Not only do I owe my career today, 12 years from graduation, to my experience at the Rose Institute, but I still use skills that I began developing at the Rose on a daily basis. Like many Rosies, GIS software was an instrumental part of my experience. But I parlayed it into an internship with GIS software company Esri, speaking about Rose redistricting projects at Esri’s user conference, and building some of our first online, interactive maps for our Redistricting in America series.
In retrospect, the Rose was a fertile testing ground for a lot of my tech experiments, whether it was online redistricting, new project management systems for research assistants, or new ways to publish the Rose Report and Inland Empire Outlook. I was grateful for the patience and support from the senior staff. As a student manager, I also experienced leading a team for the first time, helping people find the right projects for them, and hiring new RAs – all skills I use in my career today making collaboration software.
My favorite memories of the Rose are simpler though – Board of Governors meeting dinners, late nights on the Rose lab computers to work on senior theses, and moving into and decorating our new office in the Kravis Center. Even the trips out to Los Angeles or Palm Desert for redistricting and Inland Empire events.
The story I tell the most, however, came from my first year. Ian Johnson ‘09 and I, as fellow Midwesterners, formed a hypothesis that Midwesterners had stronger mapping skills because we were forced to learn the “whole” US map while people from the coasts just blended everything together. We decided to test this theory by accosting each RA as they came in for their shift with a blank map of the US. We would set a timer for 10 minutes and have them label as many states as possible, then record their own state of origin. I don’t remember the specific results, but I confidently recall proving our hypothesis correct and giving Aditya Pai ‘13 a particularly hard time for his score. He had just arrived at CMC though, so I’ll forgive it.
Rose RA’s before the 2012 BOG dinner