Thoughts on the Little Things--Returning to Dorm Room Life

A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library. --Shelby Foote

The mattress is unbelievably uncomfortable, but it makes me have extremely vivid dreams.  Or something has been making me have crazy dreams as of late.  Including one where my parents decided to seek political asylum.  In Iran.  They needed to do things quickly, but I felt like this was probably a bad idea, so I was dragging my feet through the process, hoping we would be too late.  But they really wanted to go, so even though we didn’t know if they’d let us in, we went.  To Iran.

The mattress also makes me realize that there was a really good reason why I bought an egg crate foam topper for my bed in college because actually sleeping on this thing for more than three weeks would do me in. 

I’ve also found myself realizing that this room is actually really big, the closet nice sized, and in general that there would be plenty of space.  Until I realize that there’s another empty bed in my room—that this room would actually be for two people.  And the closet then seems less amply proportioned. 

Eating in the dining hall is a whole different conundrum.  I’m finding myself addicted to certain aspects of it—I haven’t had to cook or clean up a kitchen in more than two weeks now.  I don’t have to think about going grocery shopping or what I’m going to make to eat.  And there is a seemingly unlimited amount of fresh, already cut watermelon and pineapple at every meal. 

But by that same token, I’ve only had two actually home-cooked meals in two weeks and I’ve been eating an amazing amount of food I simply don’t eat anymore.  I’ve been having what seem like very real fears about gaining a lot of weight back because of these three weeks, which isn’t a very long time, I realize.  But I stopped eating processed foods, white bread, white rice, potatoes, white-flour pasta, and sugar about two years ago.  And quite honestly, there are limited options—basically the pineapple and watermelon already mentioned—if I want to continue to eat this way.  So I’m doing the best I can for three weeks, but not only do I sort of hate having to eat this way, it just doesn’t taste as good.  But there is coffee.  At every meal.  Not great coffee, but it’s not helping me drink less of it that it’s always there.

I also haven’t been totally without a car since my sophomore year in college, although there weren’t many places within walking distance of Grove City.  There isn’t a lot available to walk to here at LMU, but there is enough to make a few strolling trips off campus worth it.  I do love walking everywhere though—since I’ve been here I’ve had about two straight weeks of more than 15,000 steps, or more than six miles of walking every day.  Which I suppose balances out all the white bread. 

It’s a strange existence, living on a college campus once again.  One of the best parts is that being in southern coastal California, it’s perfect weather most days: warm, but not hot, lovely breezes and zero humidity.  We take about four fifteen minute breaks from class every day and being able to sit and just enjoy the weather while the kids play four square isn’t a bad deal.  Also, I have a sickness--I checked out three books from the library for two weeks on campus because I was worried I would run out of things to read.  

I love it here.  Sort of.  But I’m ready to get back to my own bed.  

So How's it Going So Far?

"Kids don't remember what you try to teach them.  They remember what you are." --Jim Henson

Kids designing their heroes.

You dream about finding kids like this in your class.  You hope that someday you’ll have one.  You convince yourself they exist.  Kids who like to read and can contentedly lose themselves in a good story.  Kids who want to write to express themselves and who understand what a thesis statement is as a twelve year old.  And when you find one, you cultivate the rich treasure that it is and hope they will continue on in the pathway of English greatness. 

I have found such a student.  Not just one, in fact.  Fourteen of them.   In the same class.  At the same time. 

They aren’t perfect.  But as pre-adolescents entering the world of adolescences, they are better than I could possibly have imagined. 

I’ve had these students for two weeks now, and we’re together from 9am to 4:15pm five days a week, which is plenty of time to come out of their shells and start rebelling.  At least in my experience.  But instead, they continue to work together well, offer each other good feedback, and manage to sit and read quietly for an hour, write a thoughtful response about what they’ve read and get ready to discuss whenever they’ve all finished.  When I announce that it’s break time, half of them appear to be jolted out of another world and it takes them about five minutes to pull themselves into a line for what is basically recess.   In two weeks we’ve read a young adult novel, studied Greek Mythology and basically finished Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Not a simplified, childish version—the real deal. It’s almost unbelievable.

