Well, I have decided that this is the month for good news or at least semi good news in my part. I just got a call about a job interview. As I am about to graduate with no prospects this is great news. So next Tuesday in the morning I want all of you to be praying and sending the love towards me. I will be interviewing at the College of Charleston and I really, really really want this position. I personally believe that it was made for me. Everyone wish me luck!
For the past month and a half (or maybe more), I have been going through a grueling, anxiety inducing process of interviewing and competing for practicum placements. This will be the site where I will see my first clients and do all of my pre-degree MFT training. I interviewed at five sites. I had three top choices, two of which were pretty competitive. This week was notification week and Thursday was Decision Day. I received offers from my top three choices! I selected Santa Anita Family Services which was my top choice and the most competitive site. They take eight students from my school and just about every other school in LA county. Everyone in my cohort (about 50) applied there. I was lucky to get an interview and even luckier to get an offer. Or maybe I'm just that good. Either way I'm super excited about this. I accepted a placement that will begin on June 6. The clinic has sites in three cities. I'm unsure which one I'll be at yet, but it would be nice to be at the main site since it is three blocks from my apartment but that is unlikely. Anyway, I just wanted to share this news. It's such a relief to have this over with. Now I'm only one final away from spring break, and then I'm off to Georgia for two weeks. Only three more months until I will finally see my first client!
"I thought I would build a busier life, one full of significance and resonance for our world today, especially after receiving a doctorate from an Ivy League university in America. But I haven't succeeded in any worldly way. And can I be happy being nobody? ''I'm Nobody. Who are you?'' wrote Emily Dickinson. Even so, I still attempt to leave a little scratch in this world with my writings--just these little etchings, renderings of my life's experiences in short vignettes. It's a wonderful thing to do, to write, to recreate lost worlds and in doing so to forgive myself. I am of no significance or perhaps really I am, because I live and breathe and think and do what I need to do in life and encourage people like my sister to do the same."
-Peggy, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, from her "This I believe" essay
___
I came across the "This I believe " website by happenstance this morning. Just reading through a few of the essays that others have posted has made me feel like going home, huddling beneath a blanket, pulling out my computer, and writing an essay to submit this very evening. It is only by articulating our operable beliefs or the belief system that we employ in navigating daily life, I am coming to believe [*please note, I am articulating my belief on beliefs, so roll with me here], that we can truly understand where we fall along the spectrum of belief or how our beliefs compare with those of others. The reason for this is, perhaps, that in giving voice to our beliefs, we begin to consider various issues and we either accept or reject positions on these issues in turn.
Beliefs are not necessarily permanent, so at any given time, we should be aware of what is influencing our beliefs. We are not independent of social or environmental influences as we go about the daily task of living. For example, my belief that all people deserve to be treated equally has most recently been influenced by my experience in working with people who are "the other." These people are not like me on many levels, and this has forced me to confront my own preconceived notions about what it is to be poor, to be ethnic, to be old. This has not changed my beliefs about how people should be treated, but it has influenced how I will practice my belief in my future job searches.
I especially appreciate Peggy's musings on her significance or, as she refers to it in the essay, her insignificance. My own insignificance in the grand scheme of life has become increasingly apparent to me. From childhood to adolesence to young adulthood, I have been operating with the belief that if I work hard enough, I can make anything happen. This belief was reinforced by my teachers and parents over the years, and with my adoption of this message into my belief system, I drew the assumption that "I" am significant. The steam from this belief in my significance has brought me a long way from my origins, but to what end? I find myself wondering how other people interpreted and appropriated this message into their own belief systems.
These days, society sends me a different message. I am merely one among many. In my current environment, I have embraced this anonymity, which has allowed consideration of how people view me without an exchange of words ever taking place. Before, everyone had me tagged as being a particular type of person, and I thought this indicated that they knew the essence of me. However, I realized that their beliefs were stifling my personal evolution when I felt the need to free myself of their bounds. With the elbow room that my current insignificance gives me, I am able to consider what I believe and to choose pursuits that I consider are significant, even though these pursuits may seem insignificant to mass society. My life pursuits do not need to be significant to the mass society, they must simply be and take their natural course, as everything in life does in its own time and fashion.
I challenge you to write your own "This I believe" essay and post it up if you feel comfortable doing so. I will do the same.
Hello all,
So, it's come to this my dear friends: I have an interview with the Graduate Admissions Committee this coming Tuesday, February 27th, between 2 and 4 p.m. Any positive thoughts and energy that you may send my way during that time will be greatly appreciated! Words cannot express what I am feeling right now, but I will say that I have a smile on my face:)
"Thus man could observe nature around him on every side and be enhanced both by what he observed and by his own ability to observe. He had no need to consider that he was essentially part of that nature. Man was the eye for which reality had been made visual: the ideal eye, the eye of the viewing-point of Renaissance perspective. The human greatness of this eye lay in its ability to reflect and contact, like a mirror, what was."
