Listening to Gravity

The end of the second full week of school seems like as good a time as any to try to summarize the experience so far. Meeting and Reading is the briefest summary I can give. I think it's fair to say that one strategy employed by the Clinton School in preparing its students to do Public Service is to introduce the students to many people currently serving the public. We, the Class of 2011, have met politicians, philanthropists and each other. We've done too much Reading already for me to ignore it in any summary, but it's not nearly as interesting as the Meeting we've done. And Reading doesn't seem to be unique to the Clinton School; it's a staple of most graduate school programs.
The two most daunting aspects of the early stage of my journey are 1) A lack of vision and 2) An overwhelming amount of information.
Like many of my students at the beginning of their Make a Difference projects, I have a great desire to do some good, but no idea where to start. When I was the teacher I tried to give them ideas by having them watch movies, like Emmanuel's Gift and Paper Clips and Invisible Children, and read articles about people like Chad Pregracke. Now that I'm the student I recognize that all of those examples can be very overwhelming.
My current (and only) strategy for dealing with feeling overwhelmed is to listen closely to what I'm drawn most strongly towards. After listening to an ambassador, two congressmen, a political strategist and two philanthropists, I recognize that the philanthropists have had the most impact on me. They were good speakers, but definitely not the most dynamic of the ones we've heard. It was their message and not the delivery that has me most intrigued.
They spoke from the perspective of large grant-giving organizations who see doing good on both large and small scales. They spoke about trying to encourage sustainable community health through supporting indigenous philanthropic groups (small, local organizations).
By recognizing my reaction to their comments I think I may have taken the first steps towards developing a vision.