Sure, they’re still kids—at one point one of my three boys said, “Being emo leads to be a homosexual,” which lead to a discussion that involved me advocating thinking before speaking.  To which he responded, “That would take a long time.” Another one is an English language learner who has impressive reading and writing skills, but isn’t as confident with speaking and listening.  He tends to wander away during lunchtime (when we all have to sit together).  So much so that we assigned “lunch buddies”—one other person who always knows where you are and what you’ve gotten up to do.  This student’s secondary language ability hasn’t stopped him though from asking where my lunch buddy—my TA Andi—has gone when she goes to get fruit.  I could barely speak literally in a second language, let alone make a joke. 

Even though they’re still kids, there are a few things that leave me slightly unsettled.  These kids do not follow rabbit trails.  Ever.  No matter how much one of their classmates sets them up with a comment about birth control or if I hang up blank posters all over the walls.  They simply don’t ask unrelated questions, which is eerie after seven years of students following every rabbit trail they could find.

And then there are the sweet moments—during our discussion of the Trojan War, one wasn’t sure about accepting the most beautiful woman in the world—“Are we talking about external or internal beauty?” he asked, before following it up with, “If I could spend about a month with Helen and find out what kind of person she is, then I might want to marry her.”

I don’t know that I could teach kids like this for a full year— it would be an amazing amount of things to prep considering how fast they get through material.  But I also think I would spend the whole time waiting for the other shoe to drop—and I just don’t know that it ever will.  But, I have to say, for three weeks during the summer, it’s a bit of a treat to teach kids who are extremely interested and focused, with a TA who is fantastic and knowledgeable. 

How’s it going so far? I’m pretty spoiled.  Spoiled enough to want to do this again next year.  

Stages of Joblessness Continued

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. --Ambrose Redmoon 

Stage Six: Panic Begins:

Around noon on Monday, I was starting to feel antsy and panicky.  I had plenty of work to do—I was getting ready to teach a brand new, intense course for gifted students and I had more than enough prep work to keep me occupied all morning.  But all too soon, reality came back.  I was jobless.  And I had already done everything that I could think of to do about that problem. 

The only thing I could do was wait.  And check my e-mail even more obsessively than I had been doing it before.  Nothing was there.

Stage Seven: Scary Considerations:

I had never before considered a job outside of education.  I have always felt called into this field, professionally and personally, and I had never really thought about what else I might do.  Sure, I throw out things that I want to do—I want to be a writer. I want to be the voice that reads audio books, I could be a great wedding planner or professional traveler.  But I had never considered them to be a great option for a new feasible career.

The real issue was that there was only a limited window of time that I could get a job in education for the next year—once the school year started, if I didn’t have anything, I wasn’t going to get anything.   So if that job didn’t come through, what else, exactly was I going to do?

I went to small group with my roommate Megan, partly just to get out of the house, and before I did, I (of course) checked the job list for FCPS.  The job I had been most hoping for, the place where I’d interviewed, the one that was super convenient to my house, the school which I had listed a position I was uniquely qualified to fulfill, was gone.  And with it came a pit in my stomach.

I was really blessed to have something else to think about during the evening and not have the ability to check my phone and e-mail.

After small group, Meg and I went to the grocery store and I told her something I’d been turning over in my head.  It was oddly related to Harry Potter, which I do recognize is not actually real life. But, I was thinking about how I’d adopted the viewpoint that JK Rowling actually had to kill Dumbledore because otherwise, Harry would never have been able to actually fulfill his quest on his own.  So maybe this job had come down so that I could take the one I actually was meant to take.  Maybe if this job hadn’t come down, I would’ve held out for something that was not in the cards for me.  As I write this, I’m not entirely sure the HP connection is clear, but it felt connected to me. 

