I was lucky to work at the Rose Institute for all my 4 years at CMC. I had interned for a San Diego City Councilwoman in high school, so when I came to CMC, I already had some experience working at a local government. I distinctly remember interviewing with Alan Heslop as a young freshman. I can still vividly remember meeting Dr. Heslop for the first time as he asked me questions about San Diego and different council members in his very distinct British accent. I must have answered the questions well because he hired me that day!

My most memorable project was definitely a redistricting project for the Upper San Gabriel Valley Water District that I worked on during my senior year. My job was to help draw out maps for the project. But, this was in 1991-1992 and was still at a time when we were hand drawing maps. The client wanted a big wall-sized map and I was tasked with using tape to draw the lines of the district on a huge wall map, similar to one you might find hanging in a classroom. This may sound easy, but it wasn’t. It was really hard and very time-consuming. I had to attempt to find every street boundary for the district and outline them in black tape. But, the map didn’t have all the streets, so it was not an easy task. In fact, I remember taking the huge map and my black tape down to my dorm. I was the RA of Marks Hall at the time and I laid the map out in our lounge and spent hours trying to tape off the boundaries. For some reason, I don’t think I even finished because it took much longer than planned. I had my RA duties and a thesis to write, so I think I turned an incomplete version of the map back over to Florence Adams and she may have finished it for me!