I'd like to stay lost, thank you
I'm a big advocate for maximizing my time, hyper-efficiency, crap like that. But I'm also into mindless wastes of time. One occasionally good waste of time is googling my name. I usually come up with old poems, Colby things (though these seem to be disappearing over the last couple of years -- I guess they're erasing any memory of me), and then other members of my family.
But yesterday I found this: SPAN: the State PIRG Alumni Network's page of missing alumni. At first, I thought this was alarming - the PIRG's are searching for me, trying to suck me back in. Then I realized there are about 10,000 former PIRGers on the list (which doesn't say a heckuva lot for their retention rate, does it?) and all of those people are likewise 'lost' (which doesn't say a heckuva lot for their exit interview process).
Speaking of which, that was one of the strangest exit interviews I've ever had. I think it was the only exit int., but still, it was strange. It was over the phone, I was in Denver, the guy was in Boston, I think, or D.C. Anyway, he got very defensive and there was actual shouting involved. I really just left to go be closer to M-N, teach English, leave behind a discombobulated director who spent a little too much time smoking pot while canvassing in New Jersey and saw that as the pinacle of what the PIRGs do, and, well, ok, that's about it.
It was bittersweet, though, to see two of my best friends from that job also on the list. We all left around the same time. One of my friends went to fight wildfires, his dream job. I lost touch with him a couple years ago. Another from the list is just really missing. I checked out the CoPIRG website, and her boyfriend (or former boyfriend, I guess) is still working there, setting some sort of longevity record. Yet she's missing. So now I'm just reminded of our big exodus, but I still don't know where they are.
posted by Torgo @ 1:59 PM
3 Comments:
Hey, I'm not on the lost list! Which means someone forwarded my contact info to them!
An old coworker of mine was with the PIRGs around the same time as us. All anyone had to do was say "canvass" or "role play", and we'd go into convulsions. We had these other similarities, like our dads dying around the same time in the same manner, but the PIRG rants always seemed to trump those. Whenever I'm in DC, we still meet up to catch up, and somehow still need a therapeutic purge sessions.
Talk about a loss of innocence. If there was ever a watershed moment where masses of people lose their idealism, it's every summer through the PIRGS.
Last weekend I discovered there are still street corners in Boston where I automatically go into brainwash mode: "Sign a postcard to save our national forests?" Aaaaahhhhhh.....
Have you been getting mail or email from them? I was surprised you weren't on the list, but then noticed a couple of other campus org's weren't there (ones I highly doubt 'keep in touch').
The CalPIRG people have an SF office and sometimes they postcard by my office. I look at them sadly, like I look at zoo animals. But if they talk to me, I'll sign their cards happily without making them go through the dance.
I used to get emails, for a while after I quit, but then I blocked them. So if they think they're reaching me, they're not.
And I pretend to talk on my cell phone whenever I see a WashPIRGer with a clipboard.
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