Stage Eight: Fear

I’m scared—no ifs ands or buts about it.  If this seems like an over reaction (and it probably does) that I was this scared after only seeing the job postings for a little over a week, understand that’s not the whole picture.  I’d been working on getting a job with this county since January.  I’d been going on interviews since March, been communicating with department heads and assistant principals for that long.  Of course no one could hire me until June 24^th, but I’d been actively seeking a job for close to six months.  So it wasn’t that fear crept in to me after only a week’s time, but more like after six months.  I’d expected to be seeing the payoff for all that time this week.  And instead, there was nothing.

In the midst of all this, in my panicky moments, I did two things which both calmed me down.  The first I highly recommended, the second might be more particular to me.  I went to God—over and over and over again, working on trusting Jesus with my future not only in spite of my fear, but through my fear.  I like having a plan.  I like understanding the plan, I like seeing where the plan could be heading and knowing that it’s a good place.  But, it seemed that not only did I not get to be a part of making the plan, I didn’t really know any part of where it was going to end up.  How hard it was for me was a good indication of how far I still had to go, but it was something I really wanted to allow to happen in my life.

The second thing I did was watch the videos my sister had put on YouTube or sent me of Timothy, my nephew, talking.  Like I said, that might be something that only works for me.

Stage Nine: Acceptance of Fear

I finally called my family to tell them how I was feeling on the Fourth of July.  I knew that with the holiday I also wouldn’t hear today. I knew that the fun evening plans I had wouldn’t be enough to distract me from the weight sitting in my stomach now.  So I called my sister who told me very practical things and helped me think through the reality of my situation.

It’s funny, whenever people tell me, “It’ll be fine,” without any real reason for that, it frustrates me.  But when Abby was telling me real practical advice, all I wanted was for her to reassure me.  I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to hear, but no one was saying it.

I called my mom and dad next.  Usually when I feel stressed it’s my dad and his calm that help me feel better.  But this time, it was my mom.  I couldn’t tell you exactly what she said, but I know it was exactly what I wanted to hear.  Sometimes you just need your mom to make it better.

Stage Ten: Waiting

I’m not good at waiting.  I’m really not good at waiting patiently when there’s nothing to do besides just letting other people take care of things and believe that they are taking care of things.  I was starting to feel like people were probably sick of my whining and not knowing exactly what to say to me.  So it was immensely helpful to me to talk to someone who was in a similar position, who was intelligent and well qualified for a job but didn’t have one.  I didn’t have to explain or try to make sense of how I was feeling and he didn’t have to imagine. 

Actually, most things about this day was exactly what I needed—every single part of it from a lot of supportive friends and family.  Especially when I was figuring I would probably hear from the middle school today.  After all, they had said one week, and today was one week.  Obviously, I would hear today.

Nope.  Nothing.  It probably meant they’d offered it to someone else.

Stage Eleven: Believing:
I didn’t want to waste my weekend, and my last upcoming week of summer before I started teaching in LA.  But I couldn’t sit by passively either.  I was trying to wait to hear about the job I had interviewed for first, but since that wasn’t going to be happening until Monday, I felt like I had to do something.

So, I went to Starbucks to load up on coffee and planned to do what I do best: go to the library to get something done.  I’m not entirely sure what I was going to be looking up, but it was going to be something that would get me a job. I was believing that if I was being called out of education it was for a purpose, and eventually I would know some part of the plan.  And as hard as that might be, Jesus was going to provide.

Stage Twelve: Employed

I was sitting at the red light heading to the library when I automatically refreshed my e-mail, not expecting anything.  I certainly didn’t expect to hear from Carl Sandburg Middle School.  But sitting there in my inbox was an e-mail not only offering me the job, but telling me I was their first choice for the position.  I cannot, on my best day, adequately describe what I felt after getting that e-mail.

It was not an easy two weeks—not at all.  But if it had been easy, I’m not sure I would’ve accepted this position.  I feel really good about it, I feel excited, and I feel relieved.  I also feel like I’m called to be at this school.  I’m not sure exactly how long I’m going to be here or why, but I do know that things worked out to the point where I felt really good and excited about this position.  There’s a lot I don’t know, but I do know who’s in charge.  And thank heavens it’s not me.