-John Berger (1971) in his essay, The Moment of Cubism
***
The temperature outside is rising. The snow is melting. Surely, spring cannot delay its arrival much longer [yes, I realize this was the first snow storm of the year, but I'm putting the fact of global warming out of my mind temporarily in favor of thinking of my own personal comfort]. Oh, spring, that fantastic time of the year when people abandon the indoors and flock to the parks where they can sit and watch the urban spectacle float past or they can throw themselves wholeheartedly into engagement with that spectacle. I'm already daydreaming of the light and breezy clothes that I can resurrect for just such an occasion. With each new spring, that first time out of the house without a jacket becomes a memorable occasion. With the wind caressing newly bared arms, a sense of freedom races through me. Soon, very soon.
This past weekend, I headed down to Washington DC to visit with my friends, Jason and Jayson, both of whom are from Georgia in case you don't know them. We all had a great time playing cards, watching movies, and generally not talking about our jobs or looming life decisions. It was such a relief just to exist, only briefly talking about our jobs or what each of us "do" all week. Alternately, it was so nice to talk with other Georgians about what it is like to live outside of Georgia. As it happens, perhaps this isn't a big surprise, but I do not come across many Georgians living in New York City. Jason noted that NYC is a daunting place for many of our fellow statesmen and women, and I acknowledged that this is quite understandable.
My stepmom has long been warning me (in a kind way of course) that we reach a point in life where we long for "the familiar." For longer than I can remember, I have longed to experience the foreign and the exotic so I brushed off Jody's warning. Now her words come back to me, but not because I am finished with longing for new places and experiences. Oh no, it's definitely not that. Instead, I am pondering what it is that is distinctly "Southern" about me? How much of my way of thinking and believing may be attributed to my graduate education and how much may be attributed to my upbringing? What about me is white besides the color of my skin? What makes me middle-class despite my meagre bank account?
On the bus ride back to New York City, I found myself wondering how to get away from identifying myself so closely with "what I do" since that is not "who I am." Don't get me wrong, I like my job, but for too long now, I have based my personal sense of worth on how I feel about my progress on my professional status. This most definitely is not a healthy response, because if we allow the idea that we are not doing enough or progressing as fast as we think we should to invade our thoughts, dissatisfaction and doubt may take over our very lives. What an utterly unacceptable thought!
Well, it only took me a couple weeks to log on here and say hello from the e-mail you sent me. It is 3am and I am tired, worked all day, sat for two hours in traffic not moving. At least it isn't hot. I don't have much to say tonight, but I am thinking of an appropriate blog entry; since it will be my first blog ever, it must be spectacular or anticlimatic, either of those extremes as long as it isn't banal.
Well, happy day Des, hope you are taking care of yourself.
Brian
This theme of introductions affords me the opportunity to try to bring some recurring ideas I have been having for the past several months into coherence. Since Desiree was discussing having things "figured out," I want to propose to those who may be struggling with this dilemma of self-discovery that, if you have not already done so, move to a place where everything is completely different from what you know and you are "an other" rather than being rather "like" most everyone else around you. For me, that has been one of the best ways to figure myself out. That's not to say I'm completely there or even that it's been easy (because that would be a big "Hell no!" to both of those), but it has helped me to become aware of the reality that I have a far more cogent adult self than I ever realized.
I grew up in rural southwest Georgia (Moultrie) on a farm. I lived in the same house my whole life. I went to the same Baptist church my whole life with people just like me. I went to school with the same people from the same town who were just like me (diversity in my school was mostly limited to black and white) and were taught by people just like me. We all pretty much looked the same, believed the same, and lived the same. I grew up telling myself I had to get away and that as soon as I had the chance, I was leaving.
Then, I went to Athens (oh, Athens) to the University. I spent four years there. I loved it. While there was much more diversity in types of people there than at home, I was still relatively unchallenged in my view of the world. The vast majority of us there were still Southern white kids coming from the same cultural milieu. And a funny thing happened during the course of my time in Athens. I began to think that Georgia's not so bad...and I could stay here. It is home after all, and I kept reading/hearing about all of the brain drain the state experiences so I felt an obligation to do my part to stop it. After all, I had decided to become an MFT based on the conditions of family and people I saw around me. How was I really going to help people like this by leaving? However, I knew I couldn't "settle" on staying in Georgia since I really had nothing to compare it to. So, in searching for graduate schools, I decided now was the time to experience something different for once. (My own blog, Brandon's Manifest Destiny details my journey from UGA to Fuller. Read the earlier posts though since now it has turned into mostly just my sporadic pop culture geek outs).
