DukeEngage | Duke Center for Civic Engagement

Things I Have Learned This Summer

1.    There was absolutely no reason to bring a surfboard here. For one, there is no ocean and no hope of finding waves unless there is a hurricane.  Which we clearly don’t want.  For two, there is way too much to do in the city to consider driving away for a weekend.
2.    Driving here by myself was a terrible idea, but it would have been even more terrible to not have a car.  Very much like the C-1, the streetcar never comes on time.
3.    12 kids sitting around attempting to speak in a British accent is way funnier than you’d think.
4.    Nasher museum parties are going to leave something to be desired from now on.
5.    You shouldn’t laugh while eating beignets.  Although they do taste best at 3 am when everything is funnier than it should be.
6.    Paradoxically, stores close at 6 pm while bars are open until 7 am.
7.    You can’t survive on crawfish.  They supply you with no iron.  Sometimes you have to go to Superior Grill and eat a big, fat, greasy burger.
8.    Once college kids find out about a wine bar, it automatically becomes less cool.
9.    It’s worth going to F&M just for the cheese fries.
10.    You can’t get anywhere else in the French Quarter during Essence Festival.  Unless you want to walk over a mile.
11.    While people from New Jersey never go outside during the winter, nobody here goes outside during the summer.  And running outside at noon is not a good idea. 
12.    There are only 4 radio stations and you can always hear “I kissed a girl,” “Pocket full of sunshine” and “Take a bow” within 3 minutes of turning on the radio.
13.    Some people get really intense about ultimate frisbee. Maybe I should have capitalized that…
14.    One cannot rely on streetlights to direct traffic.  People take them more as guidelines and they go out whenever it rains anyway.
15.    Can openers are unnecessary.
16.    Bourbon Street is disgusting.  There is horse poop and vomit all over the place.  Everyone who goes there is either a tourist, completely wasted, or an intern who has only been here a week and therefore doesn’t know any better.
17.    I love listening to live jazz, whether it is at a sit-down place like Snug Harbor or in a concert venue like Blue Nile, Maple Leaf, or Tipitina’s.
18.    There is nothing special about Snowballs.
19.    Rock and Bowl, despite popular belief, is not that sketchy. Yes, it is a bowling alley that also has a bar, a dance floor, and hula-hoop competitions so maybe it’s a little bizarre, but not sketchy.
20.    Big Sam’s Funky Nation does the best version of Cupid Shuffle.
21.    Parakeets can make phone calls and say “Love you.”  And they love “Run Around” by Blues Traveler.
22.    People who spend three hours lying motionless in their cars in the 101 degree Louisiana heat aren’t always dead.  Sometimes they are listening to MPR.
23.    “Non-profits” aren’t always non-profits.  Voluntourism makes money.
24.    “Power Hour” does not always mean something that is bad for your body.  In fact, most of the time it means the opposite.
25.    Living with 16 strangers really expedites the ‘getting to know you’ process.
26.    I probably shouldn’t have called this “Things I Have Learned This Summer” because I still have 5 days left, and something ridiculous could happen at any minute. So maybe the blog title will be, “Things I Have Learned So Far.”

 

 I just got back from a coffee shop where we did an interview.  On the drive back I found myself face to face with another car in the middle of the road.  I was stopped at the median and he was stopped on the other side of the road.  And we both wanted to make left turns.  And so we both went.  Now normally, we'd have to cross paths.  One of us would have to wait and then the other one could go.  But in New Orleans we don't wait.  Traffic goes as it pleases.  And so we both just understood that we'd drive on the wrong side of the road for a split second so we could turn at the same time.  Oh driving.

Now I'm going to get back to New Jersey and Durham and cause a bunch of accidents because I'm used to people here not obeying traffic laws.  I'm also going to get a bunch of parking tickets because I'm used to being able to park in yellow zones right in front of police officers and not getting ticketed.  And I'll probably get hit by a train when I'm driving across train tracks because I'm used to sitting on trolley tracks for a few minutes and not worrying that the street car won't stop.  And I will forget to look both ways before driving across an intersection because I'll expect there to be a median, just like there is on every road here. Even the little ones. And when I make a left turn I'll probably stop mid-turn because I'll expect there to be a second red light that I have to wait through before I can go.

These are reasons why driving in New Orleans is scarier than driving in Philadelphia and New York where nobody pays attention to red lights and everyone cuts everybody else off because they are eager to get to the next intersection as quickly as possible so they can be stopped by the pedestrians who stick their arms out and go without getting the walk signal.  

