Power, Privilege, Oppression, and Intersectionality

In December, I was able to site lead an Alternative Break through CMU.  I site lead the Youth Development AB that went to Omaha, Nebraska to work with Youth Emergency Services, a non-profit organization that provides resources to homeless and nearly-homeless youth in the area. This AB challenged me in ways that other ones had not yet. Being a site leader, I had extra responsibilities, such as making sure everyone arrived safe, communicating with community partners, and facilitating community building and reflections with my group. I did this with a co-site leader, from who I learned from and problem-solved with. This AB also helped understand the depth of intersectionality more than my previous ABs had.

Through service we helped sort through donations, deliver donations, set up for a Christmas Service with the members of YES!, and help run the Christmas Service. Through working with the donations I learned a lot about how much privilege I have by having easy access to everyday products that I use and need. Specifically, I looked at this through the lens of being a woman. During service, I spent lots of time going through feminine hygiene products and was surprised at how many donations of tampons and pads there were. I then realized that if I had no income or way to pay for these necessities, I would have no way of getting them. Females NEED access to these every month, and it is something that is not often donated because it is overlooked. So, if you are looking to donate to a shelter, consider donating feminine hygiene products. I also learned from my community partner the terrifying statistic that once a female is homeless, within 90 minutes 43% will be a victim of sex trafficking. This AB made me think deeper about my privilege to have access to things that keep me safe and healthy but also how much of a privilege it is for me to even go on an Alternative Break. The ability to take off time from work and serve for a week is privilege. To have access to education is a privilege.

The Christmas Service was set up with donations from members and organizations in the community for those who utilize YES! to come and take what they need. This included, diapers, baby clothing, cooking utensils, toiletries, blankets, hats, gloves, coats, and clothing. Everything in the Christmas Service was brand new, it was a gift. This made me even more aware of my privilege because when I saw individuals coming through to take what they need, when given the choice of perfume/face masks or toothpaste/blankets, they chose the toothpaste or blankets or soap, because it was what they needed. They had the opportunity to take things that aren’t a necessity, and they would get excited about soap or diapers, because it was something they needed. I had one girl who was about 13 come up and ask me what all she should take in order to take care of her hair. In that moment, I realized that not everyone has access to learn about different elements of what we consider everyday actions, let alone have the materials to be able to do them.

I also learned how those in power are implementing policies that are harming these individuals. In Nebraska, one is not able to sign a lease for their own home or apply for a loan until 19. This means that the task of going to college or moving out is extremely difficult. This puts a large number of individuals without a home unless their parents can afford to help them once they are done with high school. It is disproportionately harming families from lower socioeconomic status areas and putting them in danger. This harm increases for communities of color, woman, and individuals with disabilities. This is one example of the way those in power have the ability to shape the lives of individuals.

Alternative Breaks never fail to make me realize my privilege and give me a resurgence in my belief that it is my responsibility as a person who has privilege to do my best to help those who have not had the privilege of being given access to the same things I have. I look forward to site leading another Alternative Break this summer.

Detroit Service Trip LEAD team, try number 2

My freshman year, my cohort of LAS went on a service trip to Detroit where we received education about Detroit and served the community. This year I was on the LEAD team for the Detroit Service Trip for the freshman cohort of LAS. This meant I was able to participate in the experience and facilitate reflections with a small group of students. This experience had some differences from my freshman year, and I have grown a lot and am different too. It is because of these differences that I was able to learn so much and be impacted so heavily by the experience.

One of the biggest things that I took away this time was how aware I was of the gentrification that is occurring in Detroit. On the first day of the trip, we spent some time with Quicken Loans and took a historic tour of Detroit. During the tour, we learned about the housing barriers that have been placed on people of color and the systemic racism that has driven many decisions that have been made in the city. Decisions that were made not that long ago, have had immense effects on communities of color. After the day, I was eager to get into reflection because of the impact the tour. It was fulfilling to hear and see students response to the tour and the amount they learned. They were able to connect the dots in how power and privilege can lead to groups being oppressed. The next day we served with CASS. The group I was with worked on recycling paper. I helped sort paper before it went to be shredded.

