This week was the week before Festival del Sol, and as usual, it was very stressful. What I am used to at this time of year, and what I found myself doing in the beginning, is frantic listing of all of the things I need to do, but then spending so much time stressing about or not wanting to do the work that the list only grows. Something I found, however, is that certain work, while frustrating, can also be very peaceful or meditative. I really enjoyed working on my stencil and essay because I got into a zone. My mom used to describe this to me and tell me that I would know I had found a passion when I was able to do things in this frame of mind. For example, if a passionate rock climber explains what it feels like to think about and choose every hand and foothold as they climb to move higher and higher, they will not tell you about the experience as an long chain of events, they will explain a feeling. Even though there is a constant change in where they are reaching, there is stress from not knowing if they will make it all the way up before the sun is down, and there is a lot of work ahead of them, the rhythm is what keeps them calm. This is what I felt when making my stencil and when writing. I was in a very focused state where I could work for hours without even thinking about all of the thought that was going into the refinements I was constantly making. Something I have realized about myself is that the hardest thing for me is starting. Once I am in the right headspace, I can do anything.
0 Comments
This week was the epitome of High Tech High. Exhibition is drawing near, projects are heating up, and we got tons of time to work on whatever we prioritized as needing to get done. In my personal experience, this is what I have found to be the closest school experience to a real workplace. When I worked at WorldLink or the ACLU as an intern, I had things I needed to get done. For WorldLink I needed to do research on gender based violence and write abstracts. We would only meet once a week in the Institute for Peace and Justice, the rest of the week I had to balance between having my Freshman summer and getting all of the work and reading I needed done, doing my part to move the organization toward the eventual goal of having a Youth Town Meeting. For the ACLU, most of my work stayed within the office. I had times where I had a specific task, like shadowing one on one meetings between Gracie, a community organizer for the Southeast San Diego region, and the community members who she hoped to support, or setting up for a volunteer night. However, I also had hours where I knew what I needed to complete but had to manage myself. This is especially the case at my current job at Allegro Music Studio. My boss even told me that a good portion of my job will be anticipating the needs of the workplace. I do the important things first like managing the daily settlement reports, uploading new students or payments into our computer system, or answering to customers in person or over the phone. Those things usually take me about an hour, the rest of the time I work on whatever I see fit. I really like how my school has trained me to do this. Instead of micromanaging us or having the teacher always direct what we work on, we are given goals and the freedom to achieve them however we need.
Our trip to UCSD was tiring, but it was also inspiring. To put it simply, there were different parts of me having different reactions. My left brain, metaphorically speaking because we learned in biology that the right and left brain characteristics are subjective, was nervous. It told me when I walked through the lab with all sorts of mice brains being examined for radioactive kisspeptin, when I sat down to study in Geisel library and saw the length of surrounding college students’ material compared to mine, and when I interrogated the HTHCV alumni about the shift from high school to college, that I was not ready. However, my right brain was exhilarated! So many flyers were being pushed into my face, I immediately saw organizations that I wanted to join, and as I looked around, I realized that the work that people were doing, no matter how stressful it may have looked to me, was work that they had signed up for voluntarily. Even though Dr. Kauffman’s microscopes were showing me neurotransmitters that have little to do with the things I hope to study in college, looking through the lense at those little glowing dots was looking at the stars. I could imagine to have been looking at any of the millions of constellations that could be my life in a little over a year. I am both nervous and exhilarated. College is going to be a change. My entire life will have new responsibilities, but also new freedoms. I push myself now to practice taking care of myself as much as I can, but in the back of my mind I feel a sense of calm and assurance that everything will be okay. I know I can keep myself as motivated as the people I witnessed on campus, I trust myself.
|
What is this?Hi everyone! This is my junior year blog. Here you will find weekly reflections up until the completion of my junior internship. I hope you enjoy this inside look on my learning! Archives
June 2018
Categories |