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Beach Canvassing/Summer Festivities

Netiya Shiner and Maria Gomez are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Netiya, who is interning with the Illinois Choice Action Team.

Hi folks,

This week marked the beginning of a series of events that ICAT puts on each summer. These events, called beach canvasses, consist of hanging out at a beach in Chicago passing out free condoms and getting signatures for a petition. In years past, ICAT has used petitions that focus on specific legislation in Illinois, but this year we are using the same petition we used last year, which insists that  the government stop trying to legislate what happens in our bedrooms and doctor's offices. Last week I canvassed at North Avenue beach, where we passed out hundreds of condoms and met a lot of cool people.

A fellow ICAT volunteer and I posing with our posters at the end of the day.

In addition to canvassing at various beaches over the summer, ICAT volunteers will also be present at the Chicago Pride Parade and the Dyke March, two awesome events happening during Pride weekend June 29th and 30th. I had a blast passing out condoms and getting signatures for our petition last year, and Pride is always a fun experience. Every pride parade I've been to has been a great time, and the attendees of the festival are often an eccentric crowd. From the sheer number of floats at Pride last year, it is clear that hundreds of communities are represented, and I'm excited to act as a representative for both Shimer and ICAT.

Until then, I'll continue escorting at various clinics in Chicago. This week the protesters ventured uncomfortably close to the clinic entrance, but luckily three of us escorts were there to watch over them. I made sure to snap a photo:

There are legal ordinances against protesters getting so close to clinics, but they are rarely enforced.

Until next time,

Netiya

Recently at Haymarket...

Netiya Shiner and Maria Gomez are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Maria, who is interning with Haymarket Books.

Hello dearest Shimerians,

This is my second blog post on my experience as an intern at Haymarket Books. I, indeed, have much more knowledge about what it is to work at a publishing company. What I have been working on is compiling a couple of lists. One is a compilation of contact information for the publication department. I research institutions, e.g. universities, political organizations, etc. that might find some of the HB books interesting.  We base the research on the books that will be published in the near future.  So here is a secret that I think is pretty cool. There will be a book released on Troy Davis' horrifying persecution for a crime he did not commit. With that, I research links that are related to the death penalty.  The research that I complete often leads me to find new information. Something new that I was not aware existed is the area of study called Legal Anthropology. So I research the professors that teach that area of study and then enter their contact information into the HB database. The other list is one where I collect information on conferences that HB might want to have a booth in. I gather the information on the cost of the booth, the type of booth and the person to contact for information.

This is a review copy of the book on Troy Davis (I will say more about review copies in a bit). The book is to be released in September on the two year anniversary of his execution:

A couple of weeks ago I was at the table/booth at a Columbia College Cultural Studies Conference, where I spoke to a few professors and students about a couple of the books for sale.  Later on, the person I was working with said that I could sit in a talk at the conference! This was very exciting. Really! I’ve never been asked to sit in a talk of my choice at a conference while on the job.  I dare say that this could be any Shimerian’s ideal job situation.

 I’ve also learned about some of the inner working of publishing companies to an extent.  The departments include production, logistics, marketing and publicity. Production has to do with everything printed: the cover design, copy-edit, type-setting, etc. The publicity and marketing department deals with advertising the book to potential customers. This might take the form of emailing former customers, advertising at conferences like the Columbia College Conference, or it might take the form of formal events where the author presents on the book. And, of course, it manages social media outlets like the Facebook page, and Twitter. Once this is done, the logistics department takes and ships orders to costumers. These descriptions are very basic, but I am sure that I will expand on this more as I spend more time at the publisher.

Here is a picture of the room where I gather the books to be taken to conferences, events and, most recently, Printer’s Row (but I’ll share this particular event in a later post!):

Here is an upcoming book called The Speech: the Story behind Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream, to be released in August of this year. I have researched quite a bit on potential customers, and that is rewarding in itself. The other day, the review copies came in the mail. These are only to be read by reviewers, not the general public. Because I intern at HB, I can read a book months before anyone else can (live my life vicariously)!  And that makes me feel special. I’m being facetious, but it is preeetty cool to have a copy of a book not yet published.

