Boston, the Changing Everything Edition
As some of you have no doubt heard, I have moved to Boston to start a new education nonprofit. This post is long overdue --- I moved almost three weeks ago --- but I've been keeping busy, and so telling everyone about what's going on has fallen by the wayside.

The organization will create and support a network of college student groups that run outreach programs to middle and high school students. Based on the successful MIT ESP model, these programs are designed to get kids excited about learning and engaged in their own education; ultimately, they exist to show our students where their education can take them. Dually, they introduce college students to teaching and leadership in education, promoting a lifetime of involvement. Some programs target underserved populations while others have no specific targeting; we believe that everyone's education can benefit from this new approach. All of them are incredibly efficient, operating with volunteer teachers and administrators and free space from the university: our program at MIT provides a weekend of learning to 2000 kids and needs no outside funding, while our program at the University of Chicago can reach 500 kids from the south side for $2000 or less.

The organization now is in its infancy: we have not even yet incorporated as a nonprofit. (Indeed, I can't claim that we've even fully settled on a name; we have ideas that might work but which feel mediocre, and we'd love suggestions that might fit.) Once it does incorporate, it will begin to seek funding, and with a lot of hard work and some luck, we will hopefully find funding before my own personal funds run out. (Doubly important once my college loans come due!)

On a personal note (this is LiveJournal, right?), I am both tremendously excited and utterly terrified by this development. I think the organization has a lot of potential and I am absolutely thrilled to be challenging myself with something entirely new and very difficult. I'm seeing for the first time what it is to have to make your own direction and your own luck in life. On the other hand, I have never been in a situation where I don't have any outside source of money, nor have I ever done something as drastic as leaving graduate school to pursue a distant vision. For the first time in my life, I don't know what will happen next on a very fundamental level.

With changes come opportunities to reconnect, so if you're in Boston, drop me a line so we can reconnect, and if you're not in Boston, feel free to say "hello" anyway! As to the organization itself, if you have any inspiration for a name, want to help in a more meaningful way, or have ideas where we might find funding, please do tell!

I'll leave you with a current draft of our mission statement, with edits certainly to come but perhaps still capturing the spirit of what we hope to do:

[The organization] is a coalition of grassroots member groups that run programs for middle and high school students. We believe that exposing students to deep, exciting, and fun learning experiences can inspire them to become more engaged in their own education both within our programs and without, and that helping to create those experiences can inspire teachers and program leaders to become more involved in education for the rest of their lives. We support a broad range of programs that espouse these goals by giving them the tools to thrive and by engaging in constant experimentation, both to improve our currently-operating programs and develop new and better ones.