CIIP '18: Week 4

This end of this week marked the halfway point of CIIP 2018 and I am once again reminded how quickly how time flies. With Independence Day falling on a Wednesday this year, most of my office took the majority of the week off, leaving pretty much just me and Teddy with very few work to be done. While this has the makings of an incredibly boring week, it actually wasn’t thanks to three reasons: Erricka Bridgeford’s talk, informal discussions with Teddy, and time spent with other CIIP Interns.

Starting with the last reason, I have come to really appreciate and enjoy how proactive everyone in the cohort is about spending time with each other and checking-in on one another. It makes me proud to hear the interns compliment on the space we, the peer mentors, have helped create. Looking back to our own peer mentor orientation (like forever ago), this was one of the biggest goals we wanted to achieve. In fact, we included this as part of our mission statement as peer mentors (now I don’t remember the actual statement, but it definitely had to do with creating this encouraging space). With August looming right around the corner, it feels like there are way more events than we have the time for, however I am excited for this time.

I suppose I’ll keep going backwards on the list I presented. I spent a good chunk of time this week reading articles about design and transit in cities (primarily Baltimore) and discussing them with Teddy and another intern in the office. The whole idea of automated vehicles has always sounded really cool to me and when I think about the future, I really believe(d) that it is the logical “next-step” in our development as a society. Well that was until I thought about all the hard-working operators who could potentially lose their job. Also losing that human aspect of the job could be detrimental in other ways. So many times I see operators wait the extra 30 seconds for people running towards the bus and that wouldn’t happen if the service was automated. Again, I have plenty of thoughts on this so if you have any interested in automated vehicles (AV), perhaps like AV ride-sharing services (like Uber) or stuff that Elon Musk and Google are doing, hit me up and let’s discuss.

I believe that the primary reason my week wasn’t a snooze-fest was because of Erricka talk during our midpoint event. One idea that really stuck with me was the sense of urgency Erricka felt to start the Ceasefire Movement. When we want change especially in the case of trying to reduce the murder rate in a city, it is important to act in a timely manner or risk hours of great discussion with little result. Discussion is great however, the ideas presented in these discussions should be acted upon. While that can be difficult to do working for one organization for only 8 weeks during the summertime, I think we should spend more time asking those in our activity spaces what can and should be done so that when the opportunity comes to voice the various ideas, we are ready to.

Again, if you want to discuss anything (for example, maybe you’re still unsure how my title relates to what I wrote), come find me!