Here is a picture of the review copies of the MLK book:

  

 

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Until the next blog post!

Best,

Maria

 

 

Printer's Row Lit Fest (and an introduction)

Salutations!

I'm SaraLouise, a 4th-year student at Shimer, and I'll be a contributor to this blog over the summer. I'm working with the Dean of Students this summer to put together an Orientation program for new students, but that's not primarily what I'll be blogging about. This is my third summer in Chicago, and I think it's time I started recording what it is, exactly, that I do when the weather gets hot and the air is sticky (I'm from the desert and STILL am not quite comfortable with the humidity).

First on the list, for your reading pleasure, is the Printer's Row Lit Fest, which happened this weekend just outside of the Loop in Chicago. I went last year to see John Green speak and get a book signed, and decided to go again with an adorable 9-year-old in tow. As a kid, I was a voracious reader. My mom would take my siblings and me to the library and I consistently met the limit of books I was able to check out (25 books per library card in Albuquerque). Leila (the 9-year-old I dragged along) and I have known each other for a little less than a year, and she and I couldn't be more different at 9. She likes dolls, video games, and Minecraft (some of those things didn't really exist when I was 9, but I digress), and reads only when she has a new book and there's nothing else to do. Her brother and I buy her books for her birthday and Christmas, but she is slow to read them and often gives up (both Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and the first Series of Unfortunate Events book sits unfinished on a shelf in the basement). So I decided to take her with me to the Lit Fest and get her some books that I was excited about so that she might get excited about them too. Although she's 9 and in the 3rd grade, her teacher says she should be reading at a 5th grade level. So we set out, and I tried to remember what I was reading when I was at a 5th grade level (which is hard when I'm about to start my senior year at college).

What's cool about the Lit Fest is that there is something for EVERYONE. Do you like books about revolutionaries? Check out Haymarket Books or Revolution Books, both of which had a stand along Dearborn. Are you more interested in graphic novels or posters? There are crates upon crates of those for you. My friend walked away with 5/7 of the Harry Potter books (IN HARDCOVER) for $4 each (did I mention they were Hardcover copies?). Vintage and rare books, Game of Thrones books, and loads of Children's and Young Adult Books. The people managing the stands are helpful and personable, but extraordinarily busy as everyone tries to purchase their reading material.

A lot of the books we walked past were books that I owned and planned to bring back from home this summer and didn't want to spend the extra cash on. So, at an initial loss, I asked Leila what kind of books she wanted to read, she answered "Mysteries" and I started looking for Nancy Drew books. We found them. A LOT of them. 3 or 4 stands we walked past had the books, in excellent , poor, or restored condition, with new dustpaper jackets or the faded portrait covers. We ended up walking away with a copy of "The Mystery of the Fire Dragon," Keene's 38th installation in the girl detective's series. Considering the history of the Nancy Drew books and the fact that they were ghostwritten by many different authors, all under the pseudonym "Carolyn Keene," I figured it's probably not THAT harmful for her to start in the middle of this series.

In this search for books, I was most interested in getting her to read things that were by women or featured women as the main characters. I read a lot of Tamora Pierce when I was growing up, and I give her some credit for making me into the strong person I am today. We picked up "Sarah, Plain and Tall," which she had read in school, "The Princess and the Goblin," which one of my sisters LOVED, Sharon Creech's "The Wanderer," Gail Carson Levine's "Ella Enchanted," and the first part of the Guardian's of Ga'Hoole series. When all was said and done, it wasn't a bad haul, and she picked them up and started to read them right away as we drove home. I'm hoping her momentum continues and that she'll talk with me about the books as she gets further into them.

