Two Weeks of New Workouts

It's been a bit since I've done a triathlon post.

I had a great National Championship race three weeks ago (see the caption here).  This summer, I trained for triathlons more seriously than I have in past summers and after the race, I felt even more motivated to commit myself to trying to make the world championship next season. I think with the right amount of training and focus, I'm completely capable of doing it.

So I'm going for it.  I've started working with a coach, and have done crazy amounts of working out in the last two weeks -- definitely the most intense training I've done in the last 10 years. I'm really tired and hungry all the time, but I am already starting to notice that my body is changing and adapting.  My running is getting a little faster.  I am noticing new muscles in my legs that I didn't know I had.

This also means a bit of a lifestyle change for me. Normally during this time of year I start easing off of my workouts and returning to a more "normal" life -- one more similar to my non-triathlete friends who get to stay up and get up late on weekends and take vacations that don't revolve around training schedules.

But I think it's worth it. I think I would really regret not making my best effort at this -- I might never have the opportunity again in my life, so I think I've got to try now :)

Getting Ready for the School Year

There is almost no time of year when there is no programming for students at ScriptEd.  We run classes during school year, and run our internships during the summer.  Right now is one of those rare times.

The past couple of weeks has been a great opportunity for us to spend time preparing for the school year. That means we're busy recruiting and training new volunteers, preparing our welcome packets for our new students, finalizing letters to send home to parents, confirming our partnerships with schools and forming our volunteer teaching teams. We're just a week and a half away from the start of the year, and I feel like we're more on top of things this year than ever before.  It feels good and exciting.

Here's some photo documentation of the process in our office:

Our Volunteer Placements Wall -- This is where we assign volunteers to schools

Our intern Rebecca is getting our files ready

We Need Female Volunteers!

The school year is starting in two weeks, and we are in the middle of recruiting and training 120+ software developers to volunteer in our classrooms.  

We have are absolutely determined to have at least one female volunteer in each of our ScriptEd classrooms this school year.  Our students need female role models in the tech industry.

Do you know any female coders? Can you help us spread the word?  Send them a link to our website, or direct them to our volunteer information page.  If you're interested, you can fill out a volunteer application here.

Come to Catskills Conf!

I am really excited to have the opportunity to speak at the first ever Catskills Conf  at the end of October.  Catskills Conf is a gathering of Technologists and Creators at a retreat in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. Its goal is to bring people together to be inspired by a diverse program and the landscape of the Hudson Valley. 

Check out their website and consider joining! They are capping the number of attendees at 130 people so it should be a small enough group for folks to meet like minded people over the weekend. And the location is BEAUTIFUL!   

Treat Employees like Customers

I'm embracing a new work philosophy: To treat ScriptEd's employees as if they are my most important customers.

Over the weekend I spoke with a friend who has been running a company for a long time, and he mentioned that this was one of the most important lessons he's learned. Hearing this idea was a lightbulb moment for me.

My job continues to change everyday, and recently I've found myself spending more time than ever before listening, delegating, and managing. Now, my primary responsibility is to help ScriptEd's employees do their jobs as well as they can. The best way I can do that is to make sure the team is happy, healthy, fulfilled and productive. They are the boots on the ground carrying out ScriptEd's mission and maintaining our relationships with schools, students, volunteers and companies.

Who's got some creative ideas for me on awesome things I can do for ScriptEd's staff?

Back at it

I just got back from a week long vacation.  I spent most of the week at my mom's house biking, running and swimming. It was great.

ScriptEd's staff, of course, teased me about being overly responsive to my email the entire time I was away. It's incredibly difficult for me to just let go and not pay attention to what's going on at work.  I think it's a bit better now than maybe a year or two ago, but I feel a ton of responsibility and have trouble tuning out work while I'm on vacation.

Despite my inability to disconnect, I still feel rejuvenated after the week and am excited for our school year to get started soon. I visited our volunteer training session this weekend, and it's great to see the new and returning volunteers who will be teaching in our classrooms this Fall.

It's going to be a great school year.

