Showing posts with label AmeriCorps. Show all posts

As a young child it was easy to get people's attention. Until about age 11 I remained the size of a small stuffed animal, and have been told that I was irresistibly adorable. Many adults were curious about the fragile seven year old who could converse with fourth grade vocabulary, but appeared to be the size of a two year old, and scurried across floors with the confidence and speed of a fourteen month old baby. Growing up I remember there was usually someone rapt with attention as my parents patiently explained my curious stature and why "the whites of her eyes are so blue." Among adults I had become used to being in the spotlight, accustomed to being listened to because of what I looked like and what I had.

Fast forward fifteen year later and that seven year old is not much taller and could easily be mistaken as a 12 or 14 year old teen. Except that at this point I had just finished school, had a college degree and was about to start my first "real adult job." It was an AmeriCorps position where I was doing a year of service at a community college in Boston. A real adult job that had real adult responsibilities; I had my own office, extension, email - the whole nine yards at a place where looking cute would no longer matter to anyone.

My job was to put together a mentoring program that served first-generation community college students. Most of the students were older than myself, some had had years of life experience, some were veterans who were not much older than myself, many were parents and they were all at various places in their lives but knew that they wanted some guidance to help steer them in a direction toward success. Suddenly the spotlight I was in was not so much because of what I looked like, but more because of what I was asked to do. At least I knew that much was true; however, I found out quickly enough that it would  take awhile for this truth to sink into the community that I was serving.
Who is this young person that is suddenly trying to put together a mentoring program for us? And what does she know about how things work here? She's so small and soft-spoken our students aren't even going to listen to her. These were some of the question I was up against and the attitudes that were pervasive for the first half of my year of service.
I quickly realized that things were different now than they were for me when I was a kid. I needed people to pay attention because of what I had to offer. I wanted the attention away from myself, and instead on the need that I was confident that I could meet. I would need to take on more of an authority figure than I was used to, and somehow fish out of thin air at least 24 more inches to add to my height. Needless to say I was well aware that I had my work cut-out for me.

After months of research, interviewing, and performing assessments on students and staff members to figure out what kind of mentoring program would be needed, it was time for me to present the findings. I would be presenting to the school's Board of Trustees, the President of the college, other members of the Cabinet, and various faculty members. Going into the presentation I told myself this is it. I thought to myself this is my chance to own up to the work that I've done because in this presentation nothing else matters, nothing else should matter but what's best for the students at the college.
That day I was still 3ft tall, as tall as I had been since age 11 and as tall as I will ever be. I still had a pip-squeakish soft-spoken voice, I was still in my first "real adult job," and was still the youngest employee at the school. Not much had changed except that by putting the needs of an entire population of students before myself, I grew to be taller than everyone else in that room. It was me who had the upper hand in that moment, I was the one who was offering a real solution, and while it was nerve-wracking for me to defend my findings to the Board of Trustees - when I responded I realized that I am the one who is speaking with the most authority and knowledge on this topic.
Since then whenever I am confronted by another moment where I might be physically 'dwarfed' by others, I look to what's at stake --

Authority in a Small Package:

• It's not about you. People look to leaders who are comfortable with themselves and are confident in varying situations. I have learned that if I make it about how nervous I am or how diminutive I feel, then that's all folks will see. But if I make it about what I can offer and what I know, I can easily switch the focus away from my more vulnerable aspects. 
• Authority is only gained with respect. And as we all know, gaining respect takes time. For authority to work you need an audience that will listen, and people will only listen if they respect you. Build respect and trust, thankfully these aren't things that require any great height or physical strength to acquire.
• If you doubt yourself then others will follow suit. When we think about why we don't think we're capable, is it because of what we're telling ourselves? Or is it because what others are telling us? When we tell ourselves that we can't give the speech then it's not going to matter how others perceive us because already we've talked ourselves out. But when we tell ourselves we can give that speech, the way others perceive us can become fodder for us to prove wrong. And who doesn't like a good ol' "Hah! I WAS right and YOU were WRONG!" 
• Eye-contact. This is one of those tricks that I have had to practice a lot. Just because I am short doesn't mean that I need to physically look-up or look-down at anyone. By matching someone's eye-contact we are already beginning to present ourselves to be capable of playing on the same playing-field. It also conveys a sense of seriousness and an air of 'adulthood,' when we are naturally able to do this. 

Whoa! I can't believe that the month of July just flashed by! July was a busy month for me and the blog: my family got back from a trip to Hong Kong & Macau, I shared with you my law school app essay about misusing handicap placards, I reminisced about all the ridiculous shenanigans I got myself into in middle school, wrote a goofy poem for the younger O.I.'ers heading back to elementary school, the facebook page now has 241 fans, and Perfectly Imperfecta was featured in Thriving - the Children's Hospital Boston pediatric blog... phew!

