Holy Work

As part of the fellowship portion of my year working in Chicago, I attend weekly seminars in different nonprofits around the city. I attend with my fellow Princeton Fellows and with Fellows from U of C and Northwestern.

A couple of weeks ago we were at a competitive prep school catering solely to the students in one of the two neighborhoods my center serves. One of its founders, a former Catholic priest, spoke to us before letting the student tour guides take over. He was the best speaker we've had by far. He called us "wide-awake people," and it only took a couple minutes for me to realize he wasn't talking about the early hour. Towards the end of his remarks he reminded us (as if we needed reminding) that we wouldn't get rich doing this, and that we might not get recognition either. Instead, he said, we should remember that we are doing "holy work."

This wasn't the first time I had thought (or been forced to think) of my job in terms reminiscent of my eight years of Catholic Sunday school. I had a phone conversation towards the beginning of my time here with one of my high school friends, now teaching at a Montessori, about how I would probably learn a lot from my year but that teaching kids probably wasn't my vocation.

It was out of my mouth before I really thought it out. Luckily, she understood the term and the weight behind it.

It was true when I said it and it's still mostly true now. I don't think I can handle middle schoolers for longer than a year. I think I'm getting a crash course in special needs and mental health that I couldn't have anticipated (although despite the craziness, working these kids into my lesson planing is actually one of my favorite challenges). I think once the heat really and truly gets turned on our room is going to smell rank from November to April. I think this might not be the only time I have a lost voice and a sore throat.

Parts of it are addictive, though. Today on walkover one of my coworkers said, "You're tough. I was sure you'd be gone by now," and the other said, "I was just thinking the same thing." These are the same people who are trying to teach me some swag. I was honored (and legitimately touched) and walked around the rest of the day with an inflated sense of myself and my toughness. It's true that I've almost honed my very own Teacher Voice (the semi-parental voice that wields disappointment more lethally than threats) and that I've learned to brush off student comments about my clothes or my appearance with no more than a shrug or a quick, funny comeback. These things are addictive too because when I'm successful I'm teetering at the edge of something and not quite falling in. It's real adrenaline.

So back to "holy work." On my worst days I try not to wallow in it. (I try not to call anybody or vocalize my frustrations until I've figured out how to spin them into a good story. I drive home and I take a hot bath and I watch something on Netflix.) But it must be said that, no matter how I sell it to myself later, on those days it feels like the Peace Corps. Those are the days when this idea of "holy work," however self-aggrandizing it might seem to me on the other end, really helps. If I can put others first, even ahead of my own bad feelings, than I must be doing something good, even if it doesn't feel good. It might not be my vocation, but it's definitely not lost time either.

This week has been good. Last week was good. Still, when I Skyped with my best friend two nights ago and she told me awesome stories about her life in a job I would have no idea how to do (and probably wouldn't have the business mentality for anyway) in a city I still miss despite being completely enamored with this one, and about how the company car was going to pick her up and drive her to the airport to the morning, it took a lot of effort to re-affix this "holy work" ideal to my mind.

Maybe doing holy work isn't all that far removed from being a BAMF, Roommate J's favorite appellation for me in college (and the source of, actually, quite a lot of comfort). My favorite thing about being a BAMF is telling the story afterwards: THIS happened, so I did THIS, and then THAT, and what do you know. True BAMFitude is achieved only through uphill struggle. You can be a BAMF in the comfort of your college town, but you better trap a few cockroaches in mooncake boxes while your roommates are all shrieking bloody murder, you know? Put up or shut up.

You can do holy work anywhere too, but it has to cost you something.

You can put off finding your vocation to do it, and that can become part of it.

It might even toughen you up a little bit.

(Just make sure it doesn't swell your head.)

Current Reads

 
I thought that the only thing more dangerous that listening to StoryCorps while eating breakfast was listening to StoryCorps while driving somewhere. 
Both efforts pale in comparison to the sheer willpower involved in reading StoryCorps during your lunch break and attempting not to burst into tears in the corner of the staff room while everyone else watches Judge Mathis on the overhanging TV.

Living My Life By the Moscow Rules

1. Assume nothing.
2. Never go against your gut.
3. Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
4. Don't look back; you are never completely alone.
5. Go with the flow, blend in.
6. Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.
7. Lull them into a sense of complacency.
8. Don't harass the opposition.
9. Pick the time and place for action.
10. Keep your options open.

Also: Channel Peter Guillam stealing files. Keep it cool, calm, and collected. Allow yourself an internal freakout, but cover with more jokes. Push the work clothes envelope.

On the Attainment of Swag

No, not that kind of swag. My dreams of being a seat warmer at the Oscars went up in smoke when I rejected my Pomona acceptance. I mean swag like swagger, and I'm talking about it because my coworkers are convinced I need it. I smile too much, apparently, and that won't get me respect, or phone numbers, but that's a different story. They've even got some of the kids in on it. Today they spent fifteen minutes brainstorming ways I could dress and carry myself in the neighborhood. (Apparently skinny jeans and some sort of non-Converse brand-name shoe is the answer. And I need to learn how to walk slower. That will be hard.)

