Challenging to Say the Least...

So today has been an interesting day. I had a meeting with one of the big wigs who is responsible for site placements. I got a weird vibe from her on a couple different things...I got the impression that she thinks I'm this privileged person who, in some respects, thinks I'm "too good" for this. While my life hasn't held some of the challenges of many of the people that I serve, everyone has encountered different struggles and taken a different path to get them to the point where they are today. Sure I dress well on occasion (credit that to the retail discounts) and speak well (credit that to public school...and my mom) and am well educated (credit that to Teachers College not requiring the GRE and having a late application deadline), but does that somehow make me "too good" for all of this? Maybe some of those things do give off the vibe that that is true, but I'd like to think it's pretty far from the truth. One of my primary incentives to do AmeriCorps was to get away from that mentality. At Columbia, I remember being shocked and appalled at this "world of privilege." Not every person there falls into that category, but I felt this overwhelming aura of wealthy, white privilege just in being there. At first, I remember questioning just about everything about the place, but by the end of my two years there, I felt I had become way to comfortable in that environment. One friend described it as "putting on your Columbia skin when you get off the subway at 116th and Broadway. Here I was this self-proclaimed public school kid, knee deep in everything I'd come to despise about the educational system: that money and privilege made all the difference when it came to education. But despite my feelings to the contrary, I'd learned to navigate this world pretty well. I was almost, dare I say, comfortable there. And I hated that about myself. By the time graduation rolled around, I wanted to find the opposite of Columbia, the opposite of uppity New York, the opposite of Wall Street (pre-depression of course). So doing volunteer work in Alaska seemed like the best idea to re-focus and re-prioritize.

So at my meeting today, when I was asked how I would feel sitting next to someone who may be at one of the lowest points of their lives...unemployed, just coming out of prison, homeless...I was taken aback. That's the whole reason I signed up for this: to help people with real problems, not just roommate conflicts and tickets to student events. Real problems. So if I have in any, way, shape, or form given off the vibe that I think I am "too good" for this, please accept my sincerest apologies. I think feeling "too good" for something and needing to be intellectually stimulated in the work that you do are two very different things. Maybe I haven't done the best job at conveying the difference between the two and my strong need for the latter.

One thing I really wanted to challenge myself on this year and moving forward is to be more open and less judgmental. I know more about strangers on the bus in a 15 minute bus ride than I do about some people I have known for months. I tend to be pretty closed off with the exception of a few close friends. I'm not a big "sharer" but it is the sharing, that exchange of struggles, that exchange of ideas that brings people closer together. Making an effort to be more visibly open to this exchange can make all the difference.

Damn all this character building and personal growth.

I'm back...

As of my last post, my concern was that if I left Alaska to do my interviews that I would not actually come back. Well I did leave Alaska, spent about a week in New York City, saw some of my favorite people in my favorite place, and did return to the Last Frontier. Short of working a corporate gig that requires you to travel four days a week, I consider myself to be a pretty experienced traveler. So I took the fact that I completely lost my boarding pass from Seattle to Anchorage to be a sign, not of absent mindedness, but a sign that maybe I shouldn't be going back. But I did go back. And cried most of the way. I cried on the train leaving New York, heading to the Newark airport. (New Jersey tends to have that effect on people sometimes.) I cried when I got on the plane from Seattle to Anchorage. And I cried when I walked back into my shoe box size apartment in Alaska. Had I had the money to throw caution to the wind and put down a deposit on an apartment, I may not have returned. But I did return. And I'm pretty darn proud of myself for doing so.

Yesterday I was back at the after school program for the first time in a week. There are about 20 kindergartn-8th grade students that come to our program. About 10ish of these are the "regulars," the ones I see every day. Before I left, they told me they would miss me when I left, but when I came back three of them almost tackled me to the ground in an effort to hug me and welcome me back. That, in a nutshell, is why I have stayed here as long as I have. That, in a nutshell, is the reason I came back.

I spent most of my two interviews talking about my experiences working with the kids at the afterschool program. While Teach for America has been on my bucket list for awhile, I wasn't quite sure I was ready to apply. I thought I had more adventuring yet to do, but after working with these amazing kids for the past 6 months, I felt I was ready. While I know teaching 8 hours a day in a classroom setting with 25 of them would be 10 times harder than having them for a couple of hours after school, I loved this enough to try.

After spending two solid days talking about how much I loved working with these kids, I realized that I'm not ready to leave them. Yes, it would be much easier to pack up shop and head home, but I have an amazing opportunity here to work with some amazing kids.

I've said since day one that if I'm spending a year of my life volunteering, I should be doing something that I'm remotely interested in and, dare I say, passionate about. Trying to convey this to the people who make the placement decisions at the organization I serve with has been a challenge to say the least. Maybe my standards are too high. I don't know. But I'm certainly not going to lower my standards on their behalf. Negotiations are in the works for me to switch site placements. I would love to be at the afterschool program full time, but realizing that is not an option, I would love to see what else is available. The past couple of weeks have been extremely trying. Anyone who has had a job where they have spent time crying in the bathroom, completely unmotivated, working with people who don't acknowledge that you even exist, and/or literally bored to tears can understand. While I am here to serve with this organization, this is my experience too. For a paycheck, I can certainly fake happiness or contentedness for a while, but since money is no object, I'm gonna need some of those intangible rewards. Like not hating my life.

I think Howard Thurman says it best...

"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -Howard Thurman