Officially an Intern

I officially have an internship. I no longer feel like a lost puppy in a scary world of big dogs, now I have to help my classmates find some. We're kind of on our own out of the WWU Huxley Everett campus, since our program director, and most of the faculty is located out of Port Angeles. There were plenty of internships posted for the Olympic Peninsula, but those of us in Everett, were forced to look on the Bellingham campus postings.

This not only means that we have to compete with students out of the large main campus Huxley College, but we also have to compete against students from UW, Central, Evergreen and other large universities here on the west side. Needless to say, the paid internships have pretty fierce competition, and I wasn't willing to wait around another 3 weeks to see if I got any of those positions. I figured I might as well get a head start on everyone else for unpaid positions, and cold called 8 agencies last Wednesday.

Snohomish County Parks Planning Department was the first to get back to me, with an internship plan included. A day later, the City of Arlington called me back, and wanted to make an internship plan with the Natural Resource department. I took the SnoCo position, because parks are kind of my passion, and they were always so good to me, even as a student volunteer in high school. A lot of projects we started in the mid 90's are full-blown parks, trails and campgrounds now, and it's fascinating to me seeing what they've become after only being involved in the early grunt-work. I still want to talk with the City of Arlington to see if there's an opportunity to work for them one day a week during the next school year so I don't have to wait for internship hours next summer to graduate - we need a minimum of 300 hours.

I'm really excited for the SnoCo position, though. I went into the interview room, expecting a one-on-one with the Planning director, but ended up in an actual meeting with other planners. He brought in Chris, who was the planner I interviewed for a class project last quarter, and two other planners. I was expecting the regular questions, you know, "why do you want to work here, what are your strengths/weaknesses?" etc, but it was actually a brainstorming session to throw projects at me. Towards the end of the meeting, the Parks director walked in, and I got to meet him, too. Then last night, the hubby turned on "Parks and Rec" and I felt like a dork. Whatever, I like my future projects.

Some of my work may end up on the SnoCo website, or at public meetings. I'll get to use ArcGIS, GPS, and AutoCAD, and of course Power Point for presentations. I don't care how dumb Amy Poehler makes Parks staff look, I'm excited. And speaking of excitement, I've got to jet for a day of preparations for Tay's 13 th birthday party tonight. Minute-to-win-it games, possibly the box-in-a-box game, and tons of 12 and 13 year olds at the Darrington Community Center. Jealous much?

Drill Baby Drill? Now I've Officially Lost My Hope

Environmental politics. Those two words sum up my two favorite topics, and I think it will be my favorite class - ever! In a quarter of forest ecology with Dr. Busywork, and Oceanography which I've yet to determine if I like, there is a shining beacon every Thursday night. My biggest problem in the class will be narrowing down the topic of my term paper.

When I read the syllabus, I thought I would write about the recent presidential approval of offshore oil and gas exploration off of the Atlantic coastline from Delaware to Florida. However, there is some interesting county politics going on regarding two "sustainable" communities that have been placed on hold. I put sustainable in quotes, because I am always suspicious when the Democrat councilmen oppose the developers, and the Republican ones support them.

The oil exploration topic is interesting, though. Especially since Senate Republicans, led by John McCain, vowed not to cooperate with Democrats for the rest of the year. Then, as soon as Obama approves the oil bill, they suddenly want to cooperate on jobs and oil bills.

The approved zones in the Atlantic are off the coasts of "red states" with the exception of Delaware and Maryland which swing sometimes. The EPA recently announced a Save the Chesapeake campaign, naming it not only the largest, but most polluted estuary in America, but now it's okay to drill off the shelf 50 miles from the coast. The other zone is off the north coast of Alaska, directly off the shelf from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, infamously known as ANWR in Congressional debates. This is what the Republicans want for ANWR. This is the natural beauty that ANWR really is.

It's sad that Obama has folded like this. He promised to preserve the coasts from oil exploration in his campaign. Just like he promised Universal Healthcare instead of this Insurance Goldmine healthcare system they created. The Green Jobs are also no where to find, I'm currently visciously fighting for unpaid internships in an industry with no openings. The "Hope" has faded away. I'm happy Oilman Dubya is gone, and there will be no drilling in ANWR, but what happens when an extreme ice pack destroys a drilling rig or two, or some other accident occurs? What would happen to my Bay if an extreme hurricane caused an accident?

On a Sustainable note, I'd like to give a huge thumbs up to the City of Arlington for improving such a walkable community downtown. Yesterday, as I was still sans textbooks and waiting for Amazon, I went downtown to run a ton of errands, and got sucked into a few extra local businesses. Since the parking situation has improved, it's much easier to park, and walk everywhere, and the storefront improvements are really working. I'd like to see some more greenery, but not everything is practical in my perfect world. I found myself meandering, and picked up some good used references at the new bookstore on Division. I still have to place another order with Amazon, but, saving any bit of money is great.