Keeping Up With Kelly

While I certainly don't know if this is the answer to all our problems, I do know that I am very passionate (like many of you) about education . I feel very lucky to have gone to the schools I've gone to and had the teachers I've had. My access to great education, and the people I've met at school, have been a huge part of  my success. But I've always wondered why the kid 10 miles down the street, the kid with the same hopes as me, would never have access to the same opportunities. I realized a year or two ago that if I could be anything in the world, I would be a grade school teacher in a community that doesn't typically have the best teachers. At this point, I was already committed to a quarter of a million dollar education at USC, but I still hope that I will be able to do this someday. Until then, the team I will be working with after graduation has a whole group that researches education and how technology can help (or hurt) child development. They al...

I've never been to Europe before, but my parents, sister, and I are going in May right after graduation. My family is Armenian and my dad really wants my sister and I to go to Armenia with him while our schedules are still simple enough to do so. This is actually a very special year for us to travel to Armenia as the country is celebrating 100 years of independence. I actually have a few Armenian friends from USC who are also traveling to Armenia to celebrate too!  During World War 1, nearly 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the Armenian Genocide under the Ottoman Empire. In 1918 the Armenian people were declared a sovereign people for the first time since 1375. I'm really excited to go to Armenia with my family and friends and learn more about the war, culture, and of course eat some good food.  We are also going to London and Paris and I am meeting up with some sorority sisters in Italy at the end. If you have been to any of these places and have recommendations ...

  My best friend will be in town this weekend from New York City, so I wanted to get my post up a little early! I appreciate how Collins deconstructs the idea of “deservedness” by explaining how we all benefit from public investments. One great example he gives is about the GI Bill that allowed veterans to come back to stability by providing funds for education and housing. The 1944 GI Bill allowed middle class veterans to quickly get back on their feet. These people became stable and successful, and could pass that security to their children. Today’s republicans and democrats alike praise President FDR for signing this bill and saving the post-war economy. Yet conservatives today cringe at similar programs, like universal health care. Collins’ point is that we all, regardless of status, benefit from public investments. And to say that we haven’t is just privilege blinding us. Collins writes, “We look at our subsidy as deserved. But the other person’s subsidy is welfare or ...

The USC Student Alumni Society puts on a great weekend of events every spring called SCuppers. Any student can sign up to attend a free dinner with a few prestigious alumni. My best friend Jess works with the alumni association to coordinate over 60 dinner events with 180 alumni and nearly 800 students. SCuppers is a cool opportunity for students to sit down with successful alumni and connect over some good food Some alumni host these events at their homes or at restaurants around LA. Tonight my roommate and I went to one and I wanted to share my experience! Our dinner was hosted at Morton Fig (which is on campus) and there were roughly 12 students and 3 alumni. All 3 alumni are on the USC Board of Governors. Annie Occhipinti was the host and travels the world representing USC. Another man, whose name I forget, met his wife on freshmen move in day in 1981. After 5 years of being "friend zoned" by her, they got married and their son is now a 3rd generation Trojan. He worked ...

WALKING SAVED OUR LIVES Why ten-thousand steps a day will change your life, and how to easily achieve your step goal. I t’s the era of smart everything, and if we weren’t concerned about our health before, we certainly are now. With smart devices capturing the activity of our eyes and fingers, we don’t realize how infrequently we get our legs moving. Between long commutes, boring desk jobs, and sedentary home lifestyles, the average American spends nearly 7.7 hours sitting each day (JustStand.org)! It’s silly, but your day-to-day inactivity can quite literally kill you. Lucky for us, there are great wearable technologies (Fitbit is my favorite) aimed at counteracting the sedentary lifestyle other devices – like cell phones – create. When you purchase a wearable health device, one of the first things you do is set a step goal. Often, the default is 10,000 steps per day. But why are steps the key indicator of health? What’s the magic in 10k? And if 10k steps is nearly 5 miles, h...

In this post, I want to highlight some of the lecture notes I've noticed from Writing for Work while reading Growing a Farmer and comment on my favorite parts of the book. Overall, I think it was a great read and was different than what I would usually pick up. In chapter 3 of Writing for Work, we learned about using effective examples. Timmermeister has a beautiful example where he compares getting bees into a hive with eating a chocolate bar. He describes exactly what he expects to see, smell, and feel when he unwraps his favorite chocolate bar, and compares it to releasing the bees. I could totally envision the whole bee release process! Additionally, in lecture we have talked several times about making your topic or point easy to find. Each of Timmermeister's chapter titles tell me exactly what I will be reading about and make the book easy to flip through. In chapter 15, the Cookhouse dinner menus are easy to find (and look really tasty). Timmermeister could have ea...