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.
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