Labors of Love

Aside from this past weekend, I'd spent most of the last two weeks finishing two papers for the end of my program. The first one was a 15-page Political Economy paper about how my NGO's Cycling Awareness program relates to larger political, economic, and development issues surrounding Pune. I found some interesting articles about specific events in Pune that gave me a new perspective on how national "development" attitudes are affecting local politics.

The second paper ended up being about 40 pages, 1.5 spaced, and is I think the largest single thing I've ever written in my life. It was a report about my internship with a bit of a research element-- I described and evaluated my internship experience within the larger context of investigating the ability environmental NGOs to tackle India's development challenges. I worked on writing this paper for a good 5 days, but the last night I actually stayed up the entire night making finishing touches. For some reason, I couldn't get myself to just BS the ending... it was cathartic (?) to evaluate my experience and see if I really accomplished what I'd set out to do. Ever since I started writing, I had this vision of what I wanted the report to turn out like, and I couldn't bear working so hard to get something that I knew could be better. I also wanted the report to turn out well so I could give it to PEI and let them know what I did with their funding this summer. :)

Anyway, I didn't sleep at all last Thursday night while I wrote the report, but since I had a flight and a different presentation to make on Friday morning I couldn't crash-- I just showered and went to school like normal. I ate lunch, got on my flight, napped for an hour, met Aman and Neha in Delhi, watched a movie, and was up until about 2am on Friday night. And I was perfectly fine! It's like the whole "not sleeping" thing never happened! Since I NEVER pull all-nighters, even at Princeton, I was shocked. I think the secret must be Emergen-C... I thought I was dehydrated, so I'd been drinking about six packs of those vitamins per day for the last several days. I remember drinking some more on Thursday night because I knew that it wasn't healthy to stay up so late, and it must have been what kept my energy up through the whole day. It's like caffeine without the crash! I'm so happy I discovered this... not that I don't love sleep, but maybe now I'll actually have the energy to finish my school papers on schedule...

In case anyone was more interested about the details of my internship, I've added links to both my Political Economy term paper and my massive Internship Report (note that the internship report is missing the appendices, which I had to print separately). A couple pages of the two are similar (ie. background on Pune's traffic situation), but since the two papers have different aims they are pretty different reads. The Internship Report was my masterpiece, but in all honesty I think the other paper is more interesting in terms of finding out how my organization is trying to change the way Pune is developing and reduce traffic congestion. Please feel free to scan!