Being a United Nations Delegate

This summer I found myself once again without a job in New York. This is not a particularly comfortable situation: rent is rough; everything is expensive; searching for jobs is the worst. But in a spate of info interviews someone offered me the opportunity to go intern/volunteer by monitoring and writing reports about meetings going on at the United Nations. The rational part of my brain told me not to spend any time doing anything that would not pay me money. But my inner Model UN delegate jumped at the chance to enter the halls of the United Nations and sit alongside diplomats from around the globe. I realized the hundreds of hours I spent doing Model United Nations in college might actually have some value in my life.

I knew that an opportunity to be at the United Nations and see international diplomacy firsthand amidst the discussions on the Sustainable Development Goals would be a valuable and exciting experience. Being a true international relations nerd I was unduly excited about these discussions because these Sustainable Development Goals are deeply intertwined with the global and national policy decisions that affect the kinds of grassroots development projects I had previously worked on. But I was still afraid this flight of fancy would get in the way of my job search and cause my own life to fall into financial disarray.

But, probably disregarding better judgment, I went for it.

I spent about a month monitoring and analyzing the High Level Political Forum and Intergovernmental Negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals, which culminated in a series of late night weekend meetings before a final document was approved. That resolution will be voted on at the General Assembly in September and hopefully have far reaching consequences for global poverty. I wore a suit more often than I ever had before in my life and I read a lot of Twitter while the Nigerian delegate delivered long soliloquies about how "reproductive rights don't exist."

For maybe the first time since college I actually felt I was doing thoughtful analysis and being forced to think strategically about big issues on a daily basis. It felt good to think, to ask questions and do research into complex issues again. So much of my other jobs had been administrative and organizational challenges that required not much more than basic computer skills and a detailed to-do list. But at the United Nations I felt myself drawing on everything I had studied in order to understand the opaque language of the debates going on in front of me. It felt good to listen, research, decipher and advise my boss about advocacy targets.

Now I have a real job and I don't wear a suit. I'm no longer making off with the free sandwiches provided by the Federal Republic of Germany and I've fallen behind on the twitterverse. But for a few weeks I got to play diplomat a little more realistically than I had at all those weekend Model UN conferences in college.

The value of unemployment

On Monday I started a new and exciting job that I think is going to take me in the direction I want to go. I've finally gotten real work in international development where I can learn and grow in a field that I think will be rewarding and interesting. But getting to this point was not an easy affair. I spent the past two and half months unemployed after I left my last job at an NGO called One Acre Fund. While unemployment was in many ways a struggle, it was also a time to learn about myself and my city. 

In my last job I had been at best a glorified intern so I knew this was coming. I originally had a three month contract, then a two month extension, then a one month extension, then in mid-December there was no more extending and I stopped making my commute from the Q102 bus to the N train to the Z train that led me from Astoria, Queens to the heart of the Financial District. When you're so used to having a routine, waking up one day and not having any real pressing responsibilities is a bit of a shock. Because then finally there was no one but myself to tell me why my day matters.

Unemployment enables a lot of nice (but cold) daytime strolls through Central Park

I became my only supervisor and my only task was to acquire a new job. For weeks I sat at the folding table in my poorly heated kitchen. I could see the light come in around the edges of the back door because the foundation of the apartment building is sinking. I sat there staring at my laptop more than anything, while I looked for jobs online, emailed alumni, edited my resume countless times and became all too familiar with what is now my least favorite genre of writing, the cover letter. 

I don't like writing praises about myself so cover letters have never flowed naturally from my fingertips. I'd much rather write about rodeos, gun shows, libraries, Nigerian restaurants or Bolivian llama sheds. My self-deprecating humor and inability to exaggerate in a valuable way about myself (although I never seem to have a problem exaggerating frivolous stories about my childhood) made writing cover letters an arduous challenge to sell myself and generate excitement about each possible job even when I knew there was only a fraction of a chance I'd even get an interview. Every time I started a cover letter I just wanted to write

"I promise I'm smart. I promise I'll work hard. You can trust me, I'm an Eagle Scout."

But I was pretty sure that wouldn't get me that far. So I carried on writing, editing, checking jobs websites religiously and just kept applying because it was the only thing I could do. 

I considered a wide variety of opportunities

However, one can only write cover letters for so long every day. My general goal was to apply for at least five jobs a week but that still left me with a good deal of time on my hands. So after I put in a bunch of hours cleaning my apartment, convincing my girlfriend that a shoe organizer was necessary to bring order to our life, and loading up on groceries at Costco, I was left wondering how to spend my time. 

The first order of business was seeing as many museums as possible. While not free, a number of museums in New York are a "suggested donation" for entry, which is often a price of $15-22. However, if one lacks any semblance of shame and is very light on money, you can always just give a dollar, or sometimes even change.

