Geographical Distribution of GEMS Students

Gains in Mathematics and Science is a summer program run by the Department of Defense's Army Educational Outreach Program. They provide summer hands-on modules at sites around the Washington, DC area running programs for middle and high school students. Last year, around 500 students attended the program from many nearby schools and even students from Kalamazoo, Michigan.

I made the diagram above to best convey the geographical distribution of school participation based on their type, location and contingent size.

A Letter to Janet Cornfeld, Cornell Class of 1972

Ms. Janet Cornfeld '72 is the point of contact for the Cornell Alumni Admissions Ambassador Network for the DC and Maryland area. I know nothing about her except for her position as member of the Cornell Club of Washington, her year of Graduation and that I want to encounter more fellow alums. I'm sure she's a nice person with a good career. What lies below is an e-mail I sent her recently.

Dear Ms. Janet Cornfeld '72
My name is Ryan Gomez and I am a recent graduate of Cornell University. I graduated with a major in Operations Research and Information Engineering in the class of 2009. I have recently returned to the Washington D.C. area and aim to be a good member of my community. Recently I applied and was accepted to be a Cornell Alumni Admissions Ambassador. Please let me know how I can serve the current crop of potential Cornellians in the Washington area.

Currently, I am a near-peer mentor with the Army Educational Outreach Program working with Middle and High School students in the District of Columbia. I facilitate hands-on Science, Technology and Engineering activities to students unlikely to enter these fields. This way, I help the Department of Defense's mission of inspiring America's next scientists and engineers. Through this experience, I intend my career to be civic in scope, community strengthening, personally enriching and lots of fun.

Cornell is a place I miss terribly. I lived in no less than six places on campus: North, West, Greek, and Collegetown. I was eventually embedded into a community centered around a salon at 400 Oak Avenue. We attracted, among others, Baja Auto Racers, Cornell Democrats and Hotelies. We shared meals, told stories and organized field trips. Music filled the house. Recent graduates of our members have found themselves in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Napa Valley and everywhere in between. Apart from this community, I pursued courses in six of the seven Colleges to supplement my Engineering degree. Operations Research itself taught me the art of collecting, simulating and modeling data.

In the past year to reflect on my Cornell experience, I developed a historic Map of Collegetown, that focused on the neighborhood since 1960. The period between 1968 and 1972 was particularly rich in history and you must have wistful stories of epic gatherings, passionate debate and youthful mischief from your stay during this time. I'm pleased to report that much has not changed about coming of age at Cornell, despite the University's many changes. Additionally, I have provided a few infographics on the state of Cornell's enrollment at the MetaEzra blog and spent the time since graduation contacting local alumni and other professionals for informational interviews.

With my college years behind me, it is my wish to volunteer in service to both prospective students and Cornell's Alumni Institutions.

Thanks Very Kindly,
Ryan Gomez '09

New Cornell Enrollment Infographics

Over the Fall I've created these infographics that detail the enrollment of Cornell kids from the fall of 2008 for MetaEzra.com. I wanted to post them here first to get feedback from my friends.





Please let me know how I can improve these infographics and send me ideas for future ones.

What does Ryan Gomez read?

Earlier I tried to put my whole Google Reader page for all of you to browse. That's actually very difficult to do. Instead of showing my categorizations of the 106 blogs I read, I can only share certain articles. I will faithfully do my best to report and annotate articles I find interesting.

You subscription would flatter me greatly.

Shared Blog posts of Ryan Gomez

A list of notable blogs I follow are as follows.

For national politics I follow The Washington Post and The New York Times. My family has a home subscription to the Post and I should likely subscribe to the Wall Street Journal.

FiveThirtyEight is one of the best. It is a progressive leaning political blog with tight statistical analyses that a baseball bean counter could love. One cannot control what one cannot measure!

For Additional Commentary I subscribe to magazine blogs such as the New Yorker. A lot of people feel that the New Yorker is uppity, but I don't. In print, I skip the event listings and proceed to read every word. Its writing is committed to getting into the heads of the actors involved in a wide range of topics. I am confident that any reader who picks up the paper will find at least one crazy article that they'll like. I shared the articles on Trent Reznor and Kat Williams.

I also subscribe to Salon.com and Slate Magazine. They're both something to read, though I can't tell the difference between the two. They cover national events, fashion and stuff and cover Mad Men widely. I don't watch Mad Men, though I might.

