This and that

Life is good.

Lately I have taken an interest in teaching. It started this summer when I started helping out (meaning sitting there) with children's classes, something that I had vowed never to do. I never thought that it was my path of service, but really it is, it should be everybody's path. Now I have become more confident to teach on my own, and it has really opened things up for me. It has given me a much greater vision of how Bahai's can transform the world. It is so easy to start a class, in any neighborhood, and especially apartment complexes. It is the portal to engaging the whole family, within a framework that allows us to serve them in all dimensions, and then for them to serve other families in the same way.

The teaching has also started in the university, the labs for two classes in my graduate department, Intro to Geographic Information Technology, and Intro to Geographic Information Systems. Going in I thought I would be much more nervous than I was. The greatest challenge has been to bridge the gap between those that are way ahead of the curve and those that have some catching up to do. I enjoy working one-on-one, I love feeling that I am making a difference in somebody else's learning.

Just recently I have decided to do a thesis, again. For a while I thought I wouldn't because the previous idea flopped after putting in a lot of energy. I think, partly due to lack of support from the faculty, I was naive in the feasibility of my vision. Now a new faculty member has come that has changed my world. He embodies everything I want to learn and more. With his help I hope to develop a thesis proposal within the next few weeks. I have taken an interest in modeling spatial accessibility. Common applications of this include determining the accessibility (meaning how long does it take people to get there based upon their type of transportation within a given transportation network) of health services, and analyzing ways to efficiently extend the outreach. My thesis probably won't be related to health care since it has been thoroughly studied. Instead I am thinking in terms of job and service accessibility, especially for people without vehicles.