10 things to be proud of

A reflection on the past few weeks of my life, at the Starfish office and at home.

Things I'm proud of...
1. Learning to successfully live on my own
2. Organizing, and attempting to understand, my student loan debt all by myself
3. Learning to control my anger/frustration when I'm on the phone with the loan people
4. The Scholar Services staff (that's everyone upstairs) for holding it together
5. My crocheting skills
6. Figuring out how to use Microsoft Publisher without much help
7. Making a 27" X 40" color poster using Microsoft Publisher and getting it printed at FedEx Office
8. My roommates for being so caring and understanding, whether it's of friends or strangers
9. This year's senior class at Starfish
10. Carol, for driving the van to and from Ball State without getting us lost or hitting any curbs

Sometimes it's good to take a step back and appreciate things, no matter how small they are.

Anyone want a cat, or two?

I'm just posting this to help out a VISTA friend. She posted this on the VISTA blog awhile ago and she's STILL looking for a home or two for her cats...

Recent VISTA Alum, Jillian Luttrell is moving to Korea to teach English for a year and needs to find a good home for her two cats. The animals are healthy, fixed, declawed, and litter box trained. They are both females, ages 9 and 2. If anyone is interested in one or both of these fine felines please contact Jillian at jllutrrell(at)gmail.com

Email her or me if you're interested.

Mentors and Chase

It's been fairly low key in the office. At least on my end of everything. I don't have anything enormous and stressful creeping up on me. Match Week is coming up at the end of this month, but I'm not going crazy over it. Top priority in the office at the moment is to get enough mentors signed up for the incoming freshman class. For one reason or another, we've fallen behind on the mentor front. If you're reading this and live in the Indy area, do you want to be a mentor? Call the Starfish office (317)955-7912 if you're interested!

The most dramatic event that happened this past week was a wonderful call I got from AES. They're the people that take your money if you have private student loans through Chase. Well, my forbearance was up, but it turns out that Chase changed it's policy in March and, long story short, I'm not allowed to reapply for forbearance until December. Hmmm... anyone see a problem here? I'm a VISTA until December 5... That's not gonna work. I'm currently delinquent on my loans with them. I have no updates on how this will all end, but I'll keep you posted.

So, sorry for the kind of boring post. But here's a summary... Be a mentor and call 955-7912 to sign up! And Chase sucks just as much as the customer service at SallieMae.

Back to Earth

Bob have returned from his 2 days on the roof. It was a pretty successful event. I don't have a final count on the number of mentors we got out of it, but we definitely got a lot of media coverage. We were on 4 different news channels, and 2 or 3 radio shows. Cheri Daniels (the governor of Indiana's wife) and Mayor Ballard joined Bob for awhile yesterday. Here are some pictures for the last 48 hours at the office.

Bob going up in the cherry picker at 8am Tuesday morning

Figuring out how to use the scissor lift

Bob getting his lunch from Dasta Pizza (we had 5 different meal sponsors for Bob this year)

One of many interviews

Bob and Cheri Daniels (Indiana's First Lady)

Some of our awesome Scholars with Cheri Daniels

Yet another interview up on the roof

Some more of our awesome Scholars with Mayor Greg Ballard

Mayor Ballard riding the scissor lift up to visit Bob

Mayor Ballard and Bob

A Harlem Globetrotter (he's in their Hall of Fame) with Carol and 2 Scholars

The Globetrotter got up on the roof too!

48 hours later and he's back!

Great event! But we still need mentors. If you or anyone you know is interested in mentoring a high school student from the Indy area, call Starfish at 955-7912.