A trick she told me that her library teacher had offered to her and her classmates was to open the book to a random page, and then see how many words she didn't understand. I was proud when she told me one of them seemed "too easy," and we moved on to the next book. I'm excited for her to read more and hopefully gain an excitement about reading that we can share.

I went back with her older brother the next day, and we wandered around. The second day is DEFINITELY where you want to bring your heavy-duty book carrying material (we walked past a station wagon FILLED to the brim with books) and plenty of cash, because all of the books are on sale . Pennyworth Books was selling books for $8 apiece (even hot items like the first four Game of Thrones books), or 3 for $20. We moseyed around, stopped to look at the hand-lathed pens with reclaimed wood (some of which was 50,000 years old!!!), and walked away with "No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women" by Estelle Freedman, Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot" and David Petersen's graphic novel "Mouse Guard."

As a college student on a budget, the Lit Fest is simultaneously ecstasy and torture. It makes me really enthusiastic to see so many people excited about books of all kinds, but it is difficult to manage my money and not walk away with armloads of books (this is why I have to stay away from airport bookstores) when everything looks interesting and I have all this free time in the summer.

The Lit Fest is a great opportunity to check out independent bookstores in the Chicago Area, listen to authors and other influential folks in the literary world speak, and get excited about what I want to put on my summer reading list. 

What it Means to Be a Clinic Escort

Netiya Shiner and Maria Gomez are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Netiya, who is interning with the Illinois Choice Action Team.

Hello again, Shimer community! Now that I've officially been an intern for more than a day, I figure it's time for an update on what I've been doing with the ICAT.

The first task delegated to me by my ICAT mentor was to start posting on the ICAT twitter page. As a young college student who is fairly savvy with various social media sites, I'm going to be in charge of the ICAT twitter, tumblr, and pinterest pages (which, as many Shimerians know, is an important job in order to get an organization's name out there).

In addition to updating various social media websites, something I'll be doing on a weekly basis this summer is Clinic Escorting. What does that entail, one might ask? As a brief explanation, clinic escorts stand ouside clinics on days when abortions are performed in order to protect women from protesters. The protesters positioned outside clinics are, on a good day, quiet. If you catch these protesters on a bad day, however, they will do anything from yelling racial slurs at women to shoving pamplets in the faces of distressed mothers (who are often at the clinic for general health issues, including mammograms and STD tests). I and many other escorts witness this craziness on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, these dangerous "pro-life" protestors mean that clinic escorts are necessary in many cities for safety reasons, and Chicago is no exception. For a better summary of the job of clinic escorts, a fellow ICAT escort wrote this awesome article.

For this reason, I now get to spend two mornings a week outside of Chicago clinics helping escort women past unhappy protesters. The picture above is from last weekend, when a school/church in Arlington Heights Illinois bussed in 30+ protesters, including a number of children. This now happens on a monthly basis. Ironically enough, these groups bring posters with giant photos of white babies even though most of the women headed to the clinic are women of color (because of the location of the site). This is only one of many tactics which illustrates the general lack of understanding of the issue on the side of the protesters. 

I also took this picture last weekend, which not only utilizes a big picture of a white baby's face to try and scare women, but also includes another example of a scare tactic commonly used by protesters: fake statistics. The nice thing about made up statistics is that you don't have to source them, since they're totally made up!

Finally, I took this picture today - it shows one of my favourite aspects of ICAT, which is the diversity among the escorts. Both of these women are friends of mine, and have both been escorting for years. Both of them are proud supporters of women's rights, and are outside every week helping women of Chicago get the medical care they need.

Stay tuned for more news from my internship, including info about an ICAT event being held at Shimer in July!

Netiya

Interning at Haymarket Books!

Netiya Shiner and Maria Gomez are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Maria, who is interning with Haymarket Books.

