Wednesday night, I had the opportunity to attend two dinners. The firs was dinner at The Nittany Lion Inn with Distinguished Speaker Alton Brown. The conversation started with Mr. Brown shaking all of our hands and asking about us--what we studied and why we were eating dinner. According to him, none of us had an interesting major--mostly finance and mechanical engineering. I was the only Liberal Arts major and was told that I should pick up by biochemistry degree again because it will sound more interesting. 

The topics of conversation included which show he likes working on better (Iron Chef America only takes three weeks to film the whole season, whereas he works on Good Eats almost everyday of the year), his relationship with his wife (she's the president of their video production company and Mr. Brown loves that he gets an allowance each week), and the value of education (he didn't actually graduate from the University of Georgia until recently, but not having that degree did not stop him in his career path). 

Some interesting take-aways were that he told us to figure out what we can do, not what we love but rather what we're good at and pursue that for a career; marry for smarts, not looks; and to always be true to yourself and your values, even if it means turning down over $15 million in endorsement deals. 

The second dinner was Rosh HaShanna dinner with Penn State Hillel. This year, over 350 students gathered to celebrate the new year. Check out these articles for more information: Article 1, Article 2. I enjoyed the evening, but spent more time working to serve the other 350 students than celebrating and reflecting on this holiday myself. Hopefully, celebrating at home next weekend without the stress of a big dinner will allow me to take a better look at myself and what I want to accomplish and change in this coming year. 

May you have a happy and sweet new year. Shana Tova!

שמע ישראל

This past weekend I went home to celebrate the Bar Mitzvah of one of my cousins. It was a very special day and he did a fantastic job leading the service and reading תורה. But this story is not about him and his Jewish life, but rather about me and my father. 

יי אלוהנו

My whole family was called up to the bima to hear Jonah read from the Torah. After he had finished reading, the rabbi stopped and said a prayer for my father. And I completely lost it. Standing on the stage in front of everyone, bawling my eyes out as we are praying for my dad's health. I was leaning on both my parents, surrounded by love and support. So consumed by emotion and a hope for my dad's recovery. We stand on one side of the stage when it is our turn to say the blessing before and after the reading and then move to the other side of the bima when the next group comes up to say the blessing. I calmed down enough so that I wasn't a distraction for the next aliyah. But I was still crying and squeezing the hands of my mom and sister who were both weeping with me at this point. As soon as I was allowed to step off the bima, I bee-lined to the bathroom where my sister and I just stood there crying and holding each other. 

יי אחד

At the party that evening, to celebrate Jonah's adulthood in the Jewish community, my Uncle David came over to me early on and told me that during his toast, he was going to mention my dad and wanted to give me a heads up. I appreciated the warning but knew that it was going to do nothing for my emotions. And I was right. During his toast, my uncle talked about his brother--how brave and strong he is. How he is not letting this disease change him, but rather becoming more of himself--laughing more, teaching more, noticing the little things in life that make it so special. He told his son, Jonah to look no further than my dad for a role model--Jonah needs to look no further to see what it means to be a mensch. 

שמע ישראל

This is what was running through my head Sunday night when I finally had a minute to think. The Hebrew written throughout this was the sound track that kept repeating while these images were flashing through my head. It's the Sh'ma prayer, the prayer that proclaims the oneness of G-d in the Jewish tradition. It is customary to say it at night; I usually sing it to a lullaby sort of tune.

My father is doing okay, going through radiation and chemotherapy until the end of this month, and surgery planned for early November. 

I love you, Dad

Anthony wrote this week about seeing something, Atherton Hall, from a new perspective. He was given a tour by a woman who lived in the dorm back when it was an all female dorm. There were passages to dining rooms that are still present, customs like being served dinner at a table by a waiter and restrictions about visitors and late nights. I think it is very cool to learn about how your school has changed. In my high school we would have alumnae come back and talk to current students about what my school was like in their day. We would have a variety of ages come and talk about the different sports teams, various classes and teachers, school traditions and customs and the uniform. Every year an alumna would bring her former high school uniform to try on for all of us. It was fun to see how much it has changed and how much it has stayed the same. The classes that were taught reflected the changes in educational values for women (I went to an all girls school), many of the traditions were the same--wearing white dresses at graduation, while some had disappeared. It was really cool to see the history of our school come to life as these women told their stories. While change can sometimes be difficult to accept when it is happening, in the long run, those changes shape our lives and define our culture. 

