Well, I am back in the United States and looking for a real job now that I am officially a college graduate. I was excited to finish my Bachelor’s degree and to move on to the next phase of my life. However, the next phase of life has proved to be a little more difficult than I had expected. I have never had trouble finding work in the past, but starting a career seems to be a little more difficult than finding just another summer job.

 

This weekend I signed up for a Career Workshop that should teach me tools that I can use to improve my resume and my job searching skills. I imagine that a lot of the information will be intuitive, but I think it will still help. Also, next week I will be moving to a bigger city and that should help increase my opportunities for finding a job that will give me administrative experience. I am still hoping to go to graduate school at Harvard or Yale for a Master’s of Public Administration, so I really would like to get a job that I can use on a graduate school application. That has been somewhat difficult because some jobs ask for 3-5 years of experience. While I have administrative experience from my internship and from other jobs that I have held, I don’t think that I could say that I have 3-5 years of administrative experience.

 

However, I am self-motivated, detail-oriented and a quick learner, so I believe that I would be able to pick things up quickly if I found a work as an administrative assistant. I don’t really know how or when I will be able to find a job like that, but I believe that if I just keep moving forward and working hard, things will eventually come together how they are supposed to.

I am coming to the close of my internship in Geneva, Switzerland and in a week, I will be back in the US. I am really excited to go home and spend Christmas with my boyfriend and my family, but I admit that there are things that I will miss about my experience here. I remember in the beginning it seemed a little intimidating to be interning at an international human rights organization in Europe, but now it is all so familiar and normal that it is hard to imagine that it was ever scary to me.  

I am finishing up my project proposal for my idea for an international humanitarian organization that helps women and I am really excited about it. I am not sure when I will get to use it, since the future still seems unclear and I don’t know what I will end up doing with my life, but I think it will come in handy someday. I will graduate in less than a month with my bachelor’s degree and then I will be taking the GRE and applying to graduate schools. I still have the dream of going to Harvard, but we will see what happens with that.

I am really grateful that I decided to do this internship. It is not required for my major (I am a history major) and I didn’t need it to graduate. However, I have learned a lot about how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) work and it has helped me formulate my own idea for an NGO. Moreover, I really liked interning for Geneva Call. The people were really nice to me and I have learned a lot from my experiences here.

I really liked living in Geneva and I have loved traveling around Switzerland. Switzerland is such a beautiful country! I am going to miss the Swiss chocolate and the fresh European bread. I am going to miss how clean Geneva is, and I am going to miss shopping at Migros and Coop (grocery stores). I lived by a shopping center called Balexert with a big Migros in it that had my favorite bread ever—Yum!

In sum, Switzerland is a great place and I hope that I get to come back some day!

Today I have been working on a project proposal to help women in less developed countries. I came up with the idea for the project a few weeks into my internship and I have been developing it ever since. I have to write a 20 page policy paper for my internship class, so I asked my professor if I could adapt the policy paper to a project proposal instead, since it is more applicable to what I will be doing in the career I plan on pursuing. My professor said that was a good idea and gave me permission to move forward with it.

I am really excited to write a project proposal. At my internship, I was organizing the donor binders for my supervisor when I noticed a binder full of research on how to write a project proposal. I got really excited because I had tried to start my paper a week ago, but after a few attempts I realized that I wasn’t sure how to write a project proposal. I had seen examples, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to adapt the examples to what my idea.

When I started going through the research, I found that it answered a lot of the questions I had about what a project proposal should be like. Since then, I have started going through the binder whenever I have free time or when my supervisor doesn’t have anything for me to do. I have learned a lot of things and it has made me really excited to put my ideas down in the form of a project proposal. I don’t know if I will ever get to use it, since I don’t have an organization for which to propose it, but I am still excited. I think it might come in handy at later on, though I am not really sure how. There are a lot of things I am not sure of, but I feel really good about this and I know that when that happens, I should move forward even if I don’t know why.

A few weeks ago, I didn't have anything to do at my internship because my supervisor was out for the day and no one else in the office needed any help. I decided to go through some of the materials they have in the gender department and I found all sorts of really interesting books and articles and studies. I started reading them whenever I had spare time and I have learned a lot of new information that I hope to put to good use some day to help women in less developed countries.

A week or so after that, I was thinking about something else when all the sudden I got an idea for an international non-governmental organization (NGO) that would help improve the situation of women in less-developed countries. I got out my little notebook for ideas and lists and whatever else, and I started to scramble down my thoughts. For the next twenty minutes or more, I just wrote down everything that came to my mind. When I was finished, I looked over my notes and felt like I might have stumbled upon something that might really make a difference. It would be a slow process, because my idea has to do with changing the way people think about women, but I think that it still could be powerful.

