Lucky Man

It's been a while since I posted here. I guess I am slipping a little. Maybe that's a good thing.

The last few weeks have had a lot of travel, with the trip to Anchorage and a trip to New York last week. I was in the City to meet with the other Fellows supported by the WT Grant Foundation. We met at the Foundation's offices in mid-Manhattan for two days and shared about our experiences. It was interesting to learn what the other Fellows are up to and connect with them on a personal level. There are some amazing people doing some innovative work.

I think the meeting helped me get my head on a little straighter. Since being back, I've been thinking a lot about how to make the most of my remaining days here in Portland. I've since met with my mentor, Tom, and we've got a refined plan for how my remaining time will be spent. I think it's realistic and doable and that's given me a bit of a lift. I'm hoping for a strong finish to my time here.

One of the projects I'm excited about is one that involves starting to look at our internal data from BBBS of Alaska. For one of my classes, we have to complete a research project. I'm hoping I can look at some of the Strength of Relationship reports we've been collecting from our Bigs and Littles and see how these scores relate to match success and the way we provide support to our matches. It'll be good to work with the home office more over the next few months in advance of my return home. Plus I'm excited to bring some of my new statistical knowledge to bear on the work I've been doing at the agency.

Being in New York City also made me realize how unique my Fellowship experience has been. All of the other Fellows are still working part-time at their existing jobs and part-time on a Fellowship project. None of them transplanted their entire families to have this experience. Again, I realize how incredibly lucky I am to have such a supportive partner, my wife Jessica. She's let me follow my dreams, and kept our family together to make this move possible.

Jessica turned forty today. Happy Birthday, Sweetie! You are the love of my life.

Coming Back

I'm on the plane again, heading from Anchorage back to Seattle and then on to Portland. I think we might have passed over Kuiu Island a few minutes ago. I was reminiscing just yesterday about visiting Kuiu Island with another member of the Alaska Suicide Prevention Council. I was lucky to go there with Kake leader Mike Jackson more than 10 years ago. He took me to Point Cornwallis to pick seaweed (nori) and showed me all the places on Kuiu Island that used to be inhabited by the Tlingit people. He told me there Tlingit names and how heavily settled it once was. Now Kuiu Island is uninhabited, but it is cherished land by residents of Kake. It was a weighty experience and I felt incredibly honored to be brought to this sacred place and learn a little of the subsistence lifestyle. We picked a lot, and Mike showed me how they dried the seaweed in the open air.

It's been an interesting few days meeting with the Council. Since it was my first meeting in-person, I really tried to listen and learn about the council before shooting my mouth off too much. I think that's one thing I've learned over the last few months. I need to get better at assessing a situation and the dynamics of a group before sharing my opinions. Yesterday we spent most of the day getting to know each other and learning about some of the history of the council. Today we had a facilitated session to help develop a new strategic plan for the council.

I think everyone was pleased by the end of the day with the progress that we made. There are a lot of new members on the council, so it felt like an important step to clarify what we are about and what we want to accomplish. During the day today, we came up with some reasonable goals to shoot for over the next three years and I think they will really help to motivate the council. Personally, I really enjoyed getting to know the individuals who make up the council. Many of the members have been personally touched by suicide and it was incredibly moving to hear their stories.

I also picked up a new favorite quote, from fellow member Pat Donelson, a pastor from Wasilla who's done some really neat outreach to kids in rural Alaska around suicide prevention:

"You can't teach what you don't know. You can't lead where you won't go."

Since we were in meetings all day, I didn't have a chance to go by the Big Brothers Big Sisters office. I feel bad about that. But I did get to see a few friends from the agency after hours and get caught up on how the agency is doing.

I related to my friends how I felt changed by this experience. These last few days has made me think that more and more. All through the meetings of the council, I wanted to ask questions about the research. I wanted to know what data we have about suicide's causes in Alaska and what we know about how to prevent it. I'm not sure how the rest of the council feels about using a data-driven approach though. I may be the only one who wants to move the group in that direction. I'm wondering how much I will find myself in similar situations in the future. Maybe I am becoming an evangelist for using evidence in decision making. I wonder if this will lead to future frustration for me or if I will find success in helping others consider bringing research into different decision making processes. It felt like a taste of what's to come for me, anyways.

