This event occurred on September 27th and was hosted by Samantha Zimmerman. The event included a Kahoot about current events and was followed with a presentation that gave more detailed information about the event. In all honesty, I spent most of the meeting mentally stuck on the topic of paid maternity/paternity leave because of the first question.  I don’t think this a hot take if you actually have a soul but because I’m taking Developmental Psychology right now I just can’t believe how short leaves are and how some fathers don’t even get paternity leave. That first year of a baby’s life is so freaking important to their development of emotional, social, verbal, and attachment skills that I believe paid maternity/paternity leave should be hazily expanded. We as humans (especially in the US) do an awful job at setting up success for the future generations and one way that could easily improve the psychological and social wellbeing of future generations would be to actually give them the freaking time to interact with their parents. Not to mention, I would not want a mother to do a single thing for months after giving birth because, as my own mother reminds me, that is a borderline hellish experience. Oh yeah IA, there were also questions about a bunch of other topics like economic things in Australia and a coup in Mali.

This event was occurred on August 27th and was hosted by Steven and Jeremy Holon. I’ve been wanting to do CRIS since I first heard about it last year during the IA community meeting. At the time, I was apprehensive about becoming a mentor because I wanted to give myself some time to adjust to Columbus and being in college. Being a mentor also sounded kinda scary and I was worried about having that much of an affect on another person’s life. After this meeting, I know I definitely want to work with CRIS but I’m not sure in what capacity. Interning Sous a kinda interesting but I feel like I would be doing more good work by being a mentor. This also leads to the why I want to work with CRIS, I wanna do good work. I feel, sorta in the center of my chest, the drive to help and do the work that is necessary. I feel almost physically compelled to work with CRIS and other service organization in college and the only reason I can really explain why is I feel the need to. Hopefully, I figure out what capacity I will work with CRIS soon and can begin doing the good work.