Connecticut College CELS Internship Blogs 2007

Recently I've been compiling a bunch of handouts that we're hoping to give out to homeowners who we do Green Audits for. A Green Audit is like an Energy Audit, but also includes air quality, water conservation, and yard care evaluations. Anyways, I've been working on spiffing up and gathering a number of flyers which my boss selected (Peggy. I've decided she's my main boss), toward the purpose of creating a folder that the auditors can give to people when they're there doing the audit. I've had to sleuth out a lot of PDFs online, as well as reconstruct some handouts that didn't photocopy well. I've gotten nothing but positive feedback about any of the half dozen flyers I've created now. So that's nice. Also, today I emailed someone at the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority, which created two of the handouts we're using, to ask if it was okay that I had reconstructed these two handouts with slight alterations in style, yet kept their logo. I got an enthusiastic email back saying that I had done a FANTASTIC job and that it was a very good idea to recreate them thusly. That made me feel good.

Yet, though I've been getting positive feedback, and this project is moving toward completion, the last two weeks have brought me much discontent with my internship. It's nothing specifically against CET; I really enjoy my officemates and I think what CET does is very important. There are few things that I'm not so thrilled about.

1. Working full time. I don't like getting up so early and getting done so late. I feel like I hardly have any time to do anything I want. Maybe this is an inevitability that I will have to resign myself to as a rising adult, but I don't like it.


2. Office work. Maybe it depends on the office. Maybe it depends on what you're doing in the office. Well, actually, certainly the latter. I just don't like working with all this paper all the time. One of my favorite songs as a line, sadly denouncing a world "where paper is all that you're really taught to create", and I feel like that's what I'm doing in my job. Using up more tree product. It doesn't matter that it's "recycled" paper; it doesn't matter that it's for a solution-y cause. It's not fun, and I don't like doing it.


3. Not feeling like I know what's going on at CET well enough to talk to customers about it. Everyone else in the office is so GOOD at their job! They all know everything, or if they don't, postpone or pass off answering a question so smoothly that you wouldn't even notice. I just feel like I'm really awkward at it. But this is surely something that will get easier with experience. Good thing I'm going to be here the two years I'd need to build up that level of confidence *sarcastically*

Actually, that's it. Which is good, because I was trying to think of more things I don't like, and I really can't think of any. I like my commute, both the bike half and the bus half. I like my officemates. I like the town I work in. I love the opportunity given to me by CELS. (And I say that without even being paid. Well, they're paying me, but not to say that) I love that I'm lucky enough to be able to live at home and still have a killer internship.

So this hot air balloon story. One of my office mates (Tomasin) went up in a hot air balloon last night or so. Her partner runs the Green River Festival in Greenfield, so he was able to get her a spot in the flight they did for the press to take pictures of. Apparently, while you can't direct where you're going a whole lot, you can a little bit, because the winds at different altitudes are blowing in slightly different directions. So, the pilot would spit out of the basket and watch which way the spit fell, or release a helium balloon up to see which way it went. This guy was a really experienced pilot, apparently. Even so, he missed a few places where he'd hoped to be able to land, and they were running low on fuel as they were approaching Wendell State Forest (where there's NOwhere to land, apparently). So, the pilot told them that there were two yards big enough to land in, and in case they crashed into a tree to brake, they should all get low in the basket. But they landed fine, not crushing any flowers with the deflating balloon, not getting banged up by the tree too bad. This pilot brings a bottle of champaign with him in the basket to give to people whose yards he lands in, so they weren't upset. It sounded like a blast.

I'm going to post sometime soon about all the environmental blogs that I read on a regular basis. Oh, heck, why don't I just tell you now. There are three main ones: Treehugger, Gristmill, and Green Options.
Treehugger is the big pappie of all environmental blogs, having hundreds (maybe thousands) of readers, and in the range of 30-50 new posts per day. Treehugger's posts cover the whole spectrum, though there's a chic focus on environmental design and fashion, as well as more sober political things.
Gristmill is the blog of Grist Magazine, an online enviro mag whose motto is "Gloom and doom with a sense of humor". Gristmill has a lot of good policy analysis and notification of news stories and reports, as well as covering things like Live Earth and the greening of Bonnaroo. Gristmill prides itself on its silly, funny headlines and writing style in general.
Green Options is an extremely new blog, just a few months old, but it was started by an experienced environmental blogger, and already contains many well-written, interesting pieces. Green Options writers are mostly young and hip (though there's one blogger who's notedly old and hip, writing about environmental issues from a senior citizen's perspective), cool, experienced, and chic, but still able to tell the difference between what's a helpful solution, and what's just shallow posturing.

Okay, enough from me. Go check out those blogs; they're wonderful.