Prep week almost over

It was a little bit harder to get into work mode today, i.e. I didn't feel like my brain was operating near half capacity until around 3pm when I had my first cup of coffee. Without easy access to an abundant supply of coffee, this trip has revealed, in the very least, the depth of my addiction to caffeine.

Otherwise, it was another day of workshopping and curriculum-prepping. We began the day with the final contemplative session about how to relate to the kids and reflect on traits that make a good teacher. I then met with my instructor team to hash out a lot of logistical and content details.

More and more, I'm seeing that for my year (the rising seniors and soon-to-be graduates of MEET), we're trying to get the student groups to work in teams as if they would in a software company dealing with the forces of industry. The students have learned about the theories and fundamentals of project management and teamwork in the previous year. Now it's time to put that into practice. Both the business and technical content will be integrated. So I'm trying to understand the technical aspects as much as I can by meeting with the group regularly and attending their group brainstorming sessions.

We also met the new MEET CEO. A former European basketball star who studied in the Boston area. He seemed like a very down-to-earth guy, very open and optimistic. A good fit, I think.

After that, Ben (the other business instructor) and I spoke with the client of the upcoming Apprentice event to scope out an problem to address. We then explored a popular street market on Ben Yehuda. Afterwards, we decided to walk home, this time a lot faster. We decided to take a "scenic" route and explored some less ventured roads and paths. Almost decided to go through a ghetto area, but decided against it because we had laptops, phones, and cash on us. But we did run into these kids:




Quite the models, aren't they?

Tomorrow will be the last day for our curriculum prepping and all the computer lab set-up we need. I'll be finalizing all my Week 1 lectures.

Happy 5 Months! You know who you are.

Final Prep Week Begins

This week does look too so far. It's curriculum prep, so just a working week with a few logistical sessions and teaching workshops. Basically, the more prep we had done prior to arriving, the less stressful this week (and summer) would be. I'm finalizing some of my lectures and meeting more with the technical team to get on the same page. After the day, we went out to the Old City area again to get some street food (so delicious!) and shop for things. I got some spices to cook with! It was pretty fun haggling, but I think if I was more ambitious, I could've bought my items for less. Oh well, just warming up now.

Tour of the Old City

Today, we toured the Old City of Jerusalem. The tour was really amazing. It was like drinking from another metaphorical firehose - this time in Jerusalem.

Full of historical facts and sometimes emotional. The Old City of Jerusalem is famous for many reasons, such as the site of Jesus' betrayal, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. I felt kind of guilty that I didn't know my Biblical history well enough to get all the references. But it was amazing to physically be at the significant sites, such as the olive tree where Jesus was betrayed by Judas, the pilgrimage path that covers Jesus' imprisonment, torture, carrying the cross, and actual crucifixion. We then visited the presumed location where Jesus was buried. The crucifixion site was turned into a huge church. The ironic thing about it was that at the location in the church that signified where Jesus was nailed to the cross, there was a picture of him in front of a statue on the wall. People were lined up to basically pay their respects, but to the picture, essentially an idol. But the church was run by Orthodox Christians which apparently allows that. The take-home lesson that our tour guide wanted us to leave with was that this city is full of baseless hatred and history will repeat itself unless people start reconciling with each other. Given my limited perspective of the situation, I'm learning that this place's history is like an onion - there are layers upon layers of conflict and differences. For every wrong from one side, you can find a provocation from the other side. Pretty intense.

We then came back and ate really good Domino's for dinner. It was glorious! They have a curry spice, instead of red peppers, which takes the pizza to a whole new level. Nothing else was open because it was the Sabbath ("Shabbat") and any business run by Jewish people (which, btw, our part of the city is mostly all Jewish) is closed from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday (Friday to Saturday is the weekend here). Afterwards, we had a group meeting about schedule and curriulum, and then went into the city to watch the World Cup. Everyone was cheering for the USA, but sadly, we lost and are eliminated. It was a fun experience, nonetheless and a great way to end the weekend.

Away, for now

I made it to Jerusalem safely. Not so much for my luggage. Alitalia lives up to its reputation. Hopefully it'll come tomorrow and I'll have clean clothes, for the sake of others more than myself.

For those of you who don't know, I'm going to be in Jerusalem for the majority of the summer to help a nonprofit called MEET (Middle East Education through Technology), organized by MIT.



To learn more about it, here's a good article about MEET on The Huffington Post.

Cause and Effect

Today, I turn 27. And everything has a cause and effect.

2 years ago, I started grad school. Since then, I've co-founded a startup helping people in Africa, traveled to India, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and will be embarking on another life-changing journey to Jerusalem in 2 days, and am pursuing 2 Master's degrees. Everything has a cause and effect.

About a year ago, I switched from a church in a very wealthy suburb of Boston full of educated and talented individuals to one located in the heart of Cambridge passionate about social justice and racial reconciliation. Everything has a cause and effect.

Relationships, something that I thought I had figured out and was set on, have brought me deep emotions, both hurt and joy. Everything has a cause and effect.

Something I have learned over the past couple years, largely influenced by grad school, is that no one result is caused by a single variable. Everything stems from a number of variables, and there are usually many causal linkages. Everything is part of a system, a group of elements that are connected or related in some way. These can be physical (an ecosystem, a transportation system), conceptual (the Metric System, a betting system), even combinations (a nation's justice system, a traffic system). But all are functional, or they would not be identified as systems, i.e. a system is worth thinking about only if the behavior of the collective is more meaningful than that of its components.

Everyone is familiar with systems. Consciously and without realizing it, people regularly ascribe to all kinds of systems and interpret them accordingly. But if this is so, we must be pretty good at it, right? Do we need training in what many call "systems thinking"? Yes, because there is a large class of systems we have trouble understanding. We label these systems "complex," and resign ourselves to only the most cursory explanations of their behavior. A good example is weather prediction. What will be the high temperature on March 11, 2004? We can predict exactly how far away the Earth will be from the Sun on that day? but not (reliably) whether it will rain.

According to Wikipedia, systems thinking is:

...the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. In nature systems thinking examples include ecosystems in which various elements such as air, water, movement, plant and animals work together to survive or perish. In organizations, systems consist of people, structures, and processes that work together to make an organization healthy or unhealthy.

Systems thinking is an approach to problem solving, by viewing problems as parts of an overall system, rather than reacting to specific part, outcomes or events and potentially contributing to further development of unintended consequences. Systems thinking is a framework based on the belief that the component parts of a system can best be understood in the context of relationships with each other and with other systems, rather than in isolation. Systems thinking focuses on a cyclical rather than a linear cause and effect.

Everything has a cause and effect. And my current state is but only a snapshot of a dynamic interweaving of many elements and components, all interacting in a complex manner. Who knows what the state will be like tomorrow.