I have blogs on Photoshop, Flash and Design, but I only read the articles when I have a specific tutorial in mind I want to read. Pixel2Life.com floods my reader as does Layers Magazine. Aduzeedo is my favorite in this category, featuring futuristic daily and weekly roundups.

I'm looking to expand my Music blog profile. Of note, Fullundie features Soul and Motown selections.

I have a LifeSkills catagory that round up several established blogs that discuss productivity, money and living well. Consumerist, owned by Consumer Reports, reports corporate bullshit well. LifeHacker is also very good but produces lots of articles. The blog itself has different feeds, such as best-of's-only. Zen Habits is hokey and Get Rich Slowly will help those with incomes.

The Sartoralist has its own category. I'm a fan of portraiture and tryin' my ass to look good.

I have more blogs on Maps, GIS and Mapping API's than I need. Start at Planet Geospatial and wander. There are blogs on Strange Maps, blogs specific to Google maps, etc. Axis Maps is good, but posts irregularly.

Becoming a member of my community is important to me so I have blogs on DC and Muryland. DCIst is very good, but owned by a non-local group. Wonkette is snarky. Silver Spring Penguin and Silver Spring Scene for my predictable dinner-and-a-movie neighborhood. Start with DCBlogs roundup.

Post Secret. People send in postcards of secrets to some guy in Germantown, MD. For Everyone.

Blogs about Visualizations and Infographics is a mix of mapping and photoshop, have their own category. GraphJam and Indexed are joke sites. Flowing Data and information aesthetics cover it all.

Many more blogs await to be added to my list and please expect a healthy dose of recommended articles through following my shared blog posts page.

Musical Selections: Marvin Gaye: The Master Compilation (1961-1984) in .flac

Job Search So Far

For all those wondering how my job search has been, I've been pursuing a split path. The first direction is contacting as many people as I can, making friends and gaining information. It was once said among my travels that the only way to get a Job was through informational interviews.

Meanwhile, I'm working on a portfolio of goods providing infographics to www.metaezra.com.

As a sketch, I've listed all the people I've had meetings with since early June. The arrows indicate whose contact enabled me to reach the next person. The timeline at the bottom indicates time between first contact and the meeting.

If done in a formal context, I'd clean up the typography a bit and add useful markers explaining what the arrows and time line does.

A Link to the graphic remains Here

"May Heaven Help the Distracted."


Listening Selection: Etta James, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Ice Cube.

A Map of Collegetown

Thanks to Matt Nagowski, alum, for posting my map on his blog. I used GIS to process the building footprint and elevation data and did the rest in Photoshop and Illustrator together with old newspaper archives, phonebooks, yearbooks and interviews. It's the thing I'm proudest of most, so far.

Here to metaezra.com article.

I miss the damn place again

I wanted to respond to my spectacular weekend. I attended Cornell's Orientation Weekend to see old friends and stuff. I wanted to write about it but I couldn't so instead I wrote a letter to a pair of professors of mine. I'll post the response sometime.

Hello,
This is Ryan Gomez, a student from a class of yours a while back. I've recently graduated and wanted to report that I'm doing well as a graduate of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering looking for a career in Mapping, Cartography and Data Visualization.

I also want to be a better writer. I'm inspired this late evening to write to you because you were a writing teacher of mine. College happened to me in a big way, in the most typical of ways. I expanded my mind, I took a lot of classes, met a lot of cool people and went to a lot of parties. I learned about how the process of forming words happens in a specific place in the brain. I've read beautiful stories of wit and struggle. I learned the world is much bigger than me and that I want to react, participate and create.

Do you have any advice?

I just came back from Orientation Week to see my old friends, now in whatever place I was in for my Sophomore, Junior and Senior year. I wanted to react on a blog I'm writing to help me communicate but I'm stuck. I can only imagine what a professional writer must discuss through the analysis and creation of literature. When I try to write, all those things flood to me. Where do I begin? Point of View? Rhetoric? Plot? It's as if in my search for a formula, that word-forming part of my brain shuts off. When I do start to write, I want it to be perfect, and such the cycle of perfectionism and procrastination repeats.

So allow me to ask:

• Why is it that your write over why I make maps or others say, go into business or medicine?
• When do you get inspired to write and how do you follow a piece of writing to the end?
• In what proportion do you write prose, poetry, analysis, stories, non-fiction? - professionally and personally.
• Is it really like elementary school? - the Writing Process - and what are your thoughts on the process of composing?
• What familiar patterns do you use in your compositions?

Respond at your leisure. Any thoughts would be appreciated..

Thanks for being a Teacher,
Ryan Gomez '09