Wrapping Up

I am all graduated now! What a year. It flew by. New school. new job. new friends. new life. Penn GSE! How spectacular. I can't believe it is coming to a close. I am sure I will go into shock when I finally realize that I am done! It is crazy! Graduation was fun! And emotional. It is so strange to graduate with your master's!

My family came from California to see me graduate! They were here for a few days. We saw the Liberty Bell, South Street, the art museum, and fabric row (my mom loves fabrics!). We ate at Mid-town Continental and Ralph's Italian, two of Philadelphia's greatest restaurants. For one of my brothers, it was his first time  in Philadelphia. My mom loved it! When they got out of the car at the airport and said their goodbyes, I could hardly believe it. As soon as they left, I teared up a little bit - well, maybe more than I care to admit. I miss them so much!

The job search has been a wonderful adventure! I have traveled far and wide to find the right fit. In some ways, it is like applying to colleges all over again! Everything is in place for my next chapter and I am very, very excited!

Thank you for reading my posts this year. I will be around until mid-June. Feel free to reach out if you need anything at rbenson@gse.upenn.edu.

Why Hello There: A Critical Update!

 Today, I came in to work and found  piece of mail addressed to me on the desk! Did I say I love mail? I don't know that I ever told you that, but I love it. In any case, it was a handwritten letter from someone who is entering the higher education program next year congratulating me on graduating and thanking me for writing this blog!!! If you are reading --thank you. You made my day! And- you have nice handwriting. It's the little things like handwritten notes that keep me going.

As far as assignments, I am pretty much done.

Last night, I was up until 4 am putting the final touches on my final paper about arbitration agreements in enrollment contracts at for-profit colleges. What a hot mess! Generally, I am the do-it-ahead-of-time person, but this time I just became overwhelmed by all of the complicated issues at hand when these arbitration agreements are in play. My argument is that courts' recent interpretation that these clauses are pretty much always enforceable should be re-evaluated because there is a lot of room for the possibility that the agreements are unconscionable or entered into based on false pretenses that I argue would (or could) serve to void the contract. I do not know very much about legal issues, so it was certainly both a challenge and an adventure to investigate this issue and write about it for a final paper. my final paper of college. ever. or. at least for now.

I do have one last class meeting today with Phillip (Dr. Buckley), my uncommonly hilarious and incredibly knowledgeable legal issues in ed. policy and practice professor. The class is 12 students and we have pretty hot debates in there about things like homeschooling, special education, speech at schools and school finance. The paper I wrote about for-profit colleges is for that class because Phillip thought that it would be great for me to write about higher education for my final paper, since I am in the higher ed. program. I appreciate his flexibility in that (it was his idea!) because it makes my last paper in the program relevant to the sorts of things I am interested in the most.

Today at work, we are having an ice cream party for all who have helped with admissions events. I can't wait! Until then, I will be chugging away at a few things, wrapping up things here in the office. I'm building up a list of our continuing students who want to continue to be ambassadors for admissions and it makes me smile that so many want to continue to be involved. the next GA, who will come in late summer, will have no shortage of students to work with for admissions events!

I'm going to get back to work and my onion bagel now, but drop me a line if you need anything!

:)