So, in short, life was pretty hard for a few weeks.  I was scared and hated that.  And I have a job. 

Stages of Joblessness

“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.” --Paulo Coelho

Stage One: Confidence:

My last day with my family in St. Maarten was also the first day that Fairfax County was going to list job postings for instructional positions.  So I did what seemed appropriate—I made sure my voice mail reflected that I was out of the country and wouldn’t be able to return calls, and I checked my e-mail almost obsessively before we left the condo with Wi-Fi.  Obviously someone might be calling to offer me the job just that quickly.

It was after midnight until we finally made it home and even though I knew it was smarter to just go to bed, I needed to check the job postings.  There they were—about twelve to fifteen positions for an English teacher, although only one school that I was hoping to see had something listed.  And still no e-mails or voicemails.

The next morning, shaking off the sleepiness, I got down to business, looking up schools, editing my resume and cover letter appropriately, and e-mailing the information out to principals.  The activity felt good and productive, and I felt positive about hearing back from some schools fairly soon.

Stage Two: Impatience:

You’d think that nannying a high-needs autistic boy for the day would keep my mind off of the fact that I haven’t heard anything from anyone about a job.  But no—it did not in fact keep me from refreshing the e-mail on my phone at least two dozen times.  The continued checking was largely fruitless—I got two e-mails from principals during the day.  Those e-mails told me that should my experience and outlook be what they were looking for, I would be contacted for an interview. Not exactly the response I was hoping for.

Later that night, after showering the sweat of the humid day away, I was thinking about how not worried I needed to be.  I’ve had positive interviews so far. I’m in the FCPS system as a highly desirable candidate.  I’ve had good rapport with a few department heads and assistant principals who have positions to offer.  And I’m damn good at my job.

In the space of a heartbeat, I heard the still small voice: It’s not about you.

And I knew—it wasn’t about me, it was about the job that I was called to do, the students I was called to teach, in whatever place I was supposed to be doing that.  There was too much I couldn’t control—it wasn’t about me, but about waiting and accepting God’s will in the situation.

Stage Three: Disappointment with a Dash of Hope:

I woke up this morning to an offer—an offer to interview at a middle school I had never heard of before, but it shot me with a moment of hope.  At least it seemed someone might be interested in having me teach for them next year.  I looked up the school and found it had an Alexandria address though it’s part of Fairfax County.  It wasn’t a perfect fit based on what I found—it was a huge middle school (about 2000 kids), it was farther away than I would’ve hoped, and the employee survey didn’t have people overwhelmingly satisfied with working there.  

I set up the interview for the next day, and then hoped to find more like it throughout the rest of the day.

I didn’t get any more e-mails. 

Stage Four: Openness

I woke up this morning praying that no matter what happened I would not make a decision based on fear.  I might love the school, but I didn’t want to do anything I would regret later because I was too scared to make the right decision.

I drove over to the school more quickly than I had expected to make the trip and found the school under serious construction.  Even though I had been warned, I didn’t expected to have to walk through several inches of mud where a torn up sidewalk had been.

I met with three members of the English department and felt a good connection with them, felt excited about what they had to say, and generally had a really good feeling about the entire school.  As I was driving away and found a quicker way back to I-495 than I had found before I felt positive about the entire experience. 

The department head had told me it would take about a week for them to get back to me about the position, which I told myself was normal and fine.  And I told me that gave me plenty of time to figure out if this was really what I wanted and for other people to want to interview me as well. 

Stage Five: Setting it Aside—Saturday and Sunday

Over the next two days I knew that no one was going to be in the office contacting me about a job, so I managed to have a good time with friends and actually not really worry too much about the whole situation.   I traditionally compartmentalize very poorly so I was considering the ability to do it at all, even in a normal, sensible way, a win.

Stay tuned for stages 6-12 soon...

