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"winter shadow"
Metropolitan Transit Authority, New York: Taylor Allen, Winter Shadow 2016
On the night of January 10th, I stepped off a plane and arrived in New York. I had traveled across the country, and it was my first time traveling alone to somewhere that wasn’t Reed. It was dark and I was tired, but I was also nervous and excited for the start of my Big Apple Adventure.
Some months earlier, when I first found out that I had gotten this Shadow opportunity, I made a post on the Reed Switchboard, requesting a place to crash for a few days. Thankfully, Jon Steiner ‘93 responded and generously offered me a place to stay.
Day 1:
Jama Software: Isabella Jorissen, Winter Shadow 2016
Me, 2nd from the left, with my host Chris McCraw, on my right, and the Support Ops team
Mustering up the will to get out of bed at 7 am on a rainy Monday in Portland is a lot easier if you have something to look forward to. I realize that 7 am isn’t early for some, but after two weeks of loafing around with my family, it was a bit of a rude awakening (pardon the pun). Each morning that week, the 99 bus shuffled me to the 6th and Yamhill, and from there I’d walk a few Portland-sized blocks to 2nd and Taylor.
At the corner of 2nd and Taylor is– you guessed it– Jama’s headquarters. The building owner has a penchant for old motorcycles, so the first-floor lobby sports four beautiful bikes (three Ducatis and a Norton, if memory serves). The second-floor lobby is no less eclectic, though that’s Jama’s doing. Anyone who visits the Jama office signs in with a living wall at their back and an inspirational mission statement on the wall to their right. A few of my favorite bits: “This is where we do our best work. It’s where we ask the tough questions and challenge the status quo… As an employee, partner, customer, or guest within our space, you are a member of Jama Nation… Let’s get to work.”
Jama Software focuses on one product, known as Jama. “Jama,” as it was put me by my externship host, “is a little bit of a Swiss army knife.” It’s often used by companies who have a lot of specifications, procedural oversight, or regulations to meet during the product development process. My externship host was Chris McCraw, team Lead for Support Ops. The Support Ops team, which served as a home base of sorts for me, manages any technical issues that might pop up on the customer side. They also maintain online a community where users can ask questions, read documentation, and learn how to make Jama work for them.
Continue reading Jama Software: Isabella Jorissen, Winter Shadow 2016
Public Citizen Litigation: Elaine Andersen, Winter Shadow 2016
On a drizzly morning, the streets were dotted with umbrellas and suit-clad business people desperately holding newspapers above their heads. I realized I wasn’t in Portland anymore. Contra Portland’s laid back, “quirky” vibes, our nation’s capital buzzes with a different energy. The city teems with activity, as the foremost legal and political minds in the country face off daily.
I arrived in DC in early January to spend a week shadowing Paul Levy, a lawyer at Public Citizen. Within the small and highly collaborative litigation group at Public Citizen—a nonprofit whose stated goal is to champion citizen interests before Congress and the Courts—Paul specializes in first amendment, and more specifically internet speech, law, often representing anonymous clients.
I didn’t know what exactly I would be doing prior to my arrival at Citizen. Paul let me know that his caseload is unpredictable and I should come, not prepared for any particular thing, but for anything. Further, I would be working with another intern, Kendra, a 3L at Harvard Law School.
Continue reading Public Citizen Litigation: Elaine Andersen, Winter Shadow 2016
Oregon State Bar: Aliana Knoepfler, Winter Shadow 2016
This January I was able to spend three days shadowing Amber Hollister, the General Counsel at the Oregon State Bar. I went into the experience with a strong interest in the connection between law and ethics, but actually knowing very little about how the rules that govern lawyers play out in real life.
On the first day of the shadow, I was able to learn about the role of the disciplinary counsel at the Bar and about the process that occurs when somebody files an ethics complaint against the lawyer. During the next two days, I was able to see how these ethics rules get put into practice. I met with law students, lawyers, and even judges, which was an invaluable opportunity.
