Every single day it hits me anew that I’m graduating in just a few months. It is truly amazing the number of times this conversation about the future comes up in conversations with people you just met, people you’re catching up with, and even people you talk to regularly. Every single time I mention that I am moving back to Mexico and applying to the Peace Corps my plan seems to become even more solid and feel even more real. Also, the job I’m currently doing with the Harvard student organisation nonprofit is making me more comfortable and aware of my own abilities to succeed in a working environment. This is not exactly surprising since I have been preparing myself to eventually join the workforce, but it is comforting.
That being said, this semester is turning out to be the best one of my entire college career. I know I have called my year abroad (studying the Northern Irish Conflict in Belfast, Northern Ireland) the best year of my life, and I still look back to it fondly and often miss my friends and the opportunities it brought me. However, this semester is a different kind of good. I am so busy that it is making me extremely productive in my commitments, work and schoolwork, and even in my social life. It is all of these things that are shaping this semester into one that I know I will remember fondly. I keep telling myself that it is never the lack of sleep that I remember when I think of past memories; it is the positive emotions and accomplishments that I remember almost in a manner that is almost tangible.
Because my work has become such a dominant presence in my life and schedule, it might appear that my classes have fallen in importance. However, my tight schedule has actually made the time I spend in classes and doing schoolwork more interesting, to the point where the classes feel like a place to relax and learn. In addition, I have been able to take things from every single one of my classes that have helped me in the work I’m doing at the non-profit. For instance, I am in the process of beginning to plan the summertime programming for the program I direct, and the book I am reading for my Literature class at MIT is influencing my pick of books for the curriculum. In addition, the Independent Study course I am doing at Wellesley continues to be massively interesting and relevant, and I truly feel like I am making progress in both the administrative side of the program and in my future teaching experiences.
I am writing this in the middle of the night instead of sleeping, so I am going to head to bed now. However, I leave you with a short list of books that I have just read or am currently reading that you may find interesting!
- Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools by Jonathan Kozol (1967)
- Teacher by Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1963)
- The Round House by Louise Erdrich (2012)