It’s now been a week since my internship at Concordia Place ended and now that I’ve spent a few days sleeping in and watching Netflix instead of working, I’m starting to prepare for my senior year at Valpo and also the years ahead.
Throughout the whole summer, I was asked the typical “What do you plan on doing with your degree?” or “What are you doing when you graduate?” You know, the questions that people ask you from the moment you start looking at schools. For years, I have felt like I’ve needed to tailor my responses more to what people want to hear like “I’m thinking about becoming a teacher” or “I’m thinking about law school.” Because with a History and Latin double major, those are the job options that people expect from me. And I convinced myself that those were my future career options. But I realized that I really didn’t want to be a lawyer or a teacher. I don’t want to settle for what people expected of me. I want to do what I want to do.
Some members of the wonderful Advancement team and myself.
This past year I spent a lot of time learning about social injustices in our country. I participated in events and discussions and tried to figure out what my part in the fight is. During this searching, I started to think more seriously about working in a non-profit that serves the community, but I wasn’t quite sure how that would work.
The reason I’m so grateful for this fellowship is that it gave me the opportunity to figure out how I could follow what I was being called to do. I watched some of my friends struggle this summer with figuring out what they were called to do while I found myself reaching a clearer and clearer picture just by going into work every day.
Working at Concordia Place I learned more about what it means to run an organization. Not just becoming educated about the issues, but what it really means to work in the non-profit sector. I found myself doing a little bit of everything during my internship- things like researching foundations, writing grant proposals, designing signs, entering donor information, helping with volunteer events, social media- anything and everything that did something to help the organization grow. I worked on a lot of projects that had more to do with the day to day running of an organization and I really enjoyed doing all of that work.
A sign I created that more importantly has some statistics about Concordia Place’s year.
One of the conversations I have had with a few of my peers is “What if we don’t feel like we’re changing anything?” And this summer, I was lucky to live out these questions. Concordia Place, as an organization, does wonderful work, and while I wasn’t directly working with the kids or teens or seniors, I was contributing to the overall mission. Some days, it didn’t always feel like I was doing anything. But I was. I had the unique experience of entering the CEO/president’s donor interactions which was a bit tedious and boring, but I got to see what a CEO/president does on a weekly basis, and this information was also important for advancing Concordia Place as an organization.
I’ve always been a firm believer in the fact that every bit counts, and this summer, I got to live that out. Large change isn’t going to happen without all the people on the ground- in the offices, on the streets, wherever and anywhere there is some work to be done. We’ve got to start there and then work our way up, and I feel called to be one of those people.
One of my last days, my alumni mentor and I visited the Chicago Botanic Gardens. She took me to the Japanese Gardens and walked me over a bridge that was a zig zag because according to some Japanese folklore, evil spirits have to walk in a straight line so they can’t follow you over this bridge. She took me there so I could start my senior year fresh and ready to go without any evil spirits behind me, and I am. I’m ready to go and do what I feel called to do and what I want to do. I’m ready and the CAPS fellowship is to thank for that.
The bridge at the Botanic Gardens.