Hi Shimerians! I hope that all of you find yourselves well and reading a book! I am here to blog about my participation in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship Program at a Not-for-Profit publishing company called Haymarket Books! I am excited to share my experience through this blog! Now-a-days blogging is a popular tool to express thoughts on many different topics and I am glad to get into it too! Before I go on, I should say a bit more about myself. I am Maria Gomez. I transferred to Shimer a couple of years ago, and I am happy to say that I will (hopefully!) be graduating next year with degrees in the Humanities and Social Sciences. I have been a political activist for five years, I think.  This led me to read a whole different set of literature on activist politics, consequently, meeting workers from Haymarket Books. They publish and distribute literature that informs activists about history, political philosophy, and political theory on social justice issues and struggles. I felt that they put Paulo Freire’s strategy for changing the world into practice: praxis, action and reflection (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 87). HB encapsulates the two because they assist the activist with the reflection part of the formulation.

This is me looking intently at the camera:

I first encountered Haymarket Books at an event they had with Howard Zinn in the winter of 2009.  More recently, I met Amy Goodman and Malalai Joya, both in events that HB organized. Thus, making me a fan of this book publisher!

Here is a picture of me with Goodman at the release event of her book, The Silenced Majority:

 

 

And here is one with Joya at an event on her book,  A Women Among Warlords:

 I started working about three weeks ago, and it has been a great learning experience. The people there make me feel like I am part of the team.  It was extremely exciting to be at a few of their staff meetings, where a lot of the work is talked out, to get everyone on the same page. I was there when a cover design for a book was discussed and it was decided that it had to be modified. There is simply something exciting about knowing the back story to the composition of the book cover! Additionally, I definitely feel like part of the team when we all go on a yogurt run.

While everything that I’ve done is fun, there are two highlights: the first is helping with the HB table at an Eduardo Galeano event; and the second, mailing desk copies to professors in Argentina, Canada and several places is the US. I felt that I was literally disseminating great literature to change the world.

Thus far, being an intern at Haymarket Books has been extremely exciting, and my hope is that I continue to learn about publishing companies and disseminating great literature. I will keep you posted on this endeavor on here.

Bests,

Maria 

 

Summer Internship with the Illinois Choice Action Team

Netiya Shiner and Maria Gomez are Shimer students participating in the Shimer Internship/Mentorship (SIM) Program. They regularly post updates about their internship experiences.

This post is from Netiya, who is interning with the Illinois Choice Action Team.

Hi, extended Shimer community! This is my first blog post (amazingly enough - I think I've been active in almost every sub-community of Shimer except the blog) and I'm excited to be able to blog about an awesome opportunity I've been given this summer. But before that, I should probably introduce myself properly. Hi, I'm Netiya Shiner, and I'm going into my fourth and final year at Shimer College next fall. I started at Shimer three years ago as an early entrant, and I'm studying sociology and natural sciences. I've just returned from an incredible year abroad in Oxford with the Shimer-in-Oxford program, and as mentioned I'll be in Chicago all summer - doing what, you ask? - well let me tell you!

Studying in Oxford at the Bodleian Library for my gender studies tutorial.

This summer, I've been given the opportunity to work with a not-for-profit organization I have volunteered with in the past called the Illinois Choice Action Team. ICAT works to ensure women's health and reproductive rights, particularly among low-income women in the greater Chicago area. The organization is volunteer-based, and working with them in the past I've been able to meet a lot of amazing people who are passionate about serving their communities.

Through my internship, I expect to improve my understanding of the ins and outs of working in the non-profit sector. Additionally, I'll be participating in and organizing various outreach programs, including canvassing at the Chicago Pride Parade and an event at Pitchfork Music Festival this summer (stay tuned for more info).

My internship with ICAT begins this week, and will run through August. For more information about the organization, check out their facebook page. ICAT is always looking for more volunteers, and if you're interested in getting involved don't hesitate to get in contact. I look forward to keeping everyone posted about my internship experience, and I thank the Illinois Choice Action Team, Shimer College, and the SIM (Shimer internship/mentorship) committee for this wonderful opportunity to become more involved in my community.