Chinnell leading a portion of our volunteer training this Saturday

Last Day of Our Student Internships

ScriptEd's Internship program comes to a close today.  Our students have spent the last six weeks in paid internships coding alongside developers from NYC's Tech Community.  Congratulations to our Class of 2015 interns!

 It's been great to see some of the tweets from our partner companies about the internship program (some included below). One of our students even dedicated Whiz Khalifa's song "See You Again" to his co-workers at Thrillist in a recent blog post.

Our team is headed to the NYC Media Center now for our End of Internship Celebration event. Check out our Facebook and Twitter streams throughout the day for updates.

I'm on vacation next week and taking the week off from blogging!

Happy Friday Everyone.

@ScriptEdOrg We enjoyed having the interns here in the office. They were a tremendous help and we hope they enjoyed their summer with us. :)

— globaloria (@globaloria) August 13, 2015

@ScriptEdOrg thank you for our talented interns this summer @Daquanworks106 & @Dominique_TW !! Excited for the TW showcase #ThoughtWorksNYC

— Amy Schantz (@amyy_schantz) August 13, 2015

@ScriptEdOrg our pleasure, we are polishing up the projects today! http://t.co/AgshdelSKC http://t.co/KV1GhCfKFA pic.twitter.com/Iu3DzwBoxt

— flowthings.io (@flowthingsio) August 13, 2015

Go Team!

It's another busy day at ScriptEd.

I feel really, really grateful to have such amazing colleagues.  We're now about two weeks into having our new staff members with us, and it's so great to see them take ownership of their work so quickly.   am starting to feel relieved as they continue to take bits of work off of my plate and am impressed by all the things they can do much so much better than I can.

ScriptEd's team helps to make my job a joy every day.  Thank you!

ScriptEd is an Awesome Team! (Missing: Tom :( )

ScriptEd Student Blogs

If you haven't seen it already, please be sure to check out our ScriptEd Student Blog.  Our internship students have been blogging about their experiences this summer.  Here are some of my favorite posts:

• Final Week by Earl Smith
• The Adventure of the Week at Thoughtworks by Daquan Humphry 
• Internship: First Week by Katy Yang

Please explore and enjoy reading!

Our Internship Students!

Become a ScriptEducator: Volunteer with ScriptEd!

ScriptEd is growing! We will partner with 30 schools in NYC beginning this fall, and we’re recruiting volunteers to teach in our partner schools.

ScriptEd is a nonprofit organization (that I co-founded and run) that engages software developers on a volunteer basis to teach web development in underserved high schools throughout NYC. 

Classroom volunteers commit to teach for the entire school year (approximately late September through May) twice a week. Each volunteer is part of a four-person team, and is supported by ScriptEd’s staff members.  To learn more, click here.

Interested folks can fill out a volunteer application here: bit.ly/ScriptEdVolunteer. A ScriptEd staff member will reach out and schedule a time to discuss the volunteer commitment further once an application is submitted. Trainings for volunteers will be held in late August.

Volunteering with ScriptEd is a great way to meet like minded people while teaching the next generation. We’d love for you to join us!

Some ScriptEd Volunteers at Our End of School Year Celebration

Here's some more background on ScriptEd for your reference:

ScriptEd Background Information

Our Annual Report is here.

Founded in 2012, ScriptEd is a non-profit organization that equips students in under-resourced schools with the fundamental coding skills and professional experiences that together create access to careers in technology.

We bring our tuition-free program directly to schools, where classes are taught by software developers on a volunteer basis. Students apply their new coding skills in paid summer internships where they work with role models in the field as well as gain the experience and confidence necessary to pursue careers in technology.

In its first year, ScriptEd served 27 students in two high schools in Harlem, New York, and placed four of its students in internships at technology firms. Next school year will be ScriptEd’s fourth year in operation, and we aim to serve 600 students across 30 high schools in New York City.

Our student population this year is 44% Black, 34% Hispanic, 18% Asian, 2% White and 2% Other. 88% of our students qualify for free or reduced price lunch (which means their family of four makes less than approximately $40,000 a year). Our internship pool is 44% female and 56% male.