Before we close July officially I'd like to share the top post for this month in case you missed it!

Volunteering to Out-Prove my Disability? 

Me in the 5th gr & my reading buddy, Nina.

This is the group of AmeriCorps Ambassadors of Mentoring I worked with!

At first I did it because we all had to. I was in the 5th grade and we were each assigned a 'Reading Buddy', a Kindergartner who we would read picture books with and then do some sort of literacy-related activity. I was roughly the same size as my Reading Buddy but I remember reading together all the classic favorites like Corduroy, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, countless Frog and Toad adventures, and Dr. Seuss' Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories. Back then my favorite thing about Reading Buddy Time wasn't the fact that I was helping some six year-old guess at "what might happen next?" It was the fact that I got to read, and then as the year went on I loved the fact that I was helping my Reading Buddy learn to read, and hopefully - love reading as much as I did.
I also enjoyed the fact that although I was a kid who might be the same size as a Kindergartner, and might have still needed to be pushed on the "baby" swings - it was possible to have someone else look up to me. More than that though I was also able to help this other person share in an activity that I loved so dearly. While it's quite some time ago and I can't remember how it exactly all made me feel, I imagine that I felt important, purposeful, and for once - I probably enjoyed the feeling of being able to offer someone else help as opposed to it always being the other way around. For a ten or eleven year old kid who was always the only one in her school in a wheelchair, that last feeling was huge.

And so it began: I grew to want and love helping others.  


As I grew older I volunteered at Special Olympics, sang at retirement homes, and tutored younger students. Though I never really consciously thought about it at the time, I am sure that a part of my drive for volunteering began with wanting to "prove something" to others. I'm not sure if it was ever just one thing I was trying to prove, but here are a few that come to mind:
1. I don't need as much help as some people might think I do
2. That I have something to offer to society
3. I don't expect to always be on the receiving end of assistance in society

In college I became more involved in volunteering on a different level. During this time I actually avoided one-on-one volunteering opportunities (i.e. feeding the homeless, doing a shift at a food pantry, or helping underprivileged girls find the right prom dress). At the time I wasn't sure if I really believed that those efforts "worked" or made any "real" dent in the larger-scale issues like poverty or homelessness. But more importantly I avoided those opportunities because I wasn't sure who I was yet. I still felt that I had something to PROVE about being disabled while being able to help other people, I just wasn't sure what it was! I didn't believe that I could offer anything to people in those situations (because they were so different from my own), and instead focused my student-run club (Students for Social Justice) on spreading awareness on bigger picture topics. We invited guest speakers to campus, had discussions after we watched documentaries, or went to protests. I still loved helping others, and at each club meeting or event I was fired up and motivated by my passion to educate others on the issues.
The months and weeks leading up to graduation I had a lot of big decisions to make. I was swamped with finals, law school scholarship applications, trying to decide whether or not I wanted to go straight into law school, or if I should continue figuring out what it was I wanted to help others with. Because law school is such an expensive and mentally intensive commitment I figured that if I was uncertain about it then I probably shouldn't force myself to go. So instead of going straight into grad school I opted to do a year of service with AmeriCorps. I wanted to figure out how I could best serve, in what areas of society, and with what populations; law school I knew would always be there waiting for me.

After too many AmeriCorps applications and researching programs I decided to go with an AmeriCorps Mass Mentoring program - this is a corp of (mostly) young people who serve in mentoring programs throughout the state of Massachusetts. Why did I choose the area of mentoring? I have been incredibly lucky to have many mentors in my life. Because I was the only one in my family who was disabled and had many different interests from the rest of my family members, I always sought out mentors to help me in things that I was interested in or struggled with. I recognized that I would not have gotten to where I am today without my mentors and also realized that many students fall between the cracks and miss out on meeting that important connection to another adult in their life. So for an entire year I spent developing a mentoring program for 18-24 year olds at a local community college in Boston!
The work was exhausting and I was frequently frustrated but what kept me going was that similarly to my love for reading, I truly believed in the importance and effectiveness of mentoring. I knew that if I could only have ONE student go through the mentoring program having had a positive experience, and understanding the importance of having a mentor in his or her life then I would be successful.

That was last year, and now a year later I have a better sense of the population I know I can best serve and why it is important for me to work in that area. But what I think is most important to me is that I have come to understand that I will always continue offering assistance to others, but it won't be because I have "something to prove" - now it's because there will always be something in my life that I love (whether it's a way of life, an activity, some issue I am passionate about, or a hobby) and want to share this with someone else.

This is the group of AmeriCorps Ambassadors of Mentoring I worked with!