Fall 2009

Intro

This term was the first time in my life that I felt challenged. As hard as it tried, it didn't stop me. Thus, I now feel unstoppable. That is good for my confidence and for causing me to take risks in helping the world, and it is bad for moderating myself and getting sleep.

On 9/18, there was a Haas Center retreat for all student-service leaders. I was there for both QSA and Hackathon. There wasn't a ton of work that got done, but I met some cool people. One person was with I AM, Initiative Against Malaria, which I didn't know existed.

On 9/19, there was a meeting for all sophomore-premeds to make sure everyone is on track. Since most of the people there had been at it for a year longer than me and since I was, more or less, on track, it eased some stress.

On 10/12, Google gave a tech talk on Google Chrome (their web browser that's incredibly fast, secure, and stable). I had a class right before, so I came in a little bit late.

Later on 10/12, one of the Sophomore Class Presidents' events was a Sophomore Symposium on Poverty. There were a bunch of different perspectives.

The headliner was the founder of Kiva. She talked about meeting Mohammad Yunus, going to Africa, connecting with entrepreneurs who couldn't afford basic economic capital because of predatory lending, and wanting to help them out. 

She said that she was able to succeed because she started small and specific, so she knew who she was helping and exactly what they needed.

On 10/4, Noam Chomsky spoke at a Stanford Says No To War rally as a pit stop on his way to speak at Gunn HS, where the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center was holding a very large Chomsky event.

On 9/17, there was a law school talk for Constitution Day. 
One interesting thing that I heard is that justices often avoid the constitutional question and just rule on statutory claims in order to practice judicial restraint. That is, the branch whose job it is to interpret the constitution tries to not interpret the constitution because they're afraid of being controversial. 

In URBANST131, there was a different social entrepreneur who came in each week to talk about their history, how they got involved in social entrepreneurship, and their social impact. There was a large part of each lecture allocated for question and answer. I really liked the course. Some of the people had done amazing things. Everyone had different advice on how to run a successful social venture, but at the very least I learned that there isn't just one right way to be a social entrepreneur.

The founder of MusicCorps was our final speaker. MusicCorps is a part of AmeriCorps, and it tries to use music as a means to other forms of service (ie, using music to catalyze political participation) and using music as an end in itself by expanding music education because music helps students succeed. This is especially true for at risk youth, and it is much more true of music than things like sports.

This was my favorite lecture. The people on the panel had recently won some award for being awesome, and then they got to talk to us about how awesome they each were.

From the non-tech orgs: it seems like the need for CS folks is:

Victoria Hale worked with One World Health and Medicine360. They take on medical issues that aren't profitable but are necessary, like working on Diarrhea and Visceral Leishmaniasis.

She had a good story about how even small nonprofits can cure diseases. Most of the big lessons were ones that I had gotten from past speakers, though.