Why I Do It

How many jobs can you serve/work over 40 hours in 4 days and still have a smile on your face (not for the upcoming weekend, but because doing your job makes you happy)? After a long day yesterday, I was amazed that despite working 4 straight days of 9 hours or more, I still was biking home with a smile on my face and excited about going to school on Friday as well as taking kids ice skating on Saturday.

So here' s the story of why yesterday, despite being exhausted and being away from my house for 14 hours I still ended the day primed for the next day. My day at school wasn't perfect by any means. I had to sit down with one of the students I work with to discuss his suspension. I've been working really hard with him on becoming a more responsible student, getting work turned in on time and paying attention in class. Lately, he's also been acting out and he got caught skipping, hence the suspension. It's never easy to sit down and have these sort of talks because I have to walk a fine line between lecturing and giving advice. On top of that, another one of my kids, who is very moody, was in one of his not so pleasent moods yesterday when I was working with him. I could've easily let these incidents get me down. Instead I went down to a gym class where some of my other students were. I was just going to watch, but instead got included in a game of basketball with some of the girls. I was only a designated passer, but either way it was a blast to play with them, and they were very excited to have me down there. That was just the start of things. After school, I went to watch the boys basketball team play, and despite losing, this was my first time seeing them in action, and they are fun to watch. (I would love to see the St. Matt's boys play them, because I think it would be a very exciting game and probably closely played. I think St. Matt's would win, but it would be a barn burner.) From the game I had to go straight over to the office for the the final part of training to be able to facilitate wall climbs.

I was and I wasn't looking forward to it. On the one hand I was very tired and would've loved to have gone home to go to sleep. On the other hand, every wall climb I've worked so far has been full of energy. We had a group of 5-6 members all working towards certification. Because of our need to support each other to make it through our first wall climb that we were in charge of, before any kids arrived there was already a positive atmosphere in the room. Then the kids arrived, a group of 7-9 year old Cub Scouts. They were a little wild, but that's to be expected when you have young boys getting ready to climb a wall. There were few kids who were differently nervous about climbing a wall, but with encouragement from their peers and reinforcement from us as members, they all tried to climb one of the walls. One of the kids I was working with, Marty, an 8-year old who said his "r's" like "w's", told me he was scared of heights, but he "weally wanted to climb the wall." When he came over to me, I could tell he was nervous, so I tried to loosen him up by asking him how high he thought he could go. Of course he said up to the letter "R" on the wall that has "STREAM" spelled out. Just a quick FYI, of the 4 walls, this is at least the second toughest maybe even the toughest. After the little talk we pounded fists, and he was ready to go. He struggled a little at first, but with encouragement from his friends, his parents and myself he made his way up to the R. When he got down he was grinning from ear-to-ear. He ended up climbing 2 more times and even made it to the top of one of the walls. He was so proud of himself afterwards and asked if he could come back some other time. I told him he'd have to talk to his Den leader. When we got back in the group to discuss everyone's favorite part, Marty grinned and said, "Having other people encouwage you." After that, it was hard not to go home with a smile on my face. Despite being physically wiped from an already long week, I had the greatest feeling in the world.

As I was riding home I was thinking about my day, and decided that yesterday was a perfect example of why I decided to take this position. You all may be getting tired to my references to basketball, but that's kind of what I compare this position to for myself. Both basketball and my service with AmeriCorps are things that I love so much that I'm willing to sacrafice being tired, but I still have that passion to wake-up the next day to go out for some more. It's days like yesterday that I'm willing to give my Saturday away to take two of the girls I work with ice skating. It's days like yesterday that I live for, and I thank God for giving me such an awesome opportunity.

As you can see things continue to go very well for me here. I hope everyone enjoys their weekend.

Tiring

There's one word that can sum up the pace since I've returned from Christmas break: tiring. That's not to say that I'm not enjoying the work, but it's getting more and more difficult to get up at 5:00 every morning even when I get a full night's sleep. The one surprising thing about all of this is I don't feel mentally stressed and I'm not any less enthusiastic (if anything I get more excited) about working with my students, it's very much a physical thing.

I can put some of the blame on myself, because rather than using my weekends to re-energize, I think it's more often the case to go out and let loose. In fact as much fun as I had hosting Steph and Drew Georgia along with Steph's roommate for Mardi Gras last weekend, it took a lot out of me physically. Up to this point I've been staying pretty healthy, but I think I'm in the midst of the beginnings of a cold. I'm hoping that by taking it easy this weekend, I'll be able to fight it off and should be ready to go for the upcoming week.

The beginning of Lent has also helped me focus myself in not only preparing for Easter, but getting ready for the rest of the year. I'm looking at these next 6 weeks as a chance to look inwardly and work on some things that I can improve in my life. I plan on doing a lot of reading, meditating and writing in the upcoming weeks, and hopefully come Easter I'll have a better sense of what God wants for me in the years to come.

I hope all is well for everyone else. I miss not being able to see everyone more frequently.

Pretty Typical

I don't have anything real fun to report. School is gong well. The hardest thing is that the minute I get on track with one of my kids, another kid presents me with a new set of issues. It gets to be overwhelming at times, but having teammates who deal with similar situations as well, makes it much more bearable. I feel like we share the sentiment with parents that kids don't come with manuals, especially middle schoolers who have their own set of issues.

On top of afterschool and regular school hours, I'm serving on a couple of committees. Just this week I started on a recruitment committee that I'm very excited about. Any time I can go out and talk to others about something that I have strong feelings for, I'll jump at the opportunity. I think it will also give me an idea how the application, interview and selection process works at an organization, in particular a service organization. If I end up doing a second year, I may even look to take the role as recruitment specialist.

As far as my plans for next year, it's still very much up in the air. I've got my law school application in at University of Wisconsin. I had planned on applying to a few other schools, but I'm thinking I'll just stick with Wisconsin, since I'm not sure that I want to go to any other law school. I know it limits my options, but if it doesn't work out at Wisconsin, I have some other things in mind including a second year in AmeriCorps. As I find out more, I'll let everyone know my plans. I'm hoping by the end of February I'll have heard from UW, but I can't guarantee I'll have made a decision until sometime later.

Despite not having a lot of free time, I continue to use as much of the free time as possible to take in some college basketball. Believe it or not, I'm listening to the Badger game right now over the internet. After going to the Marquette-SLU game last weekend, I may have to get to a few more games before March Madness gets going. In the meantime, I'm still keeping close tabs on my other two teams: NDA and St. Matt's 7th boys. It's a little bittersweet to not be able to be present to see more of these two teams, but I've still had a lot of fun following them from afar, and always look forward to hearing from my dad or Joey with updates on both teams.

I'm also having some visitors this weekend. Steph and Drew Georgia, along with a couple of their friends are making the trek down from Madison this weekend. Besides coming to see me, they will also get to be a part of Mardi Gras here in St. Louis, the second biggest in the nation. It should be a fun, and yes mom, a safe weekend.

That's all I have from here in St. Louis. Sounds like the Badgers are re-starting the home winning streak. I hope the rest of you are all doing well.