The Journey

I went too long in between posts but what can you do when you're in my shoes. In the month of April I was saddled with 3 papers, finals preparation, work, internship information, sleep, sports, more work, and beer. Ummm...scrap the sleeping part but you get the picture. I was out of this world busy as I finished up my last semester of undergrad.

When I read Annette's blog I see how contrasting and different we go about things as we approached the same milestones. She's all organized, packing beforehand, finding storage with plenty of time, and she's going to keep going for a Master's degree. You go girl! On the otherhand, I decided that I'm too burned out from school to go for a Master's immediately, I have half of my possessions packed in my car, I have an opportunity to go to D.C. this summer, but I find myself hesitant to accept it. Partly it is about money issues, partly because I am afraid of stepping out of my "comfort zone".

I have had an internship opportunity with The Washington Center for the past year. I had it deferred from last summer to this year for a number of reasons. What attracted me to the program was that this organization places students in internship positions with different agencies, lobbying groups, private corporations according to the interests expressed in the essay we submit. You get to attend a lecture series with important in the government, meet a whole lot of people, and become interconnected with a network of powerful people. Very few of the internships are paid and since it is an academic program as well there is a tuition fee to pay along with room and board. The room and board is not too bad since it is an upscale apartment, fully furnished with the whole shabang, but combined with tuition the program comes to about $9,500. I can get financial help and all but it is mostly through loans and I wasn't exactly wanting to add about $10,000 more to my student loan. Hence the indecision of committing firmly with TWC and having a brief flirtation with graduating in May with no experience on my resume and head back to PR and start the job hunt there.

Graduation came and went and I did not do the paperwork needed to switch some things around so I am done academically but not officially. Go figure. I had applied with TWC with the hope that I could work for a cool agency that I know I could contribute to (through my academic knowledge) such as the State Department, Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FBI, or be able to work at the Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner's office in DC or the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs office. Something sorta close to my interests would have been fine. Nevertheless I don't hear back from my program advisor about any of these. I do have an offer to do some work regarding labor rights violations in Latin America. I put LA in my essay, but labor rights and economic policy aren't my forte...it leans more towards the government/institutions/politics side of things. Basically I did not want to get stuck in an internship where I was not enjoying or learning something from it and having to foot a $10 grand bill on top of it.

I haven't been fair to TWC because I've been pushing this to the last minute. I'm going to be in D.C. at the end of May, I just don't know where. I did send in my housing contract earlier this week so I could have a place to live when I get there, regardless of program. The kicker was two days ago when I received a call out of left field. It was a representative from HACU (Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities) calling me about potential placement with an agency. I had applied to HACU in February because they actually pay their interns, they place them in federal agencies according to their interests, and (this one is key because I thought I could pull this one off) they target Hispanics students for their placements. I saw this and I thought this would be perfect because not only would I not have to worry about financial matters but since I am a good Puerto Rican student this would be a shoo-in right? No, the only thing I heard from them was that they had received my application. So the months go by and I hear nothing from HACU and I see my student loans bloating to an even bigger unimaginable number. That is until I get the phone call from HACU saying they've got a position available with the Department of Labor and wanted to know if I would like to be referred to them. I'm thinking, "uhhh, sure...it wouldn't hurt even if it's more labor related stuff" and I get Dept. of Labor will be calling the 5-7 other people in the next week with hopefully a decision by the middle of the week. Oh man, this is getting precariously close. The check-in date for TWC is May 24 and I have yet to purchase my ticket because of all this uncertainty!! Craziness! So now there might be a door opening but I don't really know until I get the call and ace the interview. The job did sound like a lot of data entry, office stuff that really doesn't interest me but it's the Feds, they're all interconnected :)

On the surface all this physical stuff has kept me busy while I've rotted on the inside. It wasn't exactly the highest point of my life because of the things I was doing. I allowed myself to become hurt due to life's issues and allowed it to eat my insides. One thing I hate is to have something taken away from me. I love having the excitement inside of me when talking to someone or just thinking about them. Yet it seems that my life can be described by having those feelings be taken away from me. Love and relationships aren't supposed to be complicated yet we make it that way. How are we supposed to live life fully if we're afraid of to let something good happen to us/other people. Just when we think that we're doing the other person a favor by not getting involved with them we realize that we're just really acting out of a selfish attitude. Instead of protecting the person we "care" about we're really protecting ourselves and thus only really worrying about the "me" and "I" instead of the "we". Real outgoing concern puts both people's interests at the forefront and you can only know how something is going to end up if you give it a shot. You don't know the ending unless you take the journey.

And that ladies and gentlemen sums up my last month. And there's more craziness in the days and weeks ahead. Oh the joy.