Paulie's Blog: Spending time with military children

I need to open by apologizing for the lack of blogs the last few weeks. The last few weeks have been crazy! Classes are in full swing, we raced in Iowa, I driver/coached my co-drivers of the Duke Motorsports team, and I visited an elementary school serving students of Ft. Bragg.

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Thus far, I'm really enjoying my classes at Duke. Overloading (taking more classes than required) is certainly a lot of work. This is not a pace I could keep up every semester. Still, I'm managing it pretty well this semester and really happy I decided to do this. I've got some awesome courses with great professors.

I would say that my High Impact Leadership class has emerged as my favorite. It's taught by a retired U.S. Army Colonel and an active Lieutenant Colonel. The Colonel was heavily involved in the writing of the leadership materials used by the U.S. Army and has a PhD in Organizational Psychology. This class really pushed my classmates and me to examine our own behaviors and seek to improve ourselves, giving us a plethora of methods and tools to use to do so.

Outside of the classroom, it's great to be back with all of my friends from last semester. My roommate and I have a pretty cool setup in our room that makes it really easy for people to come in and hang out. That said, I will admit that I have probably spent more time in the library the last two weeks than in my own dorm.

Unfortunately, Iowa didn't go as we had hoped and I take responsibility for that. I was pretty happy with the car right from the start and we were making steady gains throughout practice. We were on top of the board for a bit and were firmly in the top five when we decided to do a mock qualifying run. At a place like Iowa, you flirt really, really close to the edge to go fast, and we were living right on that edge.

Unfortunately, we didn't tighten the car up enough to counterbalance the tape (putting tape on the grill for qualifying increases front downforce and tends to make the car loose) that we had put on for our mock qualifying run. I ended up getting too loose into Turn 3 to save the car and we had to unload the backup. Although the car was too loose, I take full responsibility for what happened, as I was the one sitting behind the wheel.

Paulie talked to some North Carolina military students about the importance of education.

The guys did an awesome job of getting the backup ready to go through inspection in time for qualifying. My first laps on the track in the car were in qualifying. Since Iowa is an impound race, we weren't able to make any significant adjustments to the car until the race got started. We were tight all night and ended up 12th.

After another full week of classes, I went to an Autocross event with the Duke Formula SAE team. We competed with our car from last year in an effort to get some of the other team members seat time. I was able to coach each one individually and it was great to see the gains that everyone made in the course of the day.

Last Thursday I was able to go down to an elementary school in Spring Lake, N.C., that serves the children of Army men and women stationed at Ft. Bragg. A program called "Books on Bases, Smiles on Faces" donated 4,000 books to elementary schools impacted by the military and this was where the books were presented. I was able to open the event with remarks to the students about the importance of education in my life and Gov. Bev Perdue from North Carolina read to the students. It was a great event and I'm fortunate to have been a part of it.

The episode of 3 Wide Life that we filmed in the summer is airing this week. Be sure to check it out. Have a great week!

Paulie Harraka, a native of Fairlawn, N.J., is a student at Duke University. He is a member of the Drive for Diversity program and races in the Camping World West Series for Bill McAnally Racing. Harraka won the 2008 track championship at All American Speedway.