Lillian Cassell

I attended the Funding Graduate School is No Joke! Informative panel board hosted by the LC Peer Collective Leadership. The event is categorized as a leadership and wellness event. At the event, there were three panelists discussing their insights on graduate school funding opportunities. I know one of the panellists, Theresa Brostowitz, through being an RA and she focused her discussion on educational masters programs. Another panelist focused on medical PHD and master programs. The third panellist works at the Lewis & Clark Law School, and spoke to a lot of general law school funding tips, as well as a lot of specific information about the funding and scholarship opportunities our LC Law School provides. While none of these paths are specifically anything that I am planning on taking, the informational panel was super helpful in informing me on the kinds of questions I can be asking, and the opportunities I should out for. I am a Chemistry and Math double major, and I plan on going to graduate school for either engineering or materials science, although I am still uncertain of my exact path.
I learned a lot of information while listening to the panellists. Some of the information I gained is that there are programs at a national level, that are nationally funded that are non-specific to majors, or specific studies, but will fund schooling. A lot of these programs are called service learning programs, so in turn for educational funding you do a service for the government for x amount of years. One common example of this is the United States Military. I also learned that our Law Campus has a lot of resources for students who want to get connected to law school funding. This was so fascinating to learn because, while I have no intention of becoming a lawyer, some of my friends are on a pre-law track.

I went to the Know Your Rights Workshop hosted by the Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement office yesterday. There were two guest speakers one from the Law campus: Juliet Strumph and another from the grad campus: Amy Wang. Both speakers were great and very informed about immigration laws and rights, and I could tell that they had a deep passion to inform students and empower them with knowledge and a desire for us to create community within ourselves to protect each other. Within the workshop I learned about the updated immigration laws. This was super useful for me to hear in a format guided for students, because I honestly have bad legal literacy and a lot of the new policies confused me when I looked into them. It was important for em to go to this event because, as a Resident Advisor I want to be informed for my residents and friends in my community. I invited my residents to come with me to the event. I want to open my residents up to going to social justice events that are not necessarily directly related to things that directly affect them. This is a random aside but I've noticed some of my residents boast about supporting social justice issues, but I noticed that the residents who are in a position of privilege that boast about that actually don't engage with the community or go out of their way to engage in the social justice of individuals other than themselves. I'm trying to instill what social justice actually means within my community, and have gotten good feedback from my residents that are in minority, and do a lot for this community to bring justice to every student.

Labor of love and community was a deeply impactful experience, and I am so grateful that I was able to go and be present in such a beautiful event. Before this event, I had never heard of Friends of Seasonal and Service Workers. The organization seems so cool. I think it is so radical and with great intentions that they openly do not take government funding or any money that has any sort of strings attached. They are a completely not for profit group. The two people from Friends of Seasonal and Service Workers were so so sweet (please forgive me, I forgot their names). When they were presenting I could tell how passionate and honest they were about the organization and how meaningful their work is. The leadership skills I gained were the emphasis of building community in a time such as this, and a reminder to just jump in and have fun. As a Resident Advisor, building community within the residence halls is my main role. I think it is always important for me to have reminders of why being a part of building community is so important, not just from person to person, but institutionally, and to be reminded of the big impacts of community. Having an open and positive attitude is always so important when doing service work and creating community, and everyone in the room was so kind, and fun and uplifting. I was really inspired by how many people were able to make the effort out of their day to come and work to organize the donation clothes. I always love going to events sponsored by the Center for Social Change. Whenever I work with them I leave feeling so motivated and uplifted to do more work for my community and I leave knowing more resources of how to get involved. It was really cool to learn that Columbia donated their clothes to be given to underpaid workers. I previously did not know that.

The experience was overall good. The rules for card making were straightforward and easy to follow.