#westcoastwanderlust

I've been up for almost twenty-four hours and traveled thousands of miles.  I'm not looking up a meaningful quote. 

New CTY lanyard for 2013!

If you’re wondering about why I’m going to LA and what I’m doing there, this is for you.  It’s not really a story so much as information.  Stories about my flight out coming soon!

My end destination today is Loyola Marymount University’s campus in Los Angeles, California.  It’s one of a few dozen sites across the nation where Johns Hopkins University runs a summer camp for gifted young students called Center for Talented Youth (herein after throughout the summer referred to as CTY).  CTY is a three-week sleep away summer camp where students, aged 11-17 can come and take a course—for no other reason than to learn (no high school or college credit is given for these courses).  That is, they can come if they qualify by scoring above the national average (among 18 year olds) on a test like the SATs.   And, if their parents are willing to pay over $3000 for Smart Kid Camp (no one officially calls it that, but it just seems to make sense as a name). 

I am not going as a student—I wasn’t smart enough to qualify and I doubt I’ll ever make enough money to send my own kids should they be geniuses.   I’m going as an instructor.  It’s actually pretty cool what I’m going to do—I’m going to teach kids who have just finished fifth or sixth grade a three week writing course called “Heroes and Villains.”  We’re going to read the Young Adult novel Wonder (which I can’t recommend highly enough), Edith Hamilton’s classic text Mythology, Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and a few of Charles Perrault’s Fairy Tales and do a whole bunch of writing and discussing all day, every day.  Okay, not everyday.  They do get weekends off, but Monday through Friday, they’re in with me from about 9-4 everyday with a few short breaks plus a lunch break.   So my 10-12 students, my TA and I are going to get to know each other reallllllllly well over the next three weeks.

When I’ve told people about what I’m doing they inevitably say, “How did you get that job?”  I’ve so far avoided saying what’s always on the tip of my tongue, “I applied for it” (apparently this blog provides me the ability to release all of the snarky comments I keep inside in real life.  I’m not really a completely snarky person, even inside, I promise).

I know what they’re asking is, “How did you find out about this job?” or something like that.  And the answer is pretty simple—one of the sites, Dickinson College, is basically in my hometown and when I was in undergrad, I worked for the residential program.  In some ways I can’t believe I’m going back to work for CTY—it’s an intense experience, especially when you work both sessions like I did at Dickinson in 2005.   Three days off in six weeks, only one day between sessions without kids, and trying to help kids who greatly resemble Sheldon Cooper be social is tough work.  In 2005, I lived in the dorms with the kids, was about twenty minutes from my parents’ house, and helped plan and attended eight dances.  Eight smelly, crowded, awkward adolescent dances.   It was also a summer I remember re-reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in preparation for the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  (Side story—the book actually came out the day between the two sessions and most of my kids had finished the book, some of them twice, by the time they got to Session 2.  I immediately made it a rule that if anyone told me who mysteriously died, they would have to go to bed early the entire session because all of the RAs had decided it just wasn’t a good idea to get sucked into the book when we had almost no free time.  I was, therefore, quite distressed on the second night when, just before light’s out, one girl yelled through her open door, “Dumbledore dies!” as I was walking past.)

This summer, I’m living in apartment style housing, sharing only a bathroom with one other adult, in a totally different building from the kids.  I don’t have to go to any of the dances, and I have every evening and weekend free.  I’ve traveling a little farther from home—a totally different coast this time around, but that’s by choice.  They offered me a job teaching the same course at a day site in Alexandria, Virginia, but they’re paying me enough to justify the airfare out to California, and once I’m there it seems silly not to take a week afterwards to explore Southern California and the Grand Canyon. 

I don’t have to go to any of the dances this time, and I didn’t bring the book form of any of the Harry Potter books, though I did read Quidditch Through the Ages on my first flight out to Houston for my connection.  I’m not any more excited about eating dorm food than I was back then. 