On my last blog, I described this image of being lost in the water, treading amongst the separate islands of research, practice, and policy. Here's a crude drawing to that effect:

Identity

It's Tuesday and I'm on a plane to Seattle, on my way to Anchorage tonight. I'll be attending a meeting of the Alaska Suicide Prevention Council over the next two days, barring any further explosions from Mt Redoubt.

Next week, I'll be attending a meeting of all the fellows under the WT Grant Distinguished Fellows program in New York City. I have to give a 20 minute presentation to the rest of my colleagues about my fellowship experience. I've been puzzled by what to present to this group. Surely they won't be interested in the details of my fellowship experience. I'm tempted to talk about some of my recent soul-searching, but this might be a bore as well. I could always show some pictures. Shots of Alaska and the kids are always crowd-pleasers. But that would probably be a cop-out.

Thinking about this presentation has got me thinking more about my recent malaise. I'm snapping out of it, but what's remaining with me is a blurred sense of identity. I wish I could draw better, or I would like to draw a picture of my face all scrambled up. It would be one way to show how I'm feeling. Today in class it really struck me how I don't fit into this world of academics. Sure it's interesting and I am learning a lot of useful things. But all my other classmates are on tracks to get a degree. I don't feel like their peer, nor do I have a large urge to enroll in graduate school at this point. At the same time, now that I've been away from the job for three months or so, I'm not quite sure how I fit in there, either. It seems like I've changed somehow through this experience, and I'm not sure how my re-entry to the work-world will be.

The other image that comes to mind is a scene of three islands representing the worlds of Practice, Policy, and Research. I'm in the middle, treading water, wondering which island is inhabited by a friendly tribe and where I should try to come ashore. Meanwhile I'm getting caught up in a water polo match and constantly getting shoved underwater (I tried signing up for water polo this quarter. Two classes later and I couldn't shake my fear of drowning so I dropped the class).

I'm not trying to sound dramatic. I'm not losing a ton of sleep or anything like that. It's more like a general state of unease. It's probably confounded by the fact that I'm not quite sure what my job will be when I get back to Alaska. Right when I left, our organization was undergoing a restructuring and I wasn't really assigned a seat at that time. I thought it would be more fair for the agency to organize without me and see where I fit in when I got back. Now, my boss has announced her resignation, and I'm planning to apply for her spot as Executive Director. But who knows how that will turn out.

I've also started to wonder how it will feel to return to Juneau. I miss it more and more, but I've also gotten pretty accustomed to Portland's temperate weather. It's particularly nice to see the kids playing outside all the time. And I've gotten pretty used to the amenities of a more urban lifestyle. Surely Juneau is home, but will it feel like our permanent place once again? Who knows what the future holds.

Anyways, I'm starting to get into the groove of the new quarter. My two classes, statistics and relationship-based interventions for children seem really interesting. I'm excited to get more background in child development and to hone my statistics skills more.

Progress on my research projects has been slow. I was thrilled to launch an online survey I've been working on for weeks recently, though. We finally got IRB approval and were able to launch the survey last week. The survey is designed to provide some information from the field of youth mentoring to help inform my guidebook project. I'm working with David DuBois and Tom Keller to write this guidebook on evidence-based decision making in a youth mentoring context. Our hope is that the book will provide some useful tools to mentoring professionals to help make better decisions to guide program management. So far, we've gotten a good response from the field and I think we'll get some very useful information.

Some of my other projects have kind of gone to the back burner, but I am pretty excited about my newest one. I'm writing an article with the help of some researchers to try to compare the results of the recent random assignment studies on school-based mentoring. It's really helping me read the literature more closely. I'm particularly excited that we'll also be doing some meta-analysis of the results. I think it will be an eye-opening experience. We're going to try to publish the article when it's all finished.

I'm off the plane and here in my hotel now. Talking to the cab driver on the way into town made it feel like coming home. We'll see what it feels like when I go back to my temporary home in a few days.