This experience was an amazing one that gave me the opportunity to help members of the freshman cohort reflect and grow from their experience, and it gave me the opportunity to learn and grow myself.

Seasons of Service

Throughout my time at CMU, one of my favorite things I have been involved in is the Alternative Breaks Program (AB). The AB program provides students with issue education, service, and reflection with social justice issues through weekend and weeklong breaks that travel to different communities and assist them with whatever the community says they need. We are there to serve the communities.

When thinking about what the AB program means to me the one word I can use to describe it is community. The community comes from both the service we do with our community partners and the people that you meet.  The people that I have met through this program have become some of my best friends and support systems. The support doesn’t stop with just things occurring within the AB program but has brought me people and support that stretches outside of the AB web. I have gotten so much support in trying to figure out my professional goals and what I want to do with my life while also supporting any personal struggles I have faced while at CMU.  One of my friendships from AB, Shannon Dent, and I even made a remix to the song “Seasons of Love” about how much we love AB and Board. I wouldn’t trade our Thursday evening meetings for anything. These friendships all developed because of the sense of community and the conversations that Alternative Breaks starts. You are surrounded by people who have similar values to you and genuinely care about the people around them. Through office hours, long van rides, and service you gain the opportunity to be completely yourself and be extremely goofy at times and incredibly intentional at others. When going through an experience of growth with other people you create a bond with them that sparks that friendship and support, and I cannot imagine my time at CMU without the community that AB has helped build. It is because of the growth and community that the Alternative Breaks program has given me that I applied to be a part of the Alternative Breaks Advisory Board. This year, I was able to serve as a Site and Service Development Chair  (SSD) and a Site Leader and Orientation Chair (SLOT).

Through my involvement with Alternative Breaks this year I grew an immense amount in my knowledge of both the program and social justice. As an SSD I was given the task of planning the weeklong service experiences. This meant finding service and housing, writing Site Agreements, receiving Insurance from community partners, and making loads upon loads of phone calls. One of my favorite aspects of Alternative Breaks is the community partners we work with. I love being able to interact with them and learn from them. On all of my AB experiences I have been able to form connections and learn about different ways people are working toward social justice. As a Winter SSD during first semester, I had the opportunity to learn more about the community partners we work with beyond the scope of the ABs I have participated on and connect with them.

This year I also had an opportunity to experience the work that SLOT does.  SLOTs role is to train and prepare site leaders to lead their weeklong and weekend service experiences. This included writing trainings, writing weekly newsletters, and presenting trainings to site leaders. I was able to learn how important the role is to support site leaders and help them feel prepared to site lead their Alternative Break. I know for me through my site leading experience the time leading up to the break can be stressful, and I know I felt inadequate within my role at times. I utilized SLOT at those times and was able to have a resource to help me feel prepared. I was grateful to be able to use my experience to help prepare site leaders to have a successful, intentional, and growing experience while on their AB.

This program has helped me realize how strong my passion for social justice is, and it has helped me better understand the intersectionality of social justice issues and the importance of being an active citizen. I am extremely excited to complete my final year at CMU as a member of the AB Board as a returning SSD, and I am excited to continue to connect with community partners.

 

Serving in the Mountains

This winter I had the opportunity to go an another Alternative Break through CMU.  Due to my summer job at the assisted living home, I had a large interest in the Elderly Alternative Break.  I was nervous when going into this Alternative Break that I was going to be constantly comparing my experience on this Break to my previous Alternative Break in the summer.  However, the experiences and services were so vastly different that there were very few ways that I could even put the experiences next to each other.

11 other students and I traveled in two minivans through the mountains to the small town of Waynesville, NC.  The town was one of the most interesting towns I have ever visited due to the large amount of economic inequality that was present.  There were trailers on the bottom of the mountain, but once you tilted your head up there were multiple million dollar houses.  Due to this, a lot of the population we were serving were those who were elderly and living in a state of fiscal disadvantage.