One of the most meaningful parts of my winter shadow experience was being able to meet Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Adrienne Nelson and sit in on one of her court proceedings. Afterwards, she generously met with us and discussed her own experiences as a judge and a lawyer. I also had the honor of meeting United States District Court Judge Michael Simon and Oregon Court of Appeals Judge Christopher Garrett, who both went out of their way to answer our questions and share their experiences with us.
Continue reading Oregon State Bar: Aliana Knoepfler, Winter Shadow 2016
Lumnicenter Lighting, Brazil: Nate MacFadden, Winter Shadow 2016
In January of 2016 I traveled to Curitiba, Brazil, for a winter shadow at Lumicenter Lighting, an LED lighting company. Immediately after leaving Boston on my plane to Brazil, I felt a mixture and excitement and anxiety: I did not speak Portuguese, had never been to South America, and was going to be doing some challenging engineering. However, as I met my host family I learned that my nerves were for naught. The family I stayed with was warm and inviting. They gave me some of the best home cooking I've had (somehow making healthy food taste really good), and showed me around like I was one of their close friends. They took me to beautiful parks, cities by the coast, drove by the tropical rain forest, went to excellent restaurants, and went go-carting. The most memorable meal for me there was at a churrascaria restaurant. It is a type of all-you-can-eat barbeque with every preparation of beef and pork you could want. I generally graze on food, eating many meals but always small in portions, but here I rarely said no when offered a cut of meat.
Once at the actual company, I was greeted by staff members with whom, once we learned how to get over the language barrier, we immediately started having fun and teasing each other, all while working on a better heating solution for a LED driver. The heat had to be reduced because the higher temperature an electrical component is, the shorter its lifetime. Even if the component is within its safe operating temperature range, being near the top of that range causes the product to break significantly earlier. Many methods were already tested so I had the challenge of coming up with new methods to hopefully be applied either in conjunction with the previous methods or by themselves. The staff made sure to give me feedback on my ideas and helped me every step of the prototyping way. They also knew that nobody could work on an empty stomach, so they introduced me to a snack called Paçoquita which I ended up loving. It was basically crushed nuts and sugar pressed into little cylinders and it was fantastic.
I'm going to miss everything from my trip: the people, the food, the weather, the work... I'll be sure to visit again soon.
Continue reading Lumnicenter Lighting, Brazil: Nate MacFadden, Winter Shadow 2016
Wyle Labs, NASA Ames, Ali Cox, Winter Shadows 2016
The first day at Nasa Ames Research Center, Arwen showed us her office, where she keeps samples of Mars and Moon dirt analogs (formulated on Earth to resemble as closely as possible the real thing). Apparently these samples are used to test rover instruments to try to determine as best as possible how they would interact with the foreign environment. Arwen also kept pictures of all the previous groups she has worked with on various projects. Among them were a collaboration with the Japanese space agency to build a giant, human-sized centrifuge to simulate the gravity on the moon and on mars, and the construction of the solar panels of the ISS. Arwen showed us a piece of these panels. They were made of an incredibly thin material with intricate circuitry. Apparently when folded the basketball court long panel becomes only 3 inches thick, which I thought was amazing.
After this inspiring first impression of Arwen's job, we attended a meeting on a space station bio-lab Arwen's team is working on. Though there was a lot of technical talk that I didn't understand, I felt the vibe of teamwork and enthusiasm.
Many of Arwen's colleagues work on side projects with a different group of people out of their own interests. One of Arwen's side projects is a new Mars lander whose main goal is to directly search for life using a big drill, unlike previous rovers, which were apparently more concerned with geology. We got to see the life-sized wooden model of this lander built by Dave, a spacecraft expert. Dave was also nice enough to give us a tour of an ancient Titan 1 rocket. He even gave hand-outs about rocket engine principles and the many different types of rocket engines!
Continue reading Wyle Labs, NASA Ames, Ali Cox, Winter Shadows 2016
Gloopen, Alec Kosik, Winter Shadow 2016
I spent two weeks of this past winter break engrossed in a shadow like no other. No, my winter shadow with Gloopen did not involve much shadowing at all in fact. Instead, founders of Gloopen, Arun Sagar and Ranjan Chaudhuri, challenged us externs to develop our own startup. More accurately, they asked us to start a startup. Though there remains much to be done before we can release our project onto a Reed server, it is awesome that we can even speak about doing so—in the sense that we are amazed at what we accomplished in two weeks and terrified what will come of our idea.
