In summary...

I had a really weird day today. Okay, not WEIRD weird, like I've had in the past, but semi-weird and really eventful. It started out with me waking up 15 minutes before my alarm went off. I was all excited that I still had 15 minutes to spare, closed my eyes, thought, "Isn't it weird that it's light outside?" and opened my eyes in what felt like 3 seconds later, but was actually 30 minutes. I thought, "Drat-- I'm supposed to leave for work in like, 25 minutes", but I took a shower anyway and just showed up late for work. When I got there, I went to my boss, who was actually in a good mood for once and happy to see me. She was like, "Charissa! Hi!" And I was excited and said, "So, what do you want me to do?" "Actually, I don't have anything for you to do." Oh... "But Melissa does! She has a LOT for you to work on..." So I, all excited, because I have to be there for 3 hours, and I don't like being bored for three hours, go up to Melissa- "Melissa-- I heard that you have lots for me to do!" "Charissa! You did? Well, someone lied to you..." What? Maybe she's kidding... "No, really-- I have nothing for you to do." "I guess I can... go back to Kathy and ask if she has anything again..." So I go back to Kathy, call her a liar, and she says, "Well, I have a lot for you to do NEXT week, but nothing right now..." At this time I'm thinking, "I am NOT going home right now, I'm poor and I need these hours..." as she says, "So, let's ask Sheri if she has something for you to do..." Sheri does. I was kind of excited, kind of not, because Sheri sometimes has really scary tasks for me, such as "Do a literature review on so and so"-- I, before working here, had only heard of the term "literature review" in psychology for people who want to write papers who are working on their masters, so just the term scared me. Or, "Go on a hunt to find a COLORED scanner"-- apparently there are non-colored scanners?-- "And then pretened you know what you're doing and that you know where the building I'm going to send you to is, and scan this thing at 600 pixels per something you don't understand." But I've done all those things-- they were scary, took endless hours, but I did them-- so today when she said, "So, have you ever heard of the Veterans Heratige Program?" I was like, "No..." She said, "Oh... well, I'll have you do it, anyway. So, there's this program that the Library of Congress is putting on, and... do you remember our big project that we did last year in November?" You mean the one that took all of you PhD people an entire year to come up with and emplamented throughout the entire state, and how I had to spend literally 3 hours scratching my hands and making them bleed because we just HAD to have that flag put in that EXACT spot in the box of stuff we sent EVERY SINGLE LIBRARY IN INDIANA... yeah, I remember that... "Well, we want to take that National this year." Ambitious, I think. "So, here's the information on the Veteran's thing from the Library of Congress, and here's this year's Indiana's Logic Model"-- hold it right there--when I hear a word that scares me or a word I don't know, not only does it fly over my head, the entire sentence before, and pretty much everything you just told me that built up to that moment fly out of the trap door that's apparently always in my brain, and I forget everything you just tried to say to me. "I'm sorry-- what is this?" "Indiana's Logic Model." I can't begin to tell you how much I don't understand. "That means... nothing to me, Sheri." "Well, here's last's years logic model, and this is this year's." Yeah, I actually like you as a person-- most of the time, you don't scare me, but no matter how many times you try to explain it using that term, I'm not going to understand. So I just let her move on, because this conversation's going nowhere. "So, I need to know how to make these two mesh." "... Like, you want me to see how we can incorporate our model with the Veteran's thing?" "No, actually, you're not even going to use this logic model. We want to PARTNER with the Veterans." "And..." "There's a website for the Veteran's Program." "Oh, so if I go on the website, they'll be like, instructions on..." "No, you have to start from scratch and come up with a plan how to make OUR program go Nationally. The Veteran's Program is for just the veterans, but ours is focusing on both the soldiers and the families. " "...Okay..." "Do you get it?" Yes and no... "So, what I want from you is to take this information (info on the project) and find out how to take our project nationally, so that every library in America will do this, too. We need grants, we need partners, we need permits..." She lost me when she said "We need grants." I mean, I can barely take responsibility for my school grants-- and work study-- you know how proud I was of myself for just finding the building my work is in now? "I just stayed up all night, and my brain is fried, and I need ideas by noon, and you can bullet point them if it's easier, I just need a plan and I need it fast." Okay... so, in other words, you want me-- ME-- an undergrad, who has no experience, skill, or interest in public affairs, to take a program that took PhD graduates, civic leaders, and who knows who else a year to put together, and put it in National Spotlight... Yeah... remember yesterday when I cut up stickers? I want to cut up stickers again. That's more on my level... "Oh, and maybe facebook can somehow be involved? We need public awareness, so maybe they can put a banner on their thing somehow, I don't know how it works." Yeah-- remember the part where I don't know how this entire thing works, either? I remember. Why am I responsible for what seems like the entire future of this project? I'm not even going to do this in a future career, and I literally know NOTHING about anything. But it was my assignment, so I thought I'd do it to the best of my ability. I thought, "If we're going to partner with these people, I need a contact name." I found the name of the contact leader for colleges and universities. I e-mailed them asking for more information on how to create a partnership. I told them what our goals were-- I told them how it fit with their goals. I made it sound all professional. I didn't even get into much-- it was just a query e-mail. I got a list of all the organizations that they're already partnered with. 10 pages worth on Microsoft Word, if you wanted to know. Tomorrow I'll be going through all of them and seeing whether or not it would be good to partnership with them. I e-mailed various branches of the army, family groups, anyone who had not just state, but NATIONAL ties to large groups of people-- I used my work e-mail and gave them a link to our site so they would know I was the real thing. I even contacted the Congressman asking for resources. Three hours of all this work, and I was actually semi-excited that I had gotten as far as I had for knowing as little as I did. But then just now, I get an e-mail from the Veteran's Project people-- "We actually have too many partners-- we're going to get rid of what we have-- we've decided to only use people who want to ONLY pursue our goals. Thank-you for your interest, though." Now I know, I'm an undergrad-- they shouldn't have put me in charge of trying to set something up anyway-- but still-- my first thing that I actually try to do, and it completely fails. I feel like a failure right now. My boss was COUNTING on this partnership, and I just send a query email, and they're all, "Don't even think about it!!!" Now what am I going to do? Taking it nationally is just a bad idea right now, anyway. Remember how hard it was to take to all of Indiana? It was successful, but we don't have any real national partners that I'm aware of-- are we really going to get some company to think, "Wow, it worked once, and you only tried it once, but it's a really good idea, let's spend our money on that!" Yes, it was a success, but companies want more than that. We should do an area thing first-- maybe like, the midwest, or the "Ohio Valley"-- maybe like, 5 or 6 states that's big enough to aquire attention but small enough that we don't feel like we're in way over our heads. If it's a success there-- if other states heard, "Oh, remember how they were involved in that thing last year that was a huge success? Maybe we should have something like that, too!" Then we'd be more prepared-- have companies who are willing to take a chance on us. As it is now, we have like, 30 people working where I work- most of which are students like me. I think it's a great idea what we're doing, but that doesn't mean I expect other people to spend the resources they're given on us. It's just insane, and now like I said, I feel like a failure. There is no national library that is in charge of a state library in America-- I checked-- the closest thing we have is the Library of Congress, and they just rejected me-- so if we want this done all over America, we have to get every individual state to do it separately anyway. This is going to take a lot of time, and I can already see how it's going to turn out-- I'm going to do a bunch of work, it's going to account for nothing-- I'm going to go back to my boss saying, "So, this won't work", and it's just going to be a big waste of time, and I'm going to look that much worse at my job, which is usually entering data on a spreadsheet, or cutting out stickers. Oh well...