The first day we spent working with a center in Haywood County that serves the population of Elderly in the surrounding area.  We packaged over 300 holiday care packages for members of the Elderly community because due to the difficulty that living in the mountains adds to travel, they are unable to leave the house often to get food and other necessities, especially in the winter months.  The experience of packing the holiday care packages was further influenced by our service Wednesday, where we were able to personally deliver these packages to residents in the Haywood County and surrounding areas.  I will never forget one of my experiences with delivering one of the packages.  I knocked on the door and lady took a while to come to the door.  However, when she opened the door she was smiling from ear to ear. After giving my spiel about how I was a volunteer, and her exact response was “This is the highlight of my holiday season, and I look forward to it all year.”  The rest of the week I constantly thought about that interaction and how the small work we were doing was actually having a large impact on the people we were helping.

On Tuesday, we split into two groups and my group got to work with a man named Richard Reeves.  Richard Reeves is a man who I will remember for the rest of my life because of his ability to be selfless and give to others no matter what the situation.  Richard supplies wood to the people in the county who do not have the ability to heat their homes themselves.  He is retired and could be making an estimated million dollars off of this, but he spends all of his days doing this with no external rewards.  He does this all out of the kindness of his heart.  Richard is also one of the most humble people I have ever experienced.  While we were doing service with cutting and delivering wood with Richard, he insisted on buying us lunch, and was constantly thanking us for volunteering.

On Thursday and Friday, we got the chance to spend a lot of time with members of the Elderly community.  We visited centers in two counties that provided a place for those who are elderly to meet and eat breakfast and lunch.  One of my favorite experiences of the Alternative Break was being able to learn their favorite game, Joker.  This game is very similar to the game Sorry, only it is played with a wooden board and marbles.  The people in the senior centers were so competitive, and they made playing the game so fun.  When we were about to leave, one of the men at the senior center approached us and shared that his wife had recently passed away the week before.  His wife and he used to play Joker together a lot, so having a board in his house made him sad, so he wanted to give us some of his marbles and one of their Joker boards because he wanted us to enjoy it the way him and his wife did.

On top of the amazing service that I was able to experience on this break,  I also loved getting to know the members of my group through hiking and exploring downtown Asheville.  This break has taught me a lot about what type of leader I want to be due to the differences in leadership styles of my Summer Alternative Break site leader and my Winter Alternative Break site leaders.

Overall, this Alternative Break made me think deeply about how under-looked the issue of ageism is.  People stop thinking about giving to those who are elderly because it is not an issue that people find themselves being super passionate about.  For example,  even people on my break who knew about person-first language did not realize that this too applies to members of the elderly community.  This summer especially I am going to use my free time to assist members of my community who happen to be elderly to make sure they are able to meet all of their needs since they are not always able to do this on their own.

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“It made a difference to that one”

This summer I had the privilege of going on an Alternative Summer Break through CMU. Alternative Breaks (AB) work by having students sign up to work for a cause they are passionate about, not knowing where they are going or what they will doing.  12 students go on each break, and they meet weekly to become educated on the issue they are going to be working with.  A couple weeks after signing up, the group figures out what service they will be doing and where they will be going for their week of service.

Ever since I was little I have had this crazy amount of love for animals.  Since coming to college I have also become very passionate about the environment and saving the earth we live on.  So, I signed up for the break that deals with the issue of Animal Endangerment.  We found out that we were going to be traveling to Palm Beach, FL to help baby sea turtles find their way to the ocean, and yes, it is as perfect as it sounds.

So, me and twelve girls packed into two mini vans and drove to Palm Beach.  The first day there we spent time getting to know the area and visiting the GORGEOUS beach that we were going to be doing some of our service on.  We make our own meals throughout our week, so we went grocery shopping and set up at the Faith Lutheran church we were staying at.