I feel looked-after. And a little bit like I'm starring on an off-brand Bravo series.

(It's all very tongue-in-cheek, but there's something in it. So far I've been taking advantage of the protective bubble I inherited from my mother, with just a touch less of the accompanying obliviousness/myopia, and I think it'll carry me through the year, but they don't know that. What they know is that when the three of us went to pick up the kids at school today the parents let us know that we can't wait for the kids outside any more. Apparently, this happened, which sent an already combustible situation through the roof. On our way back to the Center with our 24 charter school kids, a police car driving on the fast side pulled over abruptly and let us know about the Little Village one here, five minutes before, three long blocks over, and one short block up. We tightened ranks and, for once, the kids listened and walked fast.)

(Would swag save me? Probably not. But it would help a little bit the next time one of the walkover kids turns to me, seizes my hand and, clearly freaked out, asks, "Did you grow up in a good neighborhood or a bad neighborhood?" Maybe my voice wouldn't go wobbly as I said, "A good one.")

Why I Do What I Do (And How to Do It)

There's this hip-hop song on one of the four stations I constantly knob between on my way to and from work. It kind of reminds me of the Lost Generation for the vaguest of gut reasons. One of the lyrics from the chorus goes, "All I care about is money and the city that I'm from. / [...] / My excuse is that I'm young, and I'm only getting older."

I care demonstrably less about money than Drake or F. Scott Fitzgerald whoever it is rapping, and I'm not from a city, but for some reason it struck me.

At this point in my life I can't just care about anything (unless it's making it through the day alive--more on that later), but it's tempting to boil it all down to one thing. I am a storyteller first, a writer second, and a teacher last, but this year the three seem so intertwined so as to feel inextricable.My leadership abilities rest on my interest in the lives of others. Every good quality I possess stems from that curiosity: observation, concern, perception, empathy, assertiveness, bravery.

This year I am working with school children and youth from two of Chicago's most crime- and poverty-stricken neighborhoods, North Lawndale and Little Village. The neighborhood around the community center where I work is volatile, and the mood of the students I work with on any given day often mirrors the mood of the community. Getting them to write or to tell their stories is often a difficult task, because guardedness is security.

Writers draw from the world around them for inspiration. That inspiration having been taken, a writer owes something to the world in return. As a writer, I am a guest in the lives of others, and it would be impossibly rude to take without leaving behind some gift of my own.

Self-expression is essential to agency. To express yourself, you have to have an audience. To make yourself heard, you have to have already found your voice. In my work as a tutor and as a teacher, my primary goal has always been to help my students find their unique voice and provide them with attention and encouragement as they experiment with that voice.

Writing is a social act. However solitary the actual meeting of pen and paper or fingers and keys may be, the remainder of the journey is undertaken with others. A writer must have a variety of knowledge and interests, but they must also care deeply about certain things. I have chosen to care about my fellow travelers.

Yesterday was the National Day on Writing. On Twitter, people were encouraged to explain why they write in 140 characters or fewer. I write because there are stories I have to tell, and until I've told them I can't do anything else.

 

(Yesterday was also Big Block of Cheese Day. Let's solve all Chicago's problems by turning the map upside down.)

Justification for my Fear Post, and a Probably Temporary Dearth of It

The Interrupters is a movie all the Fellows should go see, but especially my Chicago compatriots, and I'm not just saying that because 1/4 of the movie takes place in one of the neighborhoods my Center serves, or because my drive to work features in not one, not two, but three scenes.

Some of us work in very volatile neighborhoods, and the danger factor is not something we blog about on our blog for Fellows*. For the most part, this is because we are not directly affected. We're not held at gunpoint or threatened.

Nonetheless, one of the parts of my job that has been the most educational in the past two weeks is the daily walkover. We offer a service to students who attend nearby schools: staff members will go and meet kids when school lets out and accompany them back to the Center. I recently replaced a coworker whose schedule got switched around on one of these walkovers, and so every day two staff members and make the fifteen minute walk to a nearby charter school to greet the kids.

The first week of walkover was a breeze. The second week, there were three separate incidents that had the police swarming the neighborhood and had us going to our supervisor and strongly recommending that we spring for a bus. Parents offered to pass the hat. One mother decided that she was going to take off work and drive her kids to the Center every day.

Watching The Interrupters, I couldn't get the faces of the kids I work with out of my head. It was one of those viewing experiences that left me shaken and sure that someone needs to do something. I'm doing all I can at this point in my life. I'm not huge and imposing and I don't know the neighborhood inside out and I am not an organization with endless funds. Still, I'm not going to let CeaseFire out of my sights just yet.


*I freely admit that this is adapted from one of those posts. What can I say. I'm too busy boning up on my listening and observation skills to write two.

Scenes from the Neighborhood, Part 2

After a really deep conversation (completely driven by them) with two of the girls (aged 10 and 12) in the youth program about job satisfaction and how different things get important as you get older, one of them stuck her head back in the door and said, "Tomorrow, we'll talk about the economy."