We met with the most amazing man a couple of days ago.  He was with the Lower Ninth Ward Village.  I had never actually heard of them until we met with Holy Cross and were referred.  I had heard of LowerNine.org, but they are different.  Lower Ninth Ward Village was started 10 months ago by a man who wants to help the elderly get back into their homes.  We went there to get one of our surveys done so we could put their profile online with the other organizations we’ve done.  But we got there, and we were there for 2 hours.  And we only got about one third of our questions answered.  But what we heard about instead was unquestionably more valuable – at least to my understanding of what people have had to go through.  He talked about how he’s been trying so hard to get homes rebuilt, and how contractors will repeatedly take advantage of people, and how all the elderly people just want to come home.  One story that particularly touched me was about a very old man who was relocated to Texas.  The Lower Ninth Ward Village worked on his home for months, and he finally got to come home after 3 years of living away.  He moved back in, got all of his things put away, and after a long day's worth of work, went to sleep.  He died in his sleep that night.  The man we met with said he literally stayed alive so he could die in his home.  And some of the workers questioned whether all the work they did there was valuable, since he only got to be there for a matter of hours.  And the response was “of course it’s valuable.  We gave that man what he really wanted: to finally come back home.  He stayed alive just so he could get back home again.  And that’s what is important.  People are dying hundreds of miles away from their homes, and some of them know they’ll never be back again.  They’ll never live in their old neighborhoods, never be around their friends, never be in their homes.  And if we can bring people back so that they can feel like they finally made it home, that’s what is important.”  It kind of made me want to cry.

     This weekend was the fourth of July.  We had tickets to Essence Festival.  I actually didn’t have that much fun.  I really liked seeing Rihanna and Chris Brown and Kanye West.  But we were up in the nosebleed section where literally nobody was dancing.  It was so weird.  I’ve been to a bunch of concerts in Philly and everyone dances.  All the time.  Even on the lawn, which would equate to the upper nosebleed section.  That’s the place to be.  And those concerts were people like Dave Matthews and Jimmy Buffert.  Which is good music, but not music you dance to.  I can’t believe nobody was dancing to Kanye.  Word of advice to next year’s group – spend $20 extra and be on the floor where people were up and out of their seats and not just watching passively like you would at a play.  I’m glad we went though.  It was definitely different from concerts I’ve been to before.  People were getting up and walking around.  Leaving in the middle of sets.  And it wasn’t sold out either.  If Rihanna, Chris Brown, and Kanye came to Philly that would sell out really fast.  But maybe they aren’t that big of a deal here. Or maybe people had tickets to the other days instead. I don’t know.  Also, before we got there I didn’t realize that it was geared toward an entirely Black audience.  I knew that most of the audience would be Black, but the concert was intended to be a celebration of the achievements of African Americans and of Black culture in general.  Still, I didn’t feel out of place, unwanted, or uncomfortable at all.  So it was an interesting experience.  Not necessarily as fun as I had thought it would be, but I’m glad I went.
       I think that’s all I have to say for the moment.  Ashley says my blogs have only been a shadow of my personality so far.  Like you couldn’t tell anything about me from reading them.  It’s true.  I just never know what kinds of things are appropriate to write about in a public journal.  I fear that this one, although it makes an attempt to discuss more social and cultural aspects of the past week instead of work-related, ultra politically correct subjects, is still kind of boring.  Oh well.
 

I think it’s really great how much responsibility we’re given at our jobs down here.  I guess I can’t speak for everyone, but Ryan and I, along with the other intern at our work, are basically running our own project.  We get guidance and suggestions from Lance and Meredith, but we are scheduling our own interviews, prioritizing whom to contact first, and restructuring surveys all on our own.  Such responsibility is really new to me.  I have worked in psychology labs for a while and have never been in charge of such a large portion of a project.  And I understand the reasoning behind that too: I am an undergrad and have no professional training whatsoever.  I really should not be working with subjects or structuring surveys whose results could yield recommendations for psychological or medical practice.  Maybe it’s because this is a completely different kind of work that I’ve been trusted with an entire project.  It’s not as complicated as designing and running a psych experiment.  Or maybe it’s because it’s through a different university, in a different state, in a different culture.  I don’t really know.  And I can’t decide what makes more sense either.  Should undergraduates be trusted and given a lot of responsibility so that we learn and can carry on the work?  Or should professionals be responsible for most of the design while undergraduates complete various office tasks and handle some implementation?  Obviously I’d rather be involved in more interesting aspects of whatever project I’m doing.  But I understand not trusting a group of 20 year olds to be entirely in charge of something.  Or even if you do trust us, it makes sense to not give us all the responsibility for liability reasons.  Maybe I’m just coming from a different school of thought because all the work I do at school involves running experiments on human subjects.  And this project I’m doing here is just talking to people.  But still.  I can’t believe how much I’m allowed to do!  It’s great.