Yadda, yadda, yadda...now I live in Southern California. I sometimes tell people back home I live in LA, but people here get disgusted if I say that. Technically, I only live in Los Angeles County, not LA itself (whatev, I say). I actually live in a town called Monrovia (I recently learned that our town was the filming location for the movie "Beethoven" and my house can be seen in it). My school is in nearby Pasadena (about 8 miles west of here). Hollywood is about 15 minutes away (with no traffic) and LA proper is 20-30 minutes away (but I only went there once and was "taken" by an old man while there...stupid!).
All of this to get to my main point though, and that is, for the first time in my life, I am different than the vast majority of people around me. This has made me become increasingly aware of who I am. Seminary will do that to you anyway (actually, I think that any grad program probably does...especially one like Patricia and I are in where we are training to be therapists since we must have our self taken care of in order to help others take care of their selves..., but I don't really have anything else to compare it to. I say seminary will do that simply because the theology classes will definitely mess with your mind since you are analyzing what you hold most dear...for example, my Gospels class last quarter with Beaton is still rocking my world, and it's kind of scary). However, nearly everything about me, all the roles I use to define who I am have been changed or challenged since moving to California. I have become shockingly aware of my own culture(s). Southern culture is vastly different from LA culture. Fuller Seminary is not very much like UGA at all. Despite both (supposedly) being affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, hearing a Sunday sermon by Brother Phillip back home is insanely different from hearing one of Erwin McManus' "conversations" at Mosaic. And apparently putting my groceries in a buggy is different than putting them in a cart.
My new friends (and strangers) here often call me out on things I sometimes don't even realize are "different" about me: accents (the fun they had taking this quiz with me), dialect (the snicker every time I say "y'all" or "fixing to"), words (such as the aforementioned buggy/cart or the fact that I refer to the road as an interstate instead of freeway and I might say "I-10" instead of "the 10"), food (grits, collards, and okra are unheard of and our ideas of what constitutes "barbecue" are insanely different), drink (who knew that drinking a coke with breakfast was a bizarre "Southern thing" and any lite, or even any kind of domestic, beer is looked down upon as amusingly blue collar here), celebrations (I had to eat Thanksgiving dinner in the OC, barf. And they told me not to call it "The OC"), ideas about agriculture (a straw covered parking lot with pumpkins scattered around is called a "pumpkin patch" here), church (you want a church where you know people? Ha! SoCal has perfected the drive-in church with celebrity pastors. I've settled at Mosaic though I'm not crazy about it, and I visited Saddleback with Rick Warren which was just strange), idea of a good local restaurant (forget something like Five Star Day or The Grit, the best they can offer here is Applebee's or Cheesecake Factory) and manners (sadly, I have had to force myself to stop saying "ma'am" and "sir" to my elders as people here think it's rude and condescending, something that still baffles me).
This is just a sampling. However, as I am surrounded by people who believe/think/act/etc. different from me, it has helped/forced me to become more aware of who I am and what I believe, and more importantly why. This has helped me to learn some things about myself. For example, I have been exploring and learning to appreciate the Southern culture I grew up despising (something that was beginning to brew even before moving as seen here). Whereas for a few years now, I've been thinking to myself that I wasn't crazy about the Baptist denomination and denominations in general don't matter, I am now exploring the history of Baptists and the theology behind the beliefs. While I still think, that denominations don't make a difference in getting to heaven (they are man made after all), they are not evil and unnecessary. I am working on making my Baptist beliefs my own (or right now more on whether or not I want to do that). Were I still in the south where being Baptist is very much a cultural thing, I don't know if I would have been led on this journey. Also, being put into a place where I am different than most people has helped me to avoid hiding behind labels that may not even apply to me. In discussing government and politics with people here (they love their big government here), I realized that my beliefs about the government and what I believe it should or should not do don't really line up with the political label that I had attached myself to. This has led to another recent, and surprising for me, journey of self-examination and searching.
And then there's all that goes on in the classroom as I am learning from and integrating two fields that delve deep into the human experience and what it means to be human-psychology and theology. I am glad that I am in a Seminary that is multi-denominational and draws students from all different areas. In my cohort of 48, there are at least 8 countries, more than 20 states, and over 100 denominations represented. We are a diverse group, but we are unified in our Christian faith and desire to serve others through therapy. For the first time in my life, I am realizing the value of learning in a diverse environment (but living in a diverse area contrasted with what I see at Fuller further cements my long standing belief that diversity without unity is meaningless).
Okay, that was a lot. Some of it I'm sure was unneeded and confusing as it came out rather stream-of-counsciousnessy. Whether or not it properly served the function of introducing myself or not (at least you learned that I am fond of parenthetical asides), it helped me, at least, to verbalize some thoughts and unify several different narratives of my life. In summary, my time in California so far has helped me realize more fully who I am. I am appreciative of my time here for this season of my life, but I'm glad it's just a season. I don't see myself staying here. I mostly hate LA, and as I say that I roll my eyes because hating LA is "so LA." Dear God, what have I become?