Throughout the week we spent long days doing service.  We arrived at the beach at 6 A.M. every morning to work with the  Sea Turtle Conservation League of Singer Island.  We worked with this woman Debbie, who started the Sea Turtle program on Singer Island herself.  Debbie is a woman who, though I only spent a week with her, she has made a huge impact on my life.  Everything Debbie says inspires the people around her to do whatever they are passionate about.  She has had numerous jobs throughout the years and all of them were because she felt a pull to them at that time because it was her passion.  She said “I would get these brainstorms of what I wanted to do, and I had to do it.” She started the Sea Turtle program after already having children and having a career.  She wanted to save the turtles, and so she did just that.  Debbie does all of this program solely based on volunteering.  She and her volunteers, and us for the week we were there, spend 4 hours every morning walking the beach, helping baby sea turtles find their way to the ocean, excavating old sea turtle nests, marking new sea turtle nests, and documenting hatched nests.

After working in the mornings with Debbie, we would head over to the Loggerhead Marine Life Center to volunteer with them.  Loggerhead is a sea turtle rehabilitation center that helps rescue turtles of any age and nurse them back to health, to have them later released back into the ocean.  Loggerhead was the most amazing place I have visited to see animals.  They don’t treat the turtles any different than how a patient at a rehabilitation center that was a human would be treated.  When volunteering with Loggerhead, we did any type of work that they needed help with,  the majority of this being painting the pier they own.  We also helped them with yard work stuff in the front of the building.  Even though we were not directly working with the turtles at this point,  there is still so much reward to be gained from doing indirect service.

Our last service trip stop of the day was to MacArthur State Park.  While working at MacArthur State Park, we helped remove invasive species, trim trails, and clean up trash from trails.  This service was probably the service that was the most difficult for my group simply because we were usually doing service here at the peak heat of the day in long pants and shirt in the middle of August.  However, this work was work that really helped fire up my love for the environment.  Seeing all of the trash that is left around is heartbreaking, and so being able to help contribute to making the world a cleaner place was the ultimate win.

This trip taught me more than I could ever imagine.  Sea Turtles are endangered and only 1 in 10,000 sea turtles make it to adulthood.  Most nests have around 100 turtle hatchlings in them.  This means that a lot of nests are overall unsuccessful.  I saw a lot of nests that not a lot of the sea turtles made it to the surface of the sand alive because they get fried in the sand as a result of rising temperatures.   When sea turtles do make it out the sand, many do not make it to the water because of the amount of light that is on from buildings, hotels, and condos that lead them in the wrong direction. A lot of sea turtles are harmed once they get in the ocean because of the amount of trash that is left in the ocean. Overall, I just learned how much of an impact our everyday actions can impact the animals around us.  Even though so many sea turtles don’t make it to adulthood, and we can only help so many in a week, it is important to remember that we may not have saved all the turtles, but we were able to help some. Any is better than none.

A few things that I have started changing about my everyday life to lessen my carbon footprint and help support the environment:

• I was already a vegetarian before this trip, but this AB has reiterated my reasons for doing so
• I no longer use plastic grocery bags
• I limit my use of plastic straws
• I do not drink out of plastic water bottles

My AB was one of the best weeks of my life because of the work I got to do, and the people I got to connect with.  You can bet I will go on another Alternative Break this winter.

 

 

Walking for a Cure

A part of our LAS protocol is participating in a LEAD team.  There are multiple LEAD teams such as Special Olympics, Competition Day, LAS in the D, and more.  My LEAD team that I was placed on was Relay for Life.  I was super excited when I found out this was my LEAD team because it was one of my top choices.  However, as Relay was growing closer we hadn’t has many meetings, done much fundraising, or decided on what we were doing with our table at the actual event.  Long story short, the LEAD team was struggling and there was an opportunity for me to become the new LEAD team co-chair.  I took this opportunity, and at first I was pretty nervous because I already have a busy schedule.  However, this gave me the opportunity to really dive in and enjoy Relay for Life in a way that is much different than I had I not been put into this leadership position.

With such a short amount of time the other co-chairs and I really were hoping that members of the LEAD team would do some fundraising on their own.  We began fundraising only three weeks before Relay and because of the commitment of the team members (S/0 Allie Rutman, Kelsey Corr, and Riley McGuire!!!) we ended up being 5th out of 59 teams for fundraising.  In a short three weeks we had raised over 1250 dollars for Relay for Life.  As things started to come together, I got super excited for Relay.

