an environmentalist parable the other day in my American Novel class. Yeah, my class laughed at me... but only because I had previously told them how nerdy I am about this internship!

In short, this is an amazing job, and it has already opened up so many opportunities and experiences for me. There are so many cool things to do and places to work for in Indianapolis. What a precious resource - take advantage of it!

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Deep in the Heart of Friendship

My Fabulous Internship! aka "I am a real writer now."