So I went to the Cloisters, a beautiful reconstructed monastery maintained by the Met up in Washington Heights along the Hudson River; the Frick Collection, a beautiful home filled with great old masters and impressionist paintings that were the spoils of Charles Frick's steel empire; MoMA PS1, where I went twice so I could go on the free tour; El Museo del Barrio; Sculpture Center; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Grey Gallery at NYU; the Queens Museum; the Brooklyn Museum; the Museum of the City of New York; the Bronx Museum; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I also went twice in one day because I went to the Museum Highlights tour in the morning and then wanted to return for the Contemporary art tour in the afternoon, all for the price of one dollar. 

Georgia O'Keefe's painting of the Brooklyn Bridge was one of my favorite finds

I museum-hopped, I cooked nice dinners for my girlfriend, I did all of our laundry and even washed the sheets on a semi-regular basis. I cleaned and bought groceries and wondered if this was how 1950s housewives felt. I lay in bed reading Junot Diaz all day and remembered why I loved reading so much before college turned it into a chore. I sat in my small bedroom and listened to old records of poets reciting their works over the hum the air conditioner continuing its vain war against the always-too-hot radiator. Most of all I thought. I spent time by myself and got to consider what I wanted out of my future. I wasn't jumping from one job to another. I wasn't locked into a career track. I had time to remember me, to remember the things that make me smile and to learn that I like reading on the subway so much that I should probably ride it regularly This was the first time, maybe since the summer after my first year of college, that I had time to myself - away from jobs and school and expectations. Even with the specter of my job search hanging over my head, I took the time to make myself good coffee and to cook a lot of butternut squash because those were things that made me happy. 

I especially appreciated coffee shops that feature cat puns

While it was a struggle to continue to churn out those cover letters, writing so much about myself gave me time to consider who I wanted to say I was. Writing "what I wanted to do with my life" so many times, like a mantra of self-assertion, eventually generated some actual introspection. After going to the final round interview for four different jobs in international development and not getting an offer I began to question if I had chosen the right path for myself. But in the end, after walking for hours through Central Park and calling my grandparents as much as I should have been all along, I knew that the path of least resistance was not the road I wanted to be on. Now, after a season of art museums, an opportunity presents itself and I must rise to the challenge. 

Moving to New York Meant Leaving Chicago

The past summer I moved to Astoria, Queens from Chicago when I graduated college. I changed my New Yorker magazine subscription to a real New York address, started doing things that I found in its Goings on About Town section, ate Venezuelan food for the first time, had my tires slashed and learned what all the fuss over Williamsburg, Brooklyn was about.

My girlfriend and I moved into a shitty apartment in Astoria, so close to the East River that when I look for restaurants nearby on my cell phone it often gives me recommendations for things, far outside my price range or interest, on Manhattan's aristocratic Upper East Side. It's a 15 minute walk to the nearest train station but we have a washer and drier in the apartment and rent is cheap so I can't really complain.

Upper East Side, So Close Yet So Far

Upon arriving in New York I found myself increasingly identifying with Chicago. I listened to Kanye and Chance the Rapper endlessly, maybe mostly to hear all their references to the city I had just left behind. I needed to hear Chance say "Went to Kenwood? Me too" and know what Kenwood Academy at 51st and Lake Park looked like. I needed to feel that I understood a place and all of its cultural references. That when Kanye rapped about Lake Shore Drive, I knew every exit from 57th northward. For me those lines were more than words, they were signifiers of a place I called home and local knowledge I'd accrued. I had belonged somewhere.

Chance the Rapper, Circa 2013

Then arriving in New York I felt like I knew nothing.  In Chicago, I felt like I really knew the place I lived, the restaurants, the museums, dive bars, parks and bookstores. But New York was new and overwhelming (does that mean Chicago was whelming? unclear).

My feet, and all of my stuff for that matter, were in New York but my mind was still on Chicago. Almost weekly I brought up Harold's Chicken Shack with my co-workers who had gone to Northwestern, even though they repeatedly made it clear they had no idea what I was talking about.  I would quote to people the exact price of a half-dark special at Harold's ($3.18 with student discount) as I reminisced about delicious, barbecue sauce soaked fried chicken.

At Harold's, Hands Covered in Mild Sauce, Sucking down a Mystic, Mid 2012

So I tried to experience as much of New York as I could. I left work each day with a mission and took each weekend as an opportunity. I ate at a Cypriot restaurant and learned that Ouzo is not a very responsible beverage to pair with dinner. I went to a brewery in the farthest northwest corner of Queens where you could see Riker's Island. I went to book talks in bars and art shows in warehouses. I sat atop roofs in Williamsburg and took the ferry to Governors Island for a poetry festival. I went to almost every single museum in the city that had free hours. I marched across the Brooklyn bridge with thousands of protestors. I found Ivorian restaurants and the best arepas Jackson Heights had to offer. I got stranded waiting for what seemed like eternities at subway stops trying to making the late night exodus back to Queens.

Moonrise in Chelsea

Eventually, when a friend from back home visited I began telling him about this great place to get fried chicken called Pies and Thighs. I was almost salivating as I talked about their chicken biscuit. And later thinking back to that conversation, I realized I'd finally found a new chicken place.