The day of Relay was probably one of my best days I have had at Central.  Relay started at 12pm, and from the very start there were people there ready to walk for a cure.  I had not been to a Relay in a really long time and I had forgotten how much fun it was!   It was even fun when we were sitting at the table selling cookies, selling t-shirts, and getting pied in the face.

The best part of the day was when a janitor working the event came up to us after seeing us do the pie in the face, and offered to add a little bit of flare to that particular fundraiser.  He said that when he was a little kid, he saw someone all dressed up get pied in the face and thought it was hilarious.  He said that it has been a life long dream to have someone pie him in the face while wearing a dress suit because he wanted to make people laugh.  He said he would go buy real pies(we had been using paper plates filled with whip cream) and also donate 20 dollars if we found people to pie him.  We got a survivor to pie him at the end of the night and five others attending Relay also pied him.  At the end of the night after he got pied, he was so happy it brought tears to his eyes.  He said he loved that not only could he live out his dream, he had the opportunity to make people laugh, but also donate to such a great cause.

Relay for Life really causes me to sit back and think about how many people in the world are affected by cancer.  You cannot go anywhere or know anyone without seeing/knowing someone who has had a relative or a friend or even themselves be affected by cancer.  Relay gives us the opportunity to help this cause, but also remember our loved ones.

This whole experience has taught me a lot about leadership.  I took this opportunity because I thought that it would help me a lot, and I didn’t really think much about how it would give me the opportunity to take a larger role in helping the community of people that Relay effects.  During the Luminaria ceremony, I kind of realized that the best part of this experience was being able to see that guy make people happy and see the survivors do the survivor lap.  This kind of opened my eyes that though leadership does help me grow, that is just a secondary benefit.  The best benefit of Leadership is the influence that we have on others and the differences we can make in the world.

How We Made a Difference in Detroit

The “LAS in the D” trip was an action packed 30 hours that was filled with tons of excitement.  My entire LAS cohort packed onto a bus and headed towards Detroit with lots of enthusiasm and not really knowing what to expect.  Little did we know that this short trip was going to be one to remember.

Our first stop was to the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy.   While at the academy we were
split into different groups that had two LAS in the D Lead team members, five LAS students, and students from the academy.  We got a chance to spend a few hours at the JLRA and facilitate leadership activities with students. Being around these kids was such a fun experience because they each had such different personalities, but they were still there to learn about leadership.  Each of the students we worked with were so positive in whatever we were doing.  One of the activities we were doing involved using long string attached to a piece of plastic that is holding a kickball to move the kickball across the room.  Having done this activity before and knowing how frustrating it can be, I expected to see the students get kind of frustrated.  However, they were extremely positive and were constantly trying to think of better ways to accomplish the task.  This was one of my favorite parts of the day because it made me do a lot of self-reflection because I know often I get annoyed with doing small tasks like that and focus on the frustrations, but they all made it seem so much easier if they just kept a positive attitude.

There was a girl who joined our group a little later after we had already done our introductions, and you could tell she kind of felt out of place.  Throughout the activities she participated and gave full effort in the activities but she remained  pretty quiet throughout the entirety of the day until the end of our time at Jalen Rose.  Before we left, all of the groups met together in their gym and were discussing some of the things throughout the day.  The girl was one of the first students to stand up and share her opinions and reflect on how the day went.  Though I had only  met her a few hours before, I felt so proud that she had stood up and talked.  Since she had been quiet the majority of the day, I didn’t expect her to get up and share how the day had impacted her, and it showed to me how large of an impact we were having at the academy even after only being there a few short hours.

