The Beginning

As I dot and t's and cross the i's of my last week as an undergraduate social work major at TCU, the reality of the end of college and subsequently the beginning of the real world begins to sink in. The year has flown by, as just at the beginning of the year, as I was working resident move in days, I submitted my first, initial and naive application for Teach For America. Now, here I sit in a break between resident move outs, 9 months later, planning for the new beginning. I can recall the feeling in late October of complete restlessness as I tried to force myself to sleep the night before the final interview. I remember the excruciating fear and excitement when I opened up my email and saw the message from TFA in November, wondering if tears of sadness or screams of joy would ensue within the next ten seconds.

Now here I am, with an assignment to teach Elementary Special Education in New Orleans for the next two years. I peruse purposefully (yet resistantly at times) the summer reading texts and field questions from all friends, families and strangers on the street about my upcoming job, summer training and living arrangements. I suppress my fears about failing out of training, regretting my decision to go into more traditional social work practice, and most frightening, ending up roommate-less and house-less come mid-July. In the free minutes between the finals, internship, job and social engagements, I let myself escape into the daydream of what I hope to accomplish in the next two years as a teacher, as a woman, as a social worker and the high hopes I have for my experience. I imagine the amazing Corps Members I will meet and the fun we will have. I realistically laugh about the number of times I will probably fail at cooking or doing other independent living type things. But most pertinently, I daydream about the amazing children I will have the privilege to work with. My heart breaks as the characters created by my imagination tell stories of major behavioral issues, insurmountable poverty created obstacles and most likely, extensive histories of academic failings. Conversely, my hope engulfs the sadness as I idealistically dream of the impact I have the opportunity to make in the lives of these children who have fallen through the abyssal cracks of society. This juxtaposition between the weight of the stories of the students and the opportunity to embrace and practice social justice lead to one thing---a sense of urgent and motivating pressure.

So yet again, here I sit. My mind wandering in six thousand directions and speeding at 600 miles per hour. I am young, I am naive, I am not a teacher. But I am driven and committed and I hope that will be enough. To all my friends and my family, I ask you this, do not let me lose the idealism and the confidence in myself that I must have in order to achieve my goals. I need you now and even though I will be far away and likely, as I usually am, poor at communicating, keep me in your mind, thoughts and prayers, and do not be afraid to send me a word of encouragement. Here begins my journey into the next two years and I am honored to share it with all of you.

"I submit to you, that if man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -Martin Luther King Jr.