Courtney wrote this week about fan behavior in her blog. She commented on how it seemed funny to be treating this one team so differently than other competitors. Why were we, the Penn State student body, making such a big deal about being nice to the Alabama fans? I agree with a lot of what she said. All visitors should be treated with respect and hospitality. It is our job to treat other people with the same respect we would want--it's the golden rule, one that we all learned in kindergarten. In regards to why we were focusing so much on welcoming the Alabama fans, I think that the marketing needed to start somewhere. This program would not have been as successful I think if we started a campaign to be good sports the week before the Ohio State or Iowa game. The fact that so many people felt so welcomed at the game last year makes us want to return the favor. And since we are working so hard to treat Alabama fans nicely, it should theoretically continue into the upcoming game--treat everyone respectfully. 
I personally loved seeing the facebook events and groups pop-up in the weeks before the Alabama game--our work creating our policy proposals during last year was actually being implemented. What frustrated me was that during the game, the Alabama players and fans were still booed. It only took a handful of students to start the booing as the players ran out of the tunnel, but it was enough to get the whole student section going. Even if you were silent when they were coming out, it wasn't an effective response because the boos were so much louder. I didn't see too many instances of Penn Staters going out of their way to welcome the Crimson Tide. Maybe it just takes time. Hopefully this will get people thinking about the way we are perceived as fans and how we want to treat visitors. 

I had recently seen a picture of a friend of mine at a party pouring beer through a funnel into another friend's mouth. After talking to the person who had shown me this picture, I kept thinking about the message the two in the picture were sending. Both students are actively involved on campus in a variety of leadership positions within organizations. The funny part is, we had just had a conversation in one of our recent meetings about the image we as board members have on our community--trying to figure out what our role is and how to best achieve our goals. Branding this organization with pictures of high-risk college drinking is not the image we should be sharing. As leaders within an organization, they are representing those organizations and their school with this picture of underage drinking, propelling the negative stereotypes that already exist for college students.

Seeing this one picture seriously impacted the way I now look at these two people. I wonder if they know that this picture was taken or that is is being sent out in text messages.  As a member of the PLA, I am very conscious of what is being said and shared about me. I google myself occasionally not because I like reading about myself, but because I want to see what everyone else can see and learn about me. Any leader, any self-respecting person should be conscious and aware of the messages they are sending with pictures, status updates, and other social media resources. And if they are not aware of what message they are sending by wearing a certain shirt, saying or posting something that could be interpreted as inappropriate, it is up to the leadership, to other community members and their friends to inform them about the message they are emitting. 

This past week, I attended teacher orientation at the synagogue. I was curious to meet the new education director, see what she was like. Over the summer, we had received scattered emails asking us several times what we were interested in teaching this upcoming year. Some teachers never received the emails, not all teachers had been told that they were hired. It seemed sort of disorganized. So, with these first impressions in mind, I set off to teacher orientation. There, we were greeted with nametags, binders, class assignments and a schedule for the day. The education director was much more prepared than I had expected. Granted, there were some things that could have been done better, such as having the teaching materials (textbooks etc) prepared beforehand as well as classroom assignments so we could see where we would be working for the year. But the content in the meeting--talking about classroom behavior and lesson planning, getting to know one another, discussion various resources within the community, it was very well put together. All in all, it was a good meeting and I am excited to work with these teachers this year. 

And now for something completely different: Hurricane Irene. As I was reading the paper and talking to family this week, I was impressed with how much preparatory work was being done for Hurricane Irene--transportation systems were being shut down, lowlands were being evacuated--there was a lot being done to get ready for this storm. When the rains came, everyone seemed to take to facebook to share what was going on, to find out who still had power and to share pictures of the storm. In my sphere of friends and family, no one seemed too devastated. No one lost power, the basement stayed dry, no damage to worry about. It wasn't until after the rains hit that the major damage occurred--the flooding in Vermont and other areas. Since Hurricane Katrina and the devastation she caused in New Orleans, are we as a country better prepared for natural disasters? Did we take all these extras steps to over-prepare ourselves for the damage so that the actual damages were not as severe as we thought? What do you think?