After leaving Jalen Rose, we ventured into the city.  As we drove into downtown Detroit, I watched out the bus window and slowly had this feeling of extreme excitement race through me.  Though I had a ton of fun at Jalen Rose, I was so excited to the see the city I had heard so much about but never experienced.  I love cities, and as soon as I started seeing the tall buildings and busy streets I couldn’t contain my excitement. We arrived at Quicken Loans and we ate some of the BEST pizza.  I never really knew much about Quicken Loans and expected them to be some boring business company.  However, when you walk into their offices, you learn they are anything but boring.  Their offices are fun and bright.  We listened to their Vice President, John Fikany, talk about Quicken Loans  and I was instantly inspired.  Hearing what he had to say about wanting to help rebuild Detroit.  They knew why they were doing what they were doing, and they had so much passion.  We got to tour Quicken Loans, and I was fascinated with what they were doing.  Each space was so different and so innovative.  Seeing Quicken Loans really made me think about what I was doing with my time and my life.  I know what I want to do, but seeing Quicken Loans help Detroit made me realize I can do so much with what I care about as long as I have a passion.  If you care about something, it is easy to put in the effort to make a difference.  John Fikany wasn’t doing this for money or for status, he was working at Quicken Loans to make the city a better place.  I can honestly say that touring Quicken Loans has motivated me more than any other experience has.

After leaving Quicken Loans, my fellow LASers and I got a chance to visit the Detroit Institute of Art.  I love art museums because they are such an insightful way to view culture.  I walked through the DIA trying to see as much as possible because I had never visited before.  My favorite piece of art was found in the Modern Art section.  It was named “Autobiography: Air/CS560”  It was super cool because it was made of different phrases that combined to represent the inhumanity of man, and it focused a lot on societal issues in the world today.  I thought that was pretty interesting.

We then got the chance to have a big slumber party in the DNR’s Outdoor Adventure Center.  My whole cohort took this opportunity to act like little kids and play sardines!  It was super fun exploring the Outdoor Adventure Center and learn how they were making a difference.  My favorite part of the Outdoor Adventure Center was that they had a poster board that had their “why” on it.  They had the golden circle picture from the Ted Talk on leadership, and then multiple people involved in the Outdoor Adventure Center had their own why statement on the board.  It kind of made me realize that leadership truly does go full circle.

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early prepared for a full day of service.  We headed over to a Detroit-based agency called CASS, where we were split into four groups to do different service.  One group helped prepare food, another made doormats out of illegally dumped tires, and another helped sort donated clothing.  My group got to head over to a separate warehouse where we got to work with recycled paper and cardboard from other companies.  We shredded the paper and put it into what was like a hay bale made of paper.  I also helped clean their bathrooms.  It was so cool because in the middle of this super busy warehouse was this big sign that said “Fighting Poverty. Creating Opportunity.”  We got to learn about the history of CASS and all that they do, and I didn’t want to leave.  I felt like I could have helped so much more if we could have just stayed longer.  The people at CASS devote their life to making the world and specifically Detroit a better place, and I felt like we could have easily dedicated more time there.

While my group was walking to the warehouse though, I viewed a lot more of what I would mentally picture when I hear Detroit.  It was like as soon as we left the city to head to CASS we were surrounded by run down houses with no yards and abandoned stores.  My eyes were opened that this isn’t what Detroit is, but there are still parts that need a lot of help and rebuilding.  It was so crazy to me how different two sides of the street could look.  On one side was the super nice brick building with a tall fence, and on the other were tightly-packed houses that looked like they needed a little  TLC. Working with CASS was easily 100% my favorite part of the trip to Detroit.

The trip to Detroit  made me want to do MORE—more service, more bonding with my LAS cohort, more learning about Detroit, more growth…more.

Preparing for A Whole New City

I have been excited all year for “LAS in the D,” which is a trip that LAS freshman take every year with a few upperclassmen where we work closely with the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy and do community service.  I grew up in a really small town and have never been to Detroit except to go to Tigers games.  I have always heard not so great things about Detroit in all honesty.  My parents told me they were a little worried about me going to Detroit for the weekend, and when I told them where we going and what we were doing the first words my mom said were “Make sure your safe and do not wander off!” Which may seem like a typical mom response, but Detroit is seen as a dangerous place where I am from. So, I have been excited to go and learn more about it on this trip!

Detroit has always seemed like a city that has a lot more racial issues than a lot of other cities.  I had always known this just because of learning about things in school, such as the race riots, but my eyes were really opened to the whole history of race and segregation in Detroit when we had Dr. Baugh come and talk to our LDR class about Detroit.  I have always heard things but I never really knew why they were the way they were, and Dr. Baugh really shed some light on the subject for me.

