Meow

I feel like I can’t go back to school, or rather, I don’t want to get a PhD in philosophy.  I don’t need to get a PhD in philosophy to do what I love and want to do: read and talk about philosophy.  But I do need to find OTHERS interested in this pursuit as well.

I suppose I wonder: do my peers feel the same way?  Do my friends from college, who loved school and did quite well, who chose to shoot for other things besides grad school, do they still desire the classroom environment?  The peer review?  The writing?

Is this a big enough ‘problem’ where finding a more universal solution would solve a pain for others besides myself (aka a viable organization or business), or is this uniquely Denny?

I’m not sure but I’ve realized progressively, being ~24 months out of school, that _god_damn_ I miss it.

I’m looking for the middle ground.  Let me keep thinking.

It’s been very useful, forcing me to plan the project a lot more, get more solid and concise on the details, and really force myself to take the project seriously, think about the implications of my actions on both the teachers I’m contacting and the students I’ll be meeting. This is a serious project and I’m taking it as such.

Also reached out to a friend whose story really inspired ME to take action and hopefully find a student who fits with my project. Been telling his story all the time when discussing the project with friends and family, so hopefully I can get in touch and actually ask his permission to do so!

Next update soon!

Need to brainstorm where I can post this that will make it seen by teachers

Working on it.

Gonna reach out to Hoang this week about the draft and brainstorm who else I can contact.  Haven’t spent much time looking to the tech-sphere for help, might be useful but I think I’ll find a lot of good hits via these high school counselors.

I think I want to pick a Junior in highschool… pretty sure.

60+ social action websites.  Going to review them for commonalities, traits I like.

Have TheUsProject.Org up, with a multi-user wordpress installation, aka people can register and create their own mini-blog for the site.

Need to find a dev to help w/ hacking wordpress to facilitate other people who would want to register as a sponsor or register as a kid looking to get into school; right now you just register, it creates a site like theusproject.org/dennychapin.

Do need an appropriate theme and logo, the socialactions.com site research should help with that as well.

On the todo for today is to draft a letter to these school counselors.

Had dinner with a friend, Andy, and his friend, Hoang.  Explained the idea, they both do City Year in Seattle, so it resonated with them and having experience in schools, they both offered a lot of great ideas, were really receptive, very cool.

So, tomorrow I’m going to write a page description of what I’m trying to do and send it out to a bunch of high school counselors.  Maybe I’ll get a hit.  Good to get moving on finding the kid.

Also going to want to find a free wordpress template designer and enough cash to get a good 99designs logo.

Rough sketch of who I’m looking for #1.  I’m thinking I’m going to create some video describing this project in the abstract form it’s currently in, along with who I’m looking for, and what I hope to do working with the kid who motivates me to help.

This is the beginning of a project.  Basic premise: theres one student out there who deserves to go to school, but for whatever reason cannot.  I want to try to help that person to get into school because I was so lucky to get an opportunity to go to school, and have school change me because of it.

I’ve got some concrete ideas in my head and I’ll write them up soon, probably in fragments to lower the bar of regular commitment to this project (to help me stay regularly committed ).

My first major hurdle is to find a kid who deserves this, a kid who inspires me to put in a lot of work.  Going to meditate on that now, until next time.