Recent Musings About India, Senegal, and College Life Coming to an End

It’s my last semester at TCU. In exactly 59 days, I’ll be leaving Fort Worth and not come back until graduation in May 2015. No, I’m not graduating early, just taking a May class and then off to India and Senegal for Summer and Fall. Why India and Senegal, you ask?

India: Going on a Critical Language Scholarship from the State Department to Chandigarh (north India) to study Punjabi. Yes, it’s very random, yes it’s also free. Here, I can learn a random language, well it’s the 10^th most spoken language in the world… and study human trafficking and have lots of adventurous, courtesy of all of the taxpayers in America. I just decided to apply and then somehow wound up getting this. So, I’ll be in India June 10-August 10.

Some fun facts (considering I spend too much time reading about it): The Dakah border with Pakistan is 2 hours away from Chandigarh and has a changing of the guard- type ceremony every night. Chandigarh is in the foothills of the Himalayas and really beautiful. It’s 3-4 hours north of New Delhi and is the cleanest, safest, richest city in India and has approximately 1 million people. My personal favorite picture I found, (looks like something off of pinterest) J

Senegal: I’m going to Senegal with CIEE, a partner program of TCU. Here I will take classes and study French. It’s kind of a stepping stone, first India, more developed, people speak English, then Senegal- not very many people speak English and less developed. More fun facts coming later.

In the upcoming blogs, I’ll talk about some small epiphanies I’ve had in the last 3 years of being in college.

- When I first came to TCU, I thought it was going to be radically different from high school. In some ways it was, in the culture and environment, it wasn’t (isn’t)

- Yes, many (most) of my favorite college memories have taken place outside of TCU, and I will never exactly consider Fort Worth a home. And yes, I’m okay with that.

-  No, I have not exactly had a “typical” college life, if there is such a thing, but getting to spend time on the cross country team, in DC, Haiti, India, Senegal, and only 2.5 years at TCU and working with professors is something I would never change.

The People You Meet on Planes

My dad likes to say he would not like sitting by me on planes. We don’t share a common gene of loving to meet strangers.

Last weekend I was flying back from DC to Dallas. It was a bright and early 6:30 am and I was quite sleep deprived, which I think makes me even more talkative. I sat down on Row 25 Seat F- by the window, my favorite. Sitting in the middle was a nice man in his 30s, who began talking to me. Of course, I was excited to make new friends. Then another girl in her late twenties sat down on the aisle seat and we all began chatting. He was a dad of 5 kids, only 31 years old, who got married at 19 while he was at the University of Arizona. He’s a hedge fund college endowment investor who is relocating his family from DC to Dallas and we gave him advice on which suburbs he should live in. The girl was a SMU grad who is in residency at a Children’s hospital in DC.

What ensued was a lovely conversation about trafficking and awareness within hospital staff and international development and our upbringings. We came from different backgrounds, had different lifestyles, but valued what we had to offer and learn from other another.

3 weeks ago, I was traveling to DC (excessive trips, I know) and I met a girl on a plane when I found out I was a Truman finalist. On Friday morning, she tweeted at me Good Luck, when I had literally said nothing about when my interview was on twitter.

This conversation and that simple, kind gesture made me think, What if we treated all strangers this way? What makes someone you meet on a plane different than the person who looks differently than you on the street? What if we valued what every person has to offer?

As you continue your week, instead of complaining about someone else, think about why they are doing what bothers you, and invest in their life. 

Whirlwind of a Week and It's Only Wednesday

For the past 5 days, I’ve been in DC for the ONE Campaign Power Summit (aka a fancy word for training and advocacy). The ONE Campaign is an advocacy organization that fights to keep the less than 1% of the budget that the US spends on foreign aid. In polls, the average American believed we spend at least 25% on aid when in reality it is less than 1% (.6%). ONE has over 3 million members and was founded 10 years ago by Bono. It’s unique because they never ask for members’ money, only their voice- letters, calls, tweets to congressmen. In those 10 years, they’ve created incredible change cutting extreme poverty in half and saving 6 million lives through the GAVI alliance for immunizations. Now we are fighting for the Electrify Africa Act, which has the potential to provide 50 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa with electricity for the first time through US investments and infrastructure.

It was an incredible experience to spend these last days with 200 volunteers from around the world. Not only did we get to advocate on the hill, we also got to meet Bono, President Bush’s former chief of staff, the VP of the World Bank and a former Senator, Blanche Lincoln. I learned so much about the fight against extreme poverty and also about ONE’s incredible job team building and helping people unite around one cause. My favorite speech was last night at our final dinner by a Washington Post columnist named Michael Gershen. He talked about his trips over the past 10 years to Africa. His most recent trip was to rural Rwanda where he visited medical clinics. He asked to visit the part of the ward where there were AIDS patients and he was told there were none, then he inquired about malaria patients and was told there were none, and he was confused until he asked someone where is everyone? The man said the AIDS and Malaria drugs distributed have been so effective that we’re now mainly treating patients with heart disease and diabetes because we can. And the speaker ended by saying that “I know advocacy in this area can be hard and lonely but selfishness is a prison and millions are alive by the populations you serve.”