I think this trip is going to perfect for CMU’s Leadership Institute and my freshman class of LAS because it really encompasses what we are all about. CMU’s purpose is  “to prepare Michigan’s students and citizens for leadership roles in an increasingly complex and challenging society.”  This trip will really give us as individuals and as a group the opportunity take leadership roles in a challenging society.  I personally will be learning how to take leadership roles in a challenging and complex society because I will be improving my ability to lead others who come from such a drastically different background then I do.  This trip also works well with our vision, which is “The Leadership Institute prepares the next generation of individuals who will act responsibly to improve the quality of life, state of the economy, and communities in which they live and work.”  We will living the vision on this trip because we will devoting our time and energy to bettering the communities we are visiting and make a difference!

I think the trip is going to be super rewarding as an individual because, as I always say, knowledge is the first step to becoming a more well-rounded and open minded individual!  This trip is really going to give me the chance to learn what other places are like and change my outlook on Detroit.

A Bear…in a Safari?

Growing up, I was always extremely independent and had no fear of going off into the world on my own.  However, as the realization that I would soon have to move away from the town and house that I had lived in my whole life and away from my family I slowly started to sense fear creeping into me.  I was scared of leaving my two best friends; both of which I had been friends with since I was a little kid.  My home, Jonesville, had always been a place I never thought I would miss, but the thought of leaving my little town scared me.

Despite the fear, I packed up and moved 2 hours away to a town that my 3 older siblings had experienced before me with optimistic thoughts about what I was going to face.  I wanted these next years to be some of the best memories of my life.  I wanted to make lifelong friends.  I wanted to know what all my siblings were talking about when they said that CMU is the best college in the world.  I realized within a week that all of these things I wanted were going to happen and that my life at CMU was going to exceed my expectations.

My first week at CMU was filled with speakers and team building exercises.  Leadership Safari is a program put on by CMU that is intended for incoming freshman and transfer students who want to make new connections at Central and build their leadership skills.  Everyone attending Leadership Safari is placed into small groups that are named after animals (mine being Team Bear) and have a team leader.  Throughout the week you and your team go to motivational speakers, slam poets, and comedians.  You also spend a lot of time working on team building with your team, and you are able to really get to know your fellow team members through discussions after each event.

Mama Blair and her cubs

The part of safari that had the largest impact on me was the speaker we had the last night.  When I was younger I would watch The Buried Life on MTV.  The Buried Life was a show featuring a group of guys who spent their lives checking off tasks from their bucket list.  So, when I heard that Ben Nemtin, one of the guys from the Buried Life, was going to be our speaker, I was super excited.  To some it may seem cliche to have someone sitting in front of you telling you to live your dreams, but the message that was being given was a lot deeper than just “whatever you want to do, do it.” Sure, following your dream was a large part of the message, but I think that the most important message in following your dreams is to make sure you don’t let fear control your life and keep you from your dreams or any other great opportunity.  Pushing past your fear can lead you to not only change your life but also inspire others.  While he was speaking, Ben put a microphone in the middle of McGuirk Arena for people to come down and tell all of safari what they wanted to do before they died.  Naturally, a bundle of people came down to the microphone and shared, but there was one girl who inspired me the most.  She came down to the microphone and said that before she died she wanted to sing in front of a full stadium.  And then she did.  She sang in front of almost 2000 people at safari.  You could tell she was nervous at first, but as the song she was singing continued she grew more confident. Everyone has a dream, and it is easy for everyone to say what they want to do before they die because no one thinks they are going to die tomorrow.  Everyone thinks that living their dream is something that is far in the future that they don’t have to worry about today.  However, this girl had the guts to live her dream that day.  As I listened to her I felt goosebumps growing on my arms because in that moment I was so inspired to live my dreams too.

As someone who was filled with fear before I moved in, I can honestly say pushing through the fear of a whole new world and life has allowed me to make a new home out of Central Michigan University.