For now, here's a photo of me on a Shimer-in-Oxford trip to Stonehenge:

Until next time,

Netiya

Keble College Chapel and Organ

Greetings from Oxford!

I'm taking the liberty (and have the privilege) this evening of posting below Katherine Williams' account of a tour that a few of us took the yesterday of the new organ at Keble College. I'll be brief here (though I also take the liberty a few times below of annotating Katherine's account with a few bits of information and some images). Cheers, and now I turn you over to Katherine:

"I am not a particular fan of organ music so my knee-jerk reaction to Stuart Patterson’s offer of a tour of reputedly the finest organ in Oxford was initially negative. I think what hooked me was the idea of touring a organ. I must confess a downright embarrassing lack of knowledge about organs, so the possibility of “going inside one”, as Stuart promised was just too much to pass up. Can one go–not just look– inside of a guitar, a piano, a clarinet?

The Keble College chapel housing this mysterious walk-in organ was gorgeous. I have slipped into many of the chapels here in Oxford for evensong and such and the history and weight of the centuries sits on their honey-colored-stone bones with a solemnity fit for kings. The chapel at Keble, built of brick, is lighter airier; mosaics depicting stories from the Bible brighten the walls, but the show-stopper, for me at least, were the organ pipes themselves. Like none I have ever seen, their chocolate color and whimsical patterns added an almost childish fun to the nave, not something one expects to encounter in a church–not purposefully anyway. I’m not sure if that was the intent of the designer (this is a very new organ, only built and installed in the last few years) but, like the mosaics, it worked to lighten the space. One could imagine worshipping a God in love with creativity here.

After climbing a very narrow stone corkscrew of a staircase, we were lead to the organ loft. The very nice man giving us the tour, whose name I have forgotten*, sat at the four-tier keyboard and showed us the basics of how a pipe organ works. This is where knowing nothing, nada, zilch is sometimes freeing. Because I knew nothing, everything was a wonder. “Why he plays another (fifth), larger keyboard with his feet!” and every two rows of pulley-stops corresponds to a strata of keyboard. With his right foot he opened and closed a flue (this is most certainly not the correct term, but after he explained its function that’s the image that stuck–flue) which alters the amount of air pushing through the pipe, creating depth in tone. He began by demonstrating the different effects each pipe brings to a particular note. Then he started adding layers of sound by pulling out more stops thus driving the air through more than one pipe at a time. The effect was like swimming in chocolate in minute and sprinting over a meadow of flowers the next, truly mesmerizing. If it was this much fun to listen to, imagine the thrill of playing with such an instrument.

*[Our tour leader was the very generous and talented Simon Whalley, Fellow and Director of Music at Keble who is also a composer.]

For the grand finale he unlocked a door leading into a small room directly behind the organ’s keyboards. This room was indeed the organ’s guts. We weren’t allowed to walk in, but peering through and around the door many more pipes than were visible from the sanctuary–wooden pipes, pipes that looked like they were made out of sheet metal, round pipes, square pipes–lined one wall, while the opposite wall and floor were covered with wires and pulleys. There was a narrow wooden catwalk through the center of the crowded room with a ladder at the further end leading up to a second tier of pipes and controls. (For all I know there may have been more levels beyond that, but I’ll stick with what I saw.)

I walked away from the afternoon with perhaps only a cupful of knowledge about organs, but every time I hear one now at evensong or such, I will sip that cup with delight.

Thank you Keble College and thank you, Stuart." 

 

The Next Best Thing to Being Disassembled and Reassembled at the Molecular Level is...

We're still a long way off from Star Trek's transporter technology, but the nice thing about being in the city of Chicago and partnered with IIT is that full-time students have access to the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). If you're not aware, or only vaguely aware, Chicago has a nigh-legendary train and bus system that can get commuters from just about anywhere in the city to another. Full-time students receive an all-access pass to use these trains and buses as they please (the cost is a part of your student fees: technology, services, UPass, and health). 

