Day One

I love NEW YORK!!! We just finished a meeting on one side of the St. John’s campus and when we came out it was pouring down rain and when I say pouring I mean this rain was a significant upgrade from East Hall showers and it was even more environmentally friendly. I am pretty wiped out right now from lack of sleep and going for most the day, but it is happy hour and TFA folks are going so I figure I should enjoy the free time while I have it.

I may have been a little bit over zealous in saying that I love NYC. While I am enjoying the weather I am finding the whole experience to be quite overwhelming. The first TFA person that I met is a guy who just graduated from Stanford, I had lunch with a guys who just graduated from Harvard and Princeton, our neighbors went to Vanderbilt, my roommate graduated from University of Chicago and he just spent the last year on a Fullbright scholarship to some little country that I have never heard of between France and Spain. It makes me feel a little bit self conscious about the fact that pretty much no one has ever heard of Whitworth. I did however get to have dinner with a girl who graduated from Whitman and we had a short bonding moment over Washington State.

The people here are great, however I do certainly feel that I am in a whole new world. This is not the cozy lovey dovey Whitworth community, there is no hello walk to greet people on and while we are all trying to get to know each other, it seems as though there is not a strong desire to be there for each other. I think that this next five and a half weeks in training will give me a good idea of what life would have been like had I gone to a large state university. I don’t anticipate that I will be a wild crazy student, that just wouldn’t be me, but I never really had to deal with the fact that the first thing a lot of people want to do is go out drinking an see who is single.

When it comes to the program I am excited to see what they will teach me and what I will be able to do with my students. I certainly see a place for God in all of this and how he can shine through the decisions that I make. The more I meet people the more I have the opportunity to show them were I am supported from.