The Update Part 1 of 3

As part of the end of year reflection, I have come to the conclusion that I want to do a few things:

1) Keep in contact with people better
2) Reflect on my life in a more written and significant form

So to do these two things I have decided I will push myself to post an entry on this blog of my month in review once a month. Only the highlights, significant observations or major decisions since I remain determined to not drone on about myself in this blog.


This entry though will be rather lengthy because I plan to launch this greater reflexive effort by sharing with you a recap of the last year. To do this properly I'll actually have to start last August when I first made the move to Austin to start attending the University of Texas at Austin. Bear with me over the next "17 months."

Fall 2006- I moved to Austin and into an apartment with my good friend Kyle. As many of you might know, I hit the ground running! With my idealistic tendencies, practically the first week there I prepared to register the Human Dignity Society as an organization.

I am surprised that I've only been living in Austin for less than 14 months because the Human Dignity Society already feels like a relic in my past. For those who may not have heard, HDS was one of my efforts at creating an organization. The mission for this one was to help bring people out of homelessness and poverty by extending assistance BUT by ALSO building a community around them, providing a support network, motivation and friendship. I wanted the group to film a documentary featuring the stories of the homeless and adding to the film their progress as we continued through our efforts.

The honeymoon period of organizing building attempts and being lazy around the apartment with Kyle ended and school started. Classes were significantly harder than anything at community college. Luckily I was a busy community college student and had some background in AP classes or otherwise UT might have eaten me alive!

Despite them being hard, two of them that first semester were two of the best classes I had ever taken. I had arrived in the intellectual heaven I been dreaming of. Finally I picked courses in topics I loved and two of the three lived up to every expectation and more. Twice a week I went from learning about Europe in the twentieth century with one of the most dynamic, passionate, engaging professors I've ever met to struggling through Spanish to finally being rewarded with my African American Social and Political Thought course with another incredibly engaging professors who seemed to create the most insightful thoughts about the African American struggle and literary work.

Diving more deeply into the psyche of Nazi Germany and discussing how viewing the crime of rape as a significant metaphor to the domination of slavery. I won't ramble on about the interesting bits of knowledge I learned, but just take away that I had found what I was looking for in my academic pursuits.

As I mentioned before I had started HDS and while it was not successful, (I will share more later) the effort allowed me to meet many incredible people and get involved with my current organization and my greatest passion yet. Through my lengthy pursuits on Facebook to find like-minded people I came across Anna Tabor. Anna was one of my closest friends last year at UT and when we met through Facebook we hit it off as friends. She liked my idea for HDS and I became interested in her work with the White Rose Society.

I have to admit partially because I had a small crush on her, but still mostly because I was strongly sympathetic with the anti-genocide efforts, I went to a meeting of WRS. After that first meeting I was hooked. The anti-genocide cause draws upon my passion to make the world better, my interest in human rights, has a connection to my filial past and provides me the excitement of the challenge to organize people around a cause that has become the hallmark of things I have been involved in since the end of high school.

Additionally my becoming an active member of the White Rose Society also helped me take the plunge into another organization that has been paramount to my life in Austin: Texas Hillel. My siblings, including my sister-in-law, strongly suggested over and over for me to try Hillel, at least for some free food sometime. As soon as I walked into the building for that first WRS meeting, I knew I had to come back. After a few episodes in that building I knew the people and the atmosphere were both things I wanted to be a part of. If you are another student reading this or if you are visiting UT, I recommend checking it out. A lot of my non-Jewish friends love it and it is a really open and welcoming environment regardless of who you are.

Not much else significant I can recall from the fall of 2006. I do remember that there was a point where I felt very overwhelmed despite overall feeling very well adjusted to my new life in Austin. As things became the most difficult I wrote the blog entry, Homeless that is on my old blog. Things started to improve after that, but I guess I cannot hide that the transition to a new place both geographically and in my life was not without it's turmoil.

I finished my first semester at UT doing well in my grades, meeting a lot of great new friends and finding two organizations that I could consider my home while in Austin. During the break I visited my sister and her family including my adorable niece, Maya.

I will take a break from writing so that I can hopefully be more coherent in my musings. When I come back though I will tell you about spring 2007, when my activism reached levels I only dreamed about when I was stuck at community college in Plano.