So oddly enough, I’m headed back to Smart Kid Camp for three weeks, then road tripping with my mom for a week afterwards.  I feel pretty stupid saying this but I will anyway—you can follow me on Instagram with #westcoastwanderlust, even if you’re not friends with me on that app (but really, if you actually know me, you should be my friend J).  I’ve given up on Twitter (does that make me ridiculously old?).  And I’m going to try to have some adventures worthy of posting about on here from time to time, especially on the weekends when I’ll brave public transportation.  I think. 

Send me texts, e-mails, invites to Google Hangout or Skype, make actual phone calls (but remember I’m three hours behind you, so don’t be prepared for me to answer if it’s 9 am on Saturday morning on the East Coast).  Also, feel free to send presents to Meghan Short c/o Johns Hopkins CTY Program, Loyola Marymount University One LMU Drive MS 8150-12 Los Angeles, California 90045 through August 3. 

Forty-five minutes away from boarding—too bad I can’t post this yet!

Nostalgia for the 1980s. Sort of...

"The word aerobics came about when they gym instructors got together and said, "If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it jumping up and down." --Rita Rudner 

Forward back, one-two-three. One, two, cha-cha-cha.  One, two, lift it!   

I’m a workout video junkie—I love classes at gyms, but in the absence of a gym membership or a conveniently timed session, I love doing workouts at home.  I’ve done P90X about four times over, did Insanity last summer, and started doing Brazilian Butt Lift with my roommate who owns the series on DVD.  It might not have been the first things I would’ve chosen, but it’s a tough workout that (obviously) focuses on butt exercises. 

 

One, two, three, and burst out! Explode!

For some reason, two things were running through my mind as we were doing the DVD last time.  The first is more obvious: I felt pretty strongly that if this workout couldn’t give me an actual butt, nothing could.  It was even good enough that maybe I wouldn’t get teased every time that my mom and sister walked behind me about my non-existent butt.   The other thing is less obvious: I was thinking about Kathy Smith.  Specifically Kathy Smith’s Fat Burning Workout. 

If I am a workout video junkie, it directly stems from the first VHS that I can remember doing, or watching my mom do.  It was Kathy Smith’s 45 minute aerobic fat-burning workout.  Maybe you’ve seen your mom do it, or you’ve done it yourself.  It’s the one in which, in classic 1980s style, Kathy is wearing a leotard of turquoise and hot pink with matching purple leggings and slouchy pink sweat socks.  But the more I think about it, the outfits might be the main difference in the workouts.  (If you’re not quite sure you’ve ever seen it, start this YouTube at exactly 3 hours to see it in its entirety http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlXXOqyku48 )!

Low, low, low, and reach, now level change.

Brazilian Butt Lift is tough, and certainly focuses on the butt more than Kathy does—hers is a more whole body workout.  But the same underlying count for the exercises remains in place in both.   Both Leandro of BBL and Kathy use the same eight counts that every workout and choreographed dance song uses.  Both use the same basic body weight exercises of lunges, squats, and plies to work muscle groups.  Both focus on repeating exercises until you want to rip that body part off, and both are so unbelievably cheerful about this workout that you wonder how many times you’ll have to do it before you can smile through that last set of leg pulses. 

Twos in each direction, yeah, yeah, yeah.

P90X might be my most intensely loved workout, but Kathy Smith was first and greatest.  Not because her workout was the best (although all things considered, it’s pretty great), but because I’ve watched that VHS tape so many times. Case in point: all the quotes throughout here, which have all come from her workout without even having to rewatch it—they’re simply a part of my internal workout monologue.  When I lived in Strasburg during my first year teaching, there was no gym anywhere nearby and I lived alone.  My TV just happened to have a built in VCR and armed with tapes I borrowed from my parents’ house, it was Kathy that kept me company after I’d finish my lesson planning as I sweated along with her many nights. 

Lift tall, tall, tall, down.  Whoo.  Whoo.