How rude of me to forget introductions! Oh, but where to begin.
To start, the very thought that I could represent myself entirely with words is frightening to me. I won't even try to represent myself. If I were to use this as a forum for voicing my political views or talking about how I keep myself busy, you may gather an idea of where I am at this particular juncture in time; however, these details will not reveal the essence of who I am. By the next time we talk, in fact, my views may have shifted or maybe I will have taken up new interests and laid down others.
In part, perhaps I am trying to convince myself that it's okay to be ever-changing, never standing in one place for too long. On the other hand, the insecurity scares me. From what I always understood, people are supposed to "have things figured out" by the time they reach their mid-twenties. Perhaps some people do. I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that everyone has a carefully constructed façade, you know, they seem to have it all figured out but it's all a smoke and mirror show.
I, for one, do not have everything figured out. Five years ago, I remember wishing that I was more spontaneous. I've managed to become more outwardly spontaneous, while on the inside, I've simply gone from one routine to another. The drama arising from the spontaneity, however, does thrills me, so I'm not complaining, just coming to a realization about myself. I believe that life holds many more realizations about who I am, who other people are, what the world holds, so I'm just rambling along, trying to live from one day to the next. Of course, those who know me also know that if you politely ask me how I'm doing, I may end up "talking your ear off" about my worries for the future. Noble goals. Then comes reality.
We all have to have goals though, so I'll attempt to embrace the drama as it comes. If you all would like to form a blogging support community and change the name of this blog, please post your suggestions. The quarter-life crisis is merely a catch-phrase used by some to describe the struggle that single, professional individuals who are in their mid-twenties are currently undergoing. I disagree with the implication that the quarter-life stage is a crisis; instead, I think that there are unique challenges to be worked through at each stage of life. The challenges particular to the quarter-life stage are both different and the same now than they were for previous generations, and, in my opinion, definitely deserve being discussed. In working with senior citizens to develop support groups for dealing with the challenges of aging, I recently realized, hey, myself and other people my age would benefit from a support group to discuss what we are facing! Why haven't we started a support group before? Thoughts, anyone?
Hey everyone! First I think it is great that Desiree started this blog so we all can share our most deepest thoughts about the 'real' world. Wow, very dramatic sounding. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that I really do not know everyone and ya'll don't know me for the most part. I think it would be a great opportunity to say a little bit about each of ourselves. I'm dieing of curiosity.
So on to me. As ya'll have guessed my name is Heather and I am from the deep south (Georgia). I am in my last semester of grad school and I'm praying I can make it out with my sanity in tack. I'm close but sometimes my mental stability is questionable. Books are my passion but I have to admit that I read the trashy kind. Love romance, plus anything with a sci-fi slant is awesome as well. The classics are great but I haven't read a lot of them lately. When I read I want to be able to escape into another world. Other aspects of my life. I have recently discovered poker. It is so much fun--and hard. Don't worry, I don't play for money, just points. I love tv and movies. Once again love the romances but the sci-fi and fantasy are favorites. I also love the different CSIs.
Well, that is it for me. And that only scratches the top. Tell us about you! I can't wait to hear all the deep dark secrets out there.
When the shiny and new is dulled by routine, how do we revive our original fascination - with life, love, work? Along the life path, our expectations are altered to fit with the various experiences that we undergo. Nothing can stay new forever, and in all honesty, who would want to pause in this moment . . . forever. Is it our so-called "throwaway society" that paves the way for specks of dissatisfaction to develop into full-scale disappointment with the present? According to cultural-geographer David Harvey's interpretation of the United States as a "throwaway society," this evolution of society means "more than just throwing away produced goods (creating a monumental waste-disposal problem), but also being able to throw away values, life-styles, stable relationships, and attachments to things, buildings, places, people, and received ways of doing and being" (p. 286 of The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change).
This past Saturday morning, I sat down at the table with my breakfast, and I found myself perusing the nearby bookshelves for anything to read besides that which was sitting in front of me. I saw Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet lounging casually on the bottom shelf, just waiting for me to put off the other readings. I read the book in just under two hours, and I highly recommend it if you are seeking a fast, uplifting read. Among the sections that spoke to me most of all were those "On Freedom," "On Friendship," "On Talking," and "On Time." The following section is from "On Friendship."
And a youth said, Speak to us of Friendship.
And he [the prophet] answered, saying:
Your friend is your needs answered.
He [or she] is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live,
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
The sea lions in this picture give communal living a whole new meaning, but to my mind, they remind me of friends, that is, just as long as you don't try to pet them. While you could pet them, I suppose, it could lead to the loss of a hand, or better yet, an eye; although, logistically, I'm just not sure how that would happen. Either way, it probably would not be pleasant.
