Meet Sam, one of Go Girl’s Associate Editors!

September 25, 2013

8:15 am – Alarm goes off. Snooze for 15 minutes.

8:30 am – Roll out of bed and prepare for the day.

9:00 am – Stumble out the door, and head off to the subway.

9:12 am – The J train rolls into the station, wait for the flood of people to exit. Squeeze onto the second car.

Alright, just kidding. I’m not going to take you minute-by-minute through my day. During the daylight hours, I’m a software engineer for McGraw Hill Financial. Most of my day is spent in front of two monitors, looking at data and coding for databases. Sometimes, though, I get to mix it up and sit in meetings for hours discussing the design for a new feature or product. And, probably contrary to what many people think, those meetings are actually my favorite part of my job. Maybe it’s time to look for a position that is less individual-heavy and more people-heavy. The highlight of my lunch breaks are two food trucks that come by during the week: Frites & Meats, a great burger truck; and Bob & Jo, serving up great Korean BBQ rice platters.

When I have downtime, I squeeze in some work as an associate editor for Go Girl (which I do believe you already know about!) and some work for two organizations I volunteer with. Chinatown Youth Initiative’s Chinatown Youth Project is a Sunday morning commitment where high schoolers attend workshops discussing Asian American issues and partner with adult ESL students so they can practice their conversational English. It’s a great program that I help advise, and we’ve just kicked off our year! Another program I volunteer with is a Saturday morning commitment where I tutor fourth graders. Apex for Youth has tutoring for third graders and up, SAT prep, sports and arts programs, as well as mentoring.

Most nights I end up going home around 6:30 to start cooking dinner for myself and sometimes my boyfriend. But, being an extrovert, there are definitely nights where I’ve got plans to go out and catch up with friends over ramen or tapas or, well, anything that New York City has to offer! Some of my favorite places include Whitman’s, another burger place, and UVA, a delicious Italian place.

Recently, I started taking a class called “Modern Political Philosophy” which covers major political philosophy from Machiavelli to Ghandi and Pateman. As a college student, I had only taken an Ethics course and decided to challenge myself with a philosophy class to make sure I exercised the non-math side of my brain. Goodness, Hobbes was hard to decipher! It’s definitely adds a great variety to the week. While I am, thankfully, only auditing this course, it is helping me decide if I could manage to be a part-time student while a full-time employee!

So that’s a mashup of all the things that are included in a typical week for me. NYC is a hard city to make new friends in but a great one to find things to do. Does life get a little crazy and resemble a whirlwind? Yeah, sometimes it does, but then I just use it as an excuse to start planning a vacation (Hello, road trip in October!).