Why We Walk

Getting people to walk in the Great Strides walk is like getting a really athletic kid out in dodge ball--really hard unless you make a concerted effort at just that one kid, instead of blindly throwing balls across the line. So I've been working on reaching out to individuals to ask them personally to walk. That, as we say at Google, isn't 'scalable,' so I'm hoping to make a personal connection with you, my reader, here.

I thought I would write a bit about how important it is for me to have people come out and walk, and why it's so important in the grand scheme of things to walk, not just for me.

1) Great Strides is the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's largest national fundraiser. Your participation, and your being there makes it even bigger. It says, 'Hey world, we care about this disease, and we aren't going to stop caring until it's cured.' Think how great it is to have a big crowd of people showing their support and raising money to fight this disease. Means a lot, and every person counts.

2) Walking and doing active things is something I've done my whole life to keep myself healthy. Active fundraisers remind me how lucky I was to be able to participate in activities like this. Remember, for a lot of kids and adults with CF, this 5k walk in the park is too much activity for their diseased lungs. Do it for them! Walk for those who can't walk, use your healthy lungs to breathe in that fresh ocean air!

3) You walking, just showing your smiling face, more even than you giving money (although I will not turn that down) makes little ol' me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I know most of my friends don't think of me as 'the sick girl with CF' and I am happy for that. However, when it comes time to come out and support CF, it means so much when my friends support me, and recognize the hard work I put in every day to make sure I am not 'the sick girl with CF.'

Lastly, number 4) My mom is coming out for that weekend. I thought it would be great for her to meet my friends and see the time commitment and investment I've made in my community. Plus, I'd love for her to meet you all. 'Oh my goodness, Aly, look at how many people you got out to walk!' That's what I want my mom to say :)

So, in short, your presence means the world to me. If you are scared to ask people for money, it's understandable. But just tell them all the stuff I just said. Tell them there are kids with CF who want to live healthy normal lives and their money can help that. Tell them 90 cents of every dollar they donate goes straight to research. Tell them $5 is enough.

Thanks for reading, now go sign up!

The Power of Two comes to Google

After reading their book I thought it would be so great if Ana and Isa could come to Google and give a talk. Hopefully that would raise awareness in the Google Community about this disease, and perhaps make people more inclined to participate in things like GREAT STRIDES!

Anyway, here's their talk, thank you YouTube...please fast-forward thru my lame intro ;)

Great Strides For Cystic Fibrosis

I'm walking to raise money for a cure for CF! Please join me! Or donate to the cause :)

Home Stretch

Sadly, 2 months later I am still in the same predicament--need to write/revise essays, would rather watch football and play on the internet. Lovely. Luckily I am ALMOST done. Phew. This process has been rough, and what they say about learning all sorts of things about yourself while you write b-school essays is true, as cheesy as it is.
Here's what I've learned
1) When I get stressed out my body shows it--on my face, my belly and in my lungs. I can't lose sight of all the important stuff like taking care of myself (the stuff I wrote all my essays about) just because I am busy with work and b-school apps.
2) I am very good at procrastinating. Favorite ways to do so:
a)check email, even though I didn't get anything new from five minutes ago when I checked.
b) Facebook (sigh) yes, it's true, I like it. Read status messages, look at pics, you know, the usual.
c) online shop without actually purchasing anything, this morning I almost bought a suit at Jcrew bc it was on sale and I reasoned that should I get interviews (knock wood) I will need a suit...

In all seriousness though, I did learn a thing or two about me. I think I am pretty tough and resilient--I work hard, set high goals and don't really let anything get in the way of me achieving them. I definitely need help along the way though. Throughout the writing process I realized that I like to just spit stuff out on the paper, read, revise and then get comments from someone else before I keep going. Not sure if this is the best method or not, but a big shout out to all those someone's who helped me with these essays--I am not sure I could have done it without the insight from friends, family and coworkers on whether or not I am portraying the right picture of myself (and doing so without run-on sentences and comma splices)

That's all, as I said, home stretch, gotta finish up--might even turn this bad boy in tonight, but I kind of doubt it ;)

Procrastination Station

B-school essays are hard, maybe if I write all wordy and fun in my blog and on yelp I'll be able to write in b-school essay speak...or at least will just get to put off writing essays for a little longer.

This weekend I was meant to spend all my days writing, here's what I did instead:
caught up on Grey's Anatomy (well, almost anyway)
caught up on Gossip Girl (folks, that means watching FOUR episodes, ew, gross)
watched the Harvard Yale Game (really?)
Fixed two of the three necklaces I've been meaning to fix for 6 months
ate half a box of cereal
bought turkey broiling pans in an effort to see if my oven would fit two birds at once (no, it won't if you're curious)
spent a lot of money on oldnavy.com
wrote a yelp review
sent pictures of my nephew eli to all my friends
looked at pictures of eli (x4)

Oh, and made some progress on my 'activities list' and wrote half of two essays.
Awesome.

It's much more fun to make fun of myself and my antics, or let you know that fundraising is going well than to try to say how great i am without sounding conceited--I mean, how do you do that? I have yet to figure it out, especially when the question is: what do others admire most about you. "they love my good looks and sparkling personality" yowza, we're gonna need some work there.

The good news is, hard work pays off, I went to the doc a few weeks ago and was told my lungs are normal! Like, they are as functional as a person without CF--wahoo for pulmozyme, my vest and hypertonic saline. Keep it up CF foundation and researchers.

Oh, and in case you are curious, the event at Rogue was great. Everyone loved trivia and drank a lot of beer. Nice work people.


CF Young Professionals will be back and better than ever in 2009-so stay tuned :)

Write Write Write

Let's talk about the fact that writing in a blog about the funny things that happened to you in India, and summing up your life's ambitions in 450 words is VERY different. I really like writing on a blog. Who knows if anyone reads it, but I tend to babble on with some silly story about something I forgot or some adventure I went on, or some fundraiser I am hyping, make a funny comment and add some pictures, presto, blog post.

Applying to Business school is not like that. Writing application essays means every word counts, I can't just type and type till my fingers are tired and weighed down by the massive rings I bought from that funny jeweler guy in Jaipur. I have to calculate what I am saying and figure out what kind of impact my words have, and make sure whoever's reading it won't just throw it in the 'no'pile, or sadder, the 'dull' pile. As a wise man once told me, you are up against people that went to Africa and worked with AIDs patients, what you say has to pop. Ok, I get it. I didn't go to Africa.

But I did go to india, and I do live everyday with a pretty tough disease. I work hard every day to fight this stupid thing, to do my vest, to take my pills, I can write about my life in 450 words. Hopefully those 450 words will just be an introduction. They'll like what they read so much they'll have to let me in....right?

I guess we'll see. If not, at least I am darn good at raising money for CF. Speaking of which, we have our last event of the year coming up! See the cool gadget below--we'll be at Rogue on Oct. 25th, you should join us.

Our Big Event