ScriptEd won the Dewey Winburne Community Service Award from South by Southwest, the Judges' Choice Award in the Millennial Impact Challenge from Huffington Post, the Teach for America Social Innovation Award, the Emerging Innovator Award from American Express, the Tufts' 100k Challenge Award and both the My Voice Our City Award and the American Dream Award from Ashoka.  ScriptEd has been recognized by the White House as a Champion of Change for Tech Inclusion. The organization has been has been featured in Smithsonian, Time, Huffington Post, CBS, New York 1, Technically Brooklyn and the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and its Executive Director and Founder Maurya Couvares was a featured speaker at TEDxNYED, has been recognized by the New York Business Journal as a ‘Women of Influence' and as a Catalyst by the City of New York.

Trust Yo'self / Imposter Syndrome

If you're reading this, you probably know that I competed in the USA Triathlon Age Group National Championship this weekend.  I was very happy with how I did.

It might not have gone as well as it did though.  I learned an important lesson this weekend about trusting myself.

About a month ago, I was very lucky to have a friend lend me Zipp wheels (for non-cyclists: wheels that make you really fast).  I had them put on my bike before the New York City Triathlon.

I noticed pretty immediately that my bike was making a weird noise while I was riding on the wheels.  I thought it might be my brakes, so I brought my bike back to the bike shop, and the mechanics assured me that this wasn't the case.

So I kept riding, and kept hearing the noise.  I competed in the NYC triathlon, and did much worse than I expected to during the bike ride.

The following week, I had someone else check out my bike. Again, I was told it wasn't my brakes.  So I kept riding.

I shipped my bike to Milwaukee, and my bike was still making the same noise when I arrived. I asked the bike mechanics there to look at my bike. They couldn't solve the problem, but assured me it wasn't my brakes.

At this point, I figured I had trained all year and spent a ton of money getting myself and my bike to Milwaukee, and that I didn't want to just ignore the noise again. So I adjusted my brakes myself.

And the noise was gone.  

Then I raced, and got my fastest bike time ever -- by 5 minutes.  That's a lot of time to drop.  Clearly I had been riding with my brakes rubbing for the last few weeks.

-------

I realize now that I was suffering from a bit of imposter syndrome: I thought that the bike mechanics would know more about my bike than I did, and that they were more qualified than me.  I couldn't possibly be the expert in this situation, right?

In reality, I've had my bike for three years and know it very well. I own three different bikes. I have a huge bike tool kit.  I know a lot about bikes and how they work. I should have trusted my gut earlier and just fixed the problem.  But I trusted the bike mechanics more than I trusted myself.  

Of course, I'm glad I figured it out before I raced on Saturday. 

I think I'm pretty confident and that in most situations I can act on my instincts and expertise, but this weekend was a great reminder that I've still got work to do on myself.

My Bike = My Joy :)

Headed to Milwaukee Tomorrow!

Tomorrow, I'm headed to Milwaukee for the USA Triathlon National Championships.  I'm really excited about it, but haven't had too much time to think about it this week because of the new people starting at ScriptEd this week.

I'm hope that giving myself both a physical and mental break from triathlons this week will pay off.  Fingers crossed and wish me luck!

I'll start the race around 7:30 Central Time on Saturday morning.  If you're interested, you can watch the live coverage.  Stay tuned to my Facebook and Twitter pages for updates -- I'm taking the day off from work tomorrow and won't be blogging.

More work for less work

Today has been really busy for me.  We have a lot of new people working with us, and have just hired a few new consultants to help us with our accounting, bookkeeping and client relationship management system.

It takes a lot of time to orient new people and get them on the right path, and that's what I've been up to today. I am sure that spending this time up front will save a lot of time in the long run.

In the meantime today is REALLY busy. So that's all for now! Happy Wednesday.

Balance

Chinnell recently suggested (/requested) that I write about balance, and how I go about balancing my life.

I get this a lot, and have for my entire life. I've always been the type of person who takes on a lot of work and responsibility.  In high school, I was the Student Council President and Editor in Chief of the school newspaper at the same time (conflict of interest, anyone?), while also swimming for hours each week and taking AP classes. Now, I run a company and spend a ton of time training for and competing in triathlons.

