Big Girl School

I survived the first day, and while it was seven hours of orientation, I made it!  In the crowd I found the other Hep-C interns, a girl from CCU, and some friendly girls at lunchtime, so, technically speaking, I made some friends!

One of my favorite parts of the day was listening to faculty introductions.  Each person talked about the courses he or she taught and their personal interests in social work.  To say I was intrigued puts it mildly.  All I wanted to do afterward was ditch orientation and talk to professors.  Nerd alert!  But, really, who doesn't want to take a trip to Ireland to study the relationship between political systems and religious oppression?  Or go to Bosnia to study how major trauma influences community development?  Or attend a free yoga class aimed to teach low-income individuals how to cope with stress and love themselves bettter?

And now onto the bizarre part of the day.  A professor lead us through an exercise to help us understand this idea called the "learning edge."  Basically, we walked around the room-which he termed feeling the space-not speaking to one another and traveling whichever direction we wanted.  Hello, human whirlpool!  Then we would pause and shape our bodies into the image or concept he asked us to imagine in our heads.  The first time we stood shaped like a tree, but then it got more abstract:  shape yourself like the biggest barrier that will keep you from being successful and shape yourself like what you will do to overcome that barrier and shape yourself like your true motivation for entering into this profession.  When asked about our reaction to the exercise, I replied, out loud, that I had a hard time taking it seriously, especially in the most serious parts.  And then everyone in the group laughed.  Yay!  At least I'm funny...

Talk about weirdo but enlightening.  The professor went on to explain that the tumultuous range of emotions most of us probably felt during the day meant we stood at the precipice of our "learning edge."  If we were brave enough to stay at our learning edge during our studies, which involved feeling the icky emotions without shutting down or ignoring them, we would engage our social work education to the fullest, know ourselves better, and overcome many of the hindrances that keep us from being our best and seeing the best in other people.  He noted as well that, to do our profession well to make tangible change in issues we care about, we would need to stay at our learning edge for life.  It was odd, but it challenged me, which is something I crave and need.

Overall, I think I'm going to do okay in grad school.  And not just okay, I think I'll really love it.  And hate it at times as well.  Each class will kick my butt probably.  I'm sure I'll get in trouble for using pronouns that are not gender-neutral; this is something very new to the CCUer in me.  But in two years I'll be ready to take on the world... whatever that will look like then.  In the meantime I can rest assured that adult butterflies are very real but very likely to be overcome.  It's nice to know that something in my life is more than a hopeful thought.

Peace.