I’m not planning to go back to Kathy Smith’s Fat Burning Workout, mostly though because there’s only one of them rather than five to rotate through like Leandro’s Brazilian plan.  Sure there are some differences—like most of Leandro’s girls are wearing black shorts rather than shiny, bright spandex leggings.  But after finding Kathy Smith on YouTube I couldn’t help but realize, that maybe the biggest difference is that she does basically the entire workout with her crew.  Something I haven’t really seen from anyone since.  

Shifting Perspectives

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” –Abraham Lincoln

These are the road signs instead of stop signs. 

I’ve been back in the States from St. Maarten for about a week now.  My burn has faded to a tan that I live in continual hope will stay tan rather than peel. I’ve stopped living in constant dread of someone accidentally flying over a speed bump that isn’t painted yellow. The missed plane in Charlotte has faded in memory.  Job listings for Fairfax County have also been posted for a week with little occurring on that front.  Things are not what I had assumed they would be.

Going to St. Maarten to visit family who live there for the foreseeable future was also not necessarily what I had expected.

There are no stop signs in St. Maarten.  At least not that I’ve seen.  Instead there are speed bumps.  Some of which occur where there could and should be stop signs.  Some of which occur for no apparent reason.  Some of which are not painted to make sure someone can tell they’re there. 

Andrew knows where a lot of them are, and as Dad first drove us around the island, he tried to make sure Dad knew they were coming.  “Speed bump,” he’d say—sometimes ahead of time, sometimes as we flew over them.   It made me understand (at least a little bit) why Andrew and Jackie’s dog, Charlie, sometimes gets carsick. 

Island life proved to be different than what I expected in a more ways than just the driving.  In the same way that people keep saying to me, “Has anyone given you a job yet?” and they think it’s helpful and caring, people say something to Jackie and Andrew, “Medical school in the Caribbean—tough life.”  When most people—like me—go to the Caribbean it’s to go to the beautiful beaches and to stay at a resort while they’re there.  The thing is, when you live on the island, you don’t live at a resort.  You have to worry about things like how expensive air conditioning is and how often you can afford to run it.  You have to decide if the gate on your community that anyone can just walk around is really safe enough to stay in.  Like Jackie said, “I’m living in a third world country.”

That third world country has been both good and bad to them—it’s allowing Andrew to study medicine, it’s allowing them to meet new friends and journey to all sorts of different nearby islands.  It’s allowing them to see things they’ve never seen before—including intense poverty and back ordered license plates.

In visiting the two of them I realized just how much they’ve assimilated, but I’ve also just realized how much Jackie gave up in order to build a life down in St. Maarten because Andrew is there.  I realized that I’ve always subtly or totally looked down on girls who give up who they are in order to be a girlfriend or a wife to someone else.  Who want that MRs. Degree so badly that they have no idea what else they might be interested in on their own.  I think there is something to be said for having an independent existence and knowing yourself.  But I also realized how incredibly difficult it is to leave everything you know and everything you’re comfortable with, and everything that is easy in order to be with the person you love.  It’s not just that I’m incredibly grateful that Jackie made that sacrifice (though I am), it’s that I’ve realized it’s not lack of self, lack of independence that made her do this.  It’s incredible bravery and strength.   And it’s not giving up herself—it’s recognizing that a part of her is loving my brother and building a life with him.

The walk from the resort to Andrew and Jackie's. 

It’s a perspective switch, but one I’m so glad I was able to see in my time at St. Maarten.  Partly because I understand them both a little better because of it.  Partly because I need to have a perspective change about my job uncertainty.  I hate it, I’m afraid about it, and unsure about what this continued lack of a job means.  But if I just shift my perspective a little bit, it might also be a situation where, as Megan says, I’m building my trust and faith muscles.  To a huge extent.  And that there’s a purpose for all of this that I can’t see right now but that I’m going to understand someday—maybe soon. 

But there are some things that haven’t changed.  I miss Andrew and admire how hard he’s working to make his dream a reality.  I miss Jackie and having girl talk time with her and I'm so glad she’s a part of our family.  My parents are really fantastic people.  I love the beach.  And I hate speed bumps.