This IS a lot of work.  But for me, it's manageable.

I always have used my mom as an example of the ultimate balancer of all things, and I learned a lot of my "efficiency strategies" from her.  She raised me and my brothers as a single mom on a relatively small income as a teacher. As a former teacher, I know that teaching is an incredibly difficult profession. She managed to do her job, make sure her kids were happy and healthy, and she also found time to take care of herself -- she works out nearly every single day and can still get out there and run for miles.

In comparison, I've got it easy. I have a job that pays well enough for me to save time by spending money and outsourcing some of my daily chores.  I don't have kids.  I have a great staff that helps me get my work done.

Some of my days are long and grueling, and I have a pretty great work ethic. But at the same time, I've never pulled an all nighter in my entire life.

Here are some strategies I use to balance and get things done. They might seem obvious, but they work:

• Don't Procrastinate:  If I have something that needs to get done and I can complete it immediately, I do it immediately. I don't spend a lot of time thinking or stressing over the things I need to get done because my reaction to that stress is to just to complete the task.  This is something I learned from my mom. Growing up, when she asked me and my brothers to do something her expectation was that we would stop what we were doing and help her immediately.  
• Delegate: If there is something else someone can do for you, have them do it (even if you think you can do it better / more efficiently!) This requires the ability to trust other people to get the job done.  
• Perfect is the Enemy of Done: I believe that high quality work is important, but I am not a perfectionist.  I believe in good enough.  I've worked with a lot of perfectionists in the past, and I know that perfectionism can stall things from moving forward for inordinate amounts of time.
• Boundaries: I find that the more structure and boundaries I have in my day, the more efficient I am.  For example, if I know I have a 9:00am meeting and I want to go for a bike ride before I get to work, I have to be really efficient with my time in the morning. If I'm meeting up with someone after work, I know I have to get things done before the day ends. Without these time boundaries, it's easier to let things linger.
• Saying No: This is the most recent strategy I've learned, and has become easier to do as I've gotten older. I've learned to say no to things that are not fun, not productive, and generally a waste of time.  Having a clear idea of what's important to me and my work helps me say no more easily. 

This is what I do, and it works for me.  It allows me to get a lot done, and have enough balance in my life to pursue the things I'm passionate about.

Welcome Usman, Shane and Erica!

This week, we're welcoming three new staff members to ScriptEd!  Welcome Usman, Shane and Erica.  We're so excited to have you.

Here's a little bit more about our new team members:

Usman Farooq, Operations Manager

Before joining the ScriptEd team, Usman worked as an IT and Office Manager with Global Kids where he supported a staff of 50, at times running the department by himself. He was also involved in deploying a new web presence and created numerous print and digital communication material.

Usman earned his undergraduate degree in networks and communication management and has briefly worked in the IT sector. As a hobby he is always tinkering with new hardware and software in his spare time. Usman was once told he is not the best hugger so ever since then he is on a mission to be the worlds best hugger.

Shane Morris, Program Manager

After graduating from Elon University with a dual degree in Sociology and International Studies, Shane taught middle school science through Teach for America in San Antonio, Texas.  He then worked as a campus leader for Citizen Schools New York, serving at Isaac Newton Middle School in East Harlem.  There, he led teams of second-shift educators in delivering a rigorous expanded learning program comprised of academic support, electives, and volunteer-led apprenticeships to over 175 students. 

In his spare time, Shane enjoys biking around the city, going to the movies, and hanging out with his cats, Harriet and Marvin. 

Erica Wong, Program Manager

Prior to joining ScriptEd, Erica managed STEM programs for girls in Oakland and after school programs in San Francisco. She originally honed her teaching skills through Teach For America as a fifth grade teacher at KIPP. 

Erica holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and Spanish with a minor in Accounting. While in college she spent a year studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina and working in early childhood education with Jumpstart. To unwind, she enjoys contemporary dance, testing every ice cream shop in Brooklyn, and hiking.