And with that, I am landing in St. Louis en route back to Texas.

Shameless plug: If you live in Baton Rouge the Tortoise and Hair 5k is this weekend, you know you wanna come! Register www.tortoiseandhair5k.org

Finding Joy (and stress) in the Process

I thought about the last time I felt this anxious, as I constantly refreshed my twitter feed waiting on updates from the Truman Scholars Foundation. I’d read every blog, talked to everyone I knew that affiliated and constantly questioned my credibility for this scholarship. I imagined the ideal candidate having a 4.0, going to an Ivy, quoting Shakespeare, and having founded their own nonprofit. I’m not even in honors and sometimes (often) don’t do my required reading for English class. I read the scoring charts, wondered if people like the dean of Harvard law who could be reading my application, would find me acceptable, even though for one question I wrote about something in high school.

In December, I made the tough decision to leave DC, with one of the main reasons being the opportunity to apply. As I anxiously awaited a tweet saying the Texas/Louisiana region was being announced, my heart raced and I was constantly anxious all day Friday. Nothing came. I, along with 2 other TCU nominees had to wait another day.

I woke up at 5 am on Saturday unable to sleep, and decided to get ready and head to the airport for my flight to DC for an advocacy conference. As I got on the plane they made the 10^th out of 16 cities announcement. No more until lunchtime they said. We had a 25 minute layover in Little Rock, Arkansas and I immediately checked my email. If you get an email it will tell you you’re a finalist, if you’re not you get nothing. They had just tweeted LA/TX results were out.

On my flight, I was reading my bible study, Stuck, by Jennie Allen. This chapter was on discontent. It said “We want to be significant.” “When we search and find and don’t find and our disappointed, we miss the picture, we sometimes miss everything, the only thing. God and his plan.” I thought, what if this isn’t in the cards for me. I was so anxious because I had poured so many of my vulnerabilities, struggles, and aspirations into a document that random strangers would pour over for 5 minutes in their leather arm-patched blazers making tons of red marks on my finished product that took so many hours.

But, at that moment I realized how much I’d learned about myself and others just by writing this document. I’d worked the hardest for anything since cross country and certainly in academics. But on the grounds of sharing your vulnerabilities, you reach others. I connected with others and they connected with me. Professors who I would have never had for class helped me, challenged me, and believed in me.

Congrats you’re a finalist. I went numb on my short layover in Arkansas. I called my parents, emailed my professors, texted two of my Truman friends who proofread and then literally 2 minutes later, here I am, enroute to DC. Tears overcame me, and of course I began stressing about the interview which is in a month.

But, truly I can say that no matter what happens with the rest of the process, President Truman, your successors tested my patience and made me a better person. And thanks: to everyone, but especially to Dr. Pitcock, Dr. Bouche, Dr. Jackson, Ms. Kelsey, Whitney, Kam, Leslie, Kathleen, my parents and my friends, who read draft after draft and listened to my tears and frustration, and put up with my anti-socialness, You’re actually the best. 

I believe in adventure. Do you?

Blogging: the best remedy for using your time productively when you can’t fall asleep.

I believe in adventure. Even though I’ve been rejected from three different opportunities in the past 24 hours, it’s okay because I have three more adventures that are still possibilities.

Without, adventure life is boring. Boring is not in my vocabulary.

Each adventure and risk you take, you find yourself, but more importantly you find others who teach you something. If you don’t believe in yourself and capabilities you will never reach full potential.

When you limit yourself because you believe you’re not good enough, don’t want to be vulnerable, or are afraid of failure you close doors that were wide open.

Taking risks and the apprehension leading up to uncertain circumstances teaches patience and joy.

Adventure and daydreaming keeps me up at night. There are so many possibilities for my future and the futures of my friends as we near graduation. There are also so many uncertainties. About the summer, fall, and forever.

Today, I finished the biggest and most important application of my life. Now that I have infinitely more free time, my grandparents asked me what I was doing, assuming I was relaxing. But, I was searching for the next adventure of course.

At this point in our lives, the opportunities are actually limitless. Every job we don’t apply for and risk we don’t take is one more door we close on ourselves. Risk failure, risk disappointment, risk being “too vulnerable.”

Leave all of your doors open. Pursue every opportunity you want, and never ever give up.

Do you believe in the pursuit of new adventures?