A Long Day

So part of being a student involves me simultaneously gaining experience working in an office on campus. I have been working for the past year with the office that facilitates a variety of programs for freshmen, including the summer orientation that all freshmen must go through. The experience has been really positive. Integral to the orientation program are the orientation leaders...43 upperclassmen who have distinguished themselves in a lot of ways and want to devote their summer to helping ease the transition into college that freshmen face.

Anyway, a lot of my time is spent with these orientation leaders during the summer...especially during an intense three week period of team building and training. We're right in the middle of that now. In an effort to build a supportive team atmosphere, we do an exercise that is modeled on the "This I Believe" series introduced by Edward R. Murrow in the 60s. The gist of this thing is: in 600 or so words, talk about a belief you hold or something that you have come to find to be true. Each of these 43 leaders is asked to share their beliefs and their stories with the whole group. The result is a series of long long nights that help foster a real awesome feeling of community and honesty...but they are also a series of extremely emotional nights. Lots of intensely personal experiences get shared and there are lots of tears shed. As a staff member, I am not immune to this myself. I sit through each talk and empathize with the student leaders as if they were my own friends telling me their stories.

Tonight was a rough night...a lot came out and there were a few very raw emotional reactions as a result of some of what was talked about. It was a long day full of a lot of training and the subsequent talks and such after dinner. I didn't get home until 11 after leaving home this morning at 7:45. Despite the fact that it was long and that it was an emotionally difficult day for me to get through with its own tragedies and dramas requiring my attention, I found myself coming home tonight to the realization that there is nothing else I would want to be doing. A year ago I was finishing up at Fidelity and now I have a year of this work under my belt and am really building up towards a point where I feel confident to handle whatever comes to me through the course of this job and the ability to be for these kids what they need when they need it. It's a great feeling...and one that I felt I needed to put into words. Thanks for listening.

&Ry