I am possibly the most directionally challenged individual you will meet. I don't know why it is, but I seem to be in a perpetual state of disorientation. It's so bad that you can often find me walking around in circles through the Shimer floor trying to remember where the room my next class is. This is a pretty big problem for someone who lives in Chicago. Never mind the fact that the streets are set up like a grid; I am hopelessly lost without some guidance. It's a good thing then that I can go online to GoogleMaps, type in my current address and where I want to go, and just like that I can select the transit route I want to take (usually on longer trips it's a choice between taking a train and a bus, two buses, or two different trains). Stops for the buses have signs that tell you which direction you'd be going, what stops are on the route, and the operating hours of that bus. Train platforms have stops and maps while the train cars themselves have stops, maps, and an automated conductor to tell you what other trains you can transfer to at each stop. 

"But James, I don't have a computer" you say to me with frustration.

If you are considering attending Shimer, then I strongly suggest you get a laptop. It doesn't have to be a fancy laptop with bells and whistles and cassette players... Wait, wrong decade, never mind. You just need something that will allow you to do word processing (writing papers), checking e-mails (how else are you going to know when Shimer is doing fun stuff?), and it must be able to open Adobe files with something like Adobe Reader. Many students have opted for cheaper, but equally efficient netbooks (minature laptops). You could also build your own computer, like I did around this time last year, but that means having a desktop which is not portable (ergo not coffee shop-friendly).

"But, but, but James! I can't just go out and buy a laptop! Money doesn't grow on trees, y'know" you astutely point out to me.

If, for whatever reason, you cannot or do not wish to purchase a laptop/netbook, it is NOT the end of the world (or your chance for success at Shimer). Now I get to do a plug for the department I work in at Shimer. As of the Fall of 2012, Shimer has a computer lab with five fully-functional desktop computers for academic and recreational use. The Shimer lab computers are equipped with Microsoft Office, Google Chrome internet browser, and drivers to hook up to our new printing kiosks. In the event that the wireless decides to play hooky, these computers are wirelessly connected to the Internet and can be switched over to an ethernet (wired) connection by any one of the IT-Operations department personnel within a few minutes. 

Both these computers and the kiosks are new additions to the Shimer floor. We've done away with chipping cuneiform onto stone tablets and moved into the 21st Century at warp speed. Students can print from the computer lab to one of two kiosks (on in the Student Life Center and another in the Library). If this wasn't already a pretty convenient thing, you have the ability to install the necessary drivers (background software) on your own computer so that you can send your document to the printer from wherever you have access to the Internet.

Hypothetical: you don't have a personal computer of any kind, it's 23:45 which means the Shimer computer lab is closed, and you have a paper to write and turn in tomorrow morning at your 10:00 class. No problem! Seriously, this is not a problem. Because we share resources with IIT, we have access to their computer labs which include 11 computers in the dormitory McCormick Street Village (MSV, for those living on campus or with a friend living on campus that's willing to sign you in as a guest), the Night Owl Lab, and the McCormick Tribune Campus Center (MTCC) lab (8 computers). The computers in MSV and the Night Owl Lab are accessible at those awful hours when you're down to crunch-time and need to finish that paper. 

There, I have now successfully assured you that you can get around this beautiful city, type and print your papers regardless of whether you have a computer, and I got to promote my department. 

I hope you all are having a wonderful day and I hope to see you at Shimer someday in the future.

Until then, live long and prosper, Qapla', make it so, may the Force be with you, so say we all, and you can't stop the signal!

James

P.S. - If you didn't get the above references, it's okay. I'm just having a geek moment.

IIT student takes a Cosmology course at Shimer

When you owe someone a favor, it feels really good to return it.

IIT has done Shimer many academic favors.  There are weekly colloquia to attend, talks by national speakers to hear, and opportunities for collaboration.  More importantly,  IIT has helped us at Shimer to educate our students.  When we established our partnership with IIT, I expected to see our students take science and math courses there, and many have.  I also expected IIT students to use Shimer courses for their electives, and have not been disappointed.  It's been a reciprocal exchange that has benefited everyone: the way a partnership works best.