Terrified too of the legal quarrels looming over every startup’s head, about which we had several conversations that I found particularly enlightening. Luckily such quarrels may not be that relevant to our current project but just to have a general idea of things like the patent process, with all of its unspoken requirements (such as hiring someone to write the patent), makes me a little more confident in being able to play the game of startups.
On the technical side, Arun told us about emerging technologies as well as software histories. Because I began programming after many technologies had been created it is always revealing to hear how and why those technologies were created. For example, the conglomeration of HTML, CSS, and JS was not made all at once but rather was built upon over time as demands for dynamic webpages were solved with JavaScript (JS) and demands for style were addressed by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Continue reading Gloopen, Alec Kosik, Winter Shadow 2016
North Seattle College, Haley Tilt, Winter Shadow 2016
Julie and Haley at Julie's office.
Two days ago I arrived at Julie Kirgis’s home overlooking the Puget Sound. Julie is the Dean of Arts and Humanities up at North Seattle College, but she also has a strong background in sociology research. Since I hope to go into education administration or research (I don’t know which yet), hanging out with Julie for a few days seemed like an awesome opportunity.
That first evening, Julie and I made a quiche together in a pie pan whose generous depth resulted in a soupy final product. Tom, Julie’s husband (and a Reedie), recommended that we flip the quiche upside-down in a saucepan and drain off some fluid. Since that made the crust soggy, I suggested we put it back in the oven. After three hours the quiche looked like we’d run it through a centrifuge, so much had it separated into its component parts. 
This was the most significant hiccup of the entire shadow, but it was the same improvisation and collaboration that marked the rest of the experience. This willingness to make the best out of the resources at hand also makes Julie such a great dean.
Coming away from it all, I want to emulate the way Julie goes above and beyond to inspire a sense of community among her faculty and a sense of trust between them and herself. Of all the administrators “on the dark side” (according to the faculty), Julie’s faculty really seem to believe that she has their best interests at heart—because she does, and she lets them know it. I got to see Julie lead large meetings, meet with all of the North Seattle deans in the “cone of silence,” and support her faculty one-on-one. On one occasion, a faculty member wanted to come in just to vent that she was planning to overload her own class by three students. She wanted to do it because she knows that these students really need the class, but for her this meant extra grading and no extra pay. Julie was the listening ear who acknowledged that no, that’s not fair. But at the same time, as an administrator, Julie balances the budget and makes sure that her division isn’t running classes they can’t afford (classes without enough butts in seats). That means she’s also responsible for cutting classes and trying to get classes as full as possible. She’s often responsible for making unpleasant decisions that mean fewer jobs for teachers and cancelled classes for students. The fact that her faculty still trusts her and comes to her with their frustrations is remarkable.
Continue reading North Seattle College, Haley Tilt, Winter Shadow 2016
MindBuck Media Book Publicity, Grace Fetterman, Winter Shadow 2016
I had the privilege of shadowing Jessica Glenn, founder of MindBuck Media Book Publicity. Jessica is dynamic, knowledgeable, and thoughtful. In her job, she devotes her boundless energy to promoting the work of creative minds.
I was so lucky that my time with Jessica coincided with the beginning stages of her dialogue with Blue Star Coloring, the leading publisher of grown-up coloring books. On an icy Tuesday afternoon, I accompanied Jessica on a meeting with Blue Star, where I observed the collaborative effort of a publicity campaign. After the meeting, Jessica had me write a sample press release for an adult coloring book titled, "It's Owl Good: An Adult Coloring Book." As a Reedie English major, I found this assignment to be quite a hoot.
The entire experience revealed many elements of a publishing niche, and the literary world at large.
Continue reading MindBuck Media Book Publicity, Grace Fetterman, Winter Shadow 2016