In addition to these, a good number of Shimer students have taken language and other humanities courses at IIT.  I did not anticipate this, but should have--IIT has many excellent offerings that complement and extend our own curriculum.  While I've been happy for this happen, I've felt a little deflated: since IIT can help serve humanities to our liberal arts students, I wanted Shimer to reciprocate by offering science electives beyond the Nat Sci sequence to IITers.

Now, it has happened.  This semester, I'm offering a tutorial in Cosmology that an IIT physics student has enrolled in.  This is not a survey-level course that focuses on concepts.  It's designed for upper-level physics majors and so it begins with the concepts but then moves on, as it should, to focusing on solving the mathematical problems.  The text used is particularly appropriate for a Shimer-IIT mix because all the end-of-chapter exercises are word problems and the students need to set up as well as solve the equations to answer the problems.

I'm delighted with this outcome.  Not only do I have two excellent students, but I feel like I'm finally giving back to IIT.  A favor returned.

 

Best in Show

Hello Darlings!

It seems like it has been forever since the last time I posted an entry onto the Shimer Blog. And it has, to be fair. Life as a working Fourth Year means that I have a jam-packed schedule with very little spare time here and there. However, I am not complaining! I love every minute of my life. The most exciting and important thing that I have been up to (besides my Thesis, of course) is the fundraiser for SitStayRead: Best in Show!

Best in Show is SitStayRead’s annual fundraiser where over two hundred guests come together in order to raise funds for our youth literacy programs. This year, Best in Show was held at the Hard Rock Hotel in Downtown Chicago where guests came with their dogs (yes, you read that right!) to watch the live broadcast of Westminster Kennel Club’s Best in Show, take pictures at our awesome Stand Up Background, bid at our Auction, and participate in a crazy Raffle. This was an event that all the staff at SitStayRead had been working on for the past few months and yesterday was its final debut!

Yesterday I arrived at our SitStayRead headquarters at 12:00 pm, ready to start loading Mallory’s car full of all the goodie bags for humans and dogs, the red carpet, and other miscellaneous things. Mallory and I ended up getting lost in the maze of buildings and construction downtown as we tried to find the Chicago Tribune to pick up a banner and then proceeded to unload her car at the hotel. I then aided in setting up all the Goodie Bags, the Check-In station, the Stand Up Background Photo Booth thing, the Wine Bottles, and every other little thing possible. All of us on staff were running around like crazy, perfecting each and every detail. After set-up, all of us went ahead and got ready (where all of us looked magnificent, obviously).

Sooner rather than later, all of our guests began to arrive. Glorious outfits of suits and dresses drowned our human guests while their furry friends were adorned in matching bowties and necklaces. As a staff member of SitStayRead, I attended the event as a working participant- mainly at the Check-In with the other Program Leader, Mallory. That meant that we were the first and last people that most of the guests saw that evening. It was non-stop, ALL NIGHT! Mallory
and I barely had time to catch our breath as people were registering, purchasing, and what not for the entire evening. We definitely did not get home until after midnight… but it was awesome! SitStayRead had done it, we had gone above and beyond what we had ever intended to do- we raised far more money than the previous year and were even told that it was the best fundraiser that SitStayRead has ever had!

What was really great about helping to put together the Best in Show fundraiser was that I was once again reminded how Shimer College has been vital in more than just my every day life. As a student at Shimer, I have evolved into the very person that our motto stands for-“Not to be served but to serve”.  I was able to take all the necessary skills that I have developed from my time here and put them into an organization, a cause that I truly support. And this is only a fraction of what I will continue to accomplish.

-L

P.S: We also premiered our SitStayRead video! You can hear my voice at the end with our Program's cheer...and maybe if you're good, you can spot me working with the kids.