I don't know how or if I will ever get to the point of being able to create the NGO that I have envisioned, but I think it is still good to dream and work towards those dreams.

Anything is possible, right?

A week ago I started my internship in Switzerland. I have been in the country for a week and a half and I am starting to feel adjusted to life in the international city of Geneva. The first few days were sometimes really exciting and sometimes a little intimidating, but I am starting to get into the swing of things so all the strange things—like taking a tram to work and hearing everyone speak in French—seem more normal now.

 

I think that I will really like Geneva. There is definitely something different about living in a place where everyone speaks three or four or five languages. It makes me wish that I had more of a gift for learning languages so that I could pick up French while I am here, but I think it would take me more than three months to do that.

 

I also think that I will really like the international human rights organization that I am interning for. I feel like I have so much to learn, which was a little discouraging at first because I want to do so much and I don’t want to have to wait to get ten years of experience in order to do it. However, things started looking a little more encouraging after the first few days. I started to pick up on all the unfamiliar words and terminology that people used and I realized something important: this is a world that I can learn. I like to read and study and gather information to solve problems, and I saw that I can use those skills here too. I realized that just like with school, if I put forth the effort to learn, I can be successful.

 

I think that is all I have for an update right now with. I still don’t know exactly how I am going to get where I want to go, or how long it will take me, but so far things are at least looking optimistic!

“Have you ever said you would do something that you were scared to do, but knew you had to do anyways, so you said yes, even though deep down inside you wanted to say no and run away?

I hadn't felt like that for a long time, but I felt like that a few weeks ago when I agreed to volunteer with a research project. The happy and optimistic part of me was really excited, but the realistic part of me wondered if I was getting in over my head: I don't have any kind of experience with this kind of research and they except me to be professional. I am usually a quick learner and I can usually succeed at anything I put my mind to, but there is the chance that I might fail and that scares me. I really don't like failure, because then you let people down and I hate to let people down, especially if they are counting on me.

I know that failure is part of life and that I shouldn't worry so much about doing everything right—because no one does everything right. Yet, it is still scary to agree to do something that you aren't sure you can do.

At the same time, I think those are the moments when you decide who you will become—will you choose to be brave and face your fears or will you choose to be weak and give in to your fears?

I think that facing our fears is the best way to go. Whenever I have run away from my fears in the past, I get that dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach that I have shortchanged myself of something important. I hate that feeling. It fades with time, but I still get the feeling that the more I let my fears dictate my choices, the less power I will have in the future to overcome them. Therefore, when that feeling fades of disappointment in myself, I try not to forget it completely so that the next time an opportunity to run away comes along, I remember why I should choose to say yes, when the weak part of my wants to shout NO! and hide in the corner of my closet.”

 

Well, I don't think that I have much to write today, except that saving the world looks more doable these days. It is amazing how life comes together in ways that we never would imagine. About two week ago, I got a general email from the Women's Research Institute at my school. The email had nothing to do with research opportunities, but it got me wondering if there was any research on women going on in my school. I decided to look into it, so I set up an appointment at the Women’s Research Institute to talk to someone there.

They didn't have any research opportunities at the moment, but they referred me to the business school because they were doing a study on self-reliance and single mothers. After talking with them, I found out that they were looking for a student fluent in Spanish to help with their research for the next month and a half. ¡Qué perfecto!

I have never participated in a study of this kind, but I am excited. I am a research assistant for one of my history professor who is working on a book, but for that kind of research I don’t really get to work with other people. Instead, I search for information or books that are difficult to find or I read/skim through books so he doesn’t have to read them. I like that kind of research too, but I am excited for something where I can more directly help other people.

I get the feeling that this opportunity will be a good learning experience and help prepare me for a career where I can improve the lives of women in less developed countries! ¡Qué bendición!

 

I am a history major with a Spanish minor.  My plan had never been to major in history—I thought I was going to be an elementary teacher.  In fact, I had planned on becoming an elementary teacher since I was in ninth grade. For my first two years of college, I never seriously considered anything else. I took classes in child development and decided to get an emphasis in early childhood development so that I would be qualified to teach kindergarten. I really enjoyed my classes and I had no reason to consider any other major.

After my sophomore year of college, I decided to take a year and a half long break from school to be a missionary in Argentina. I knew a little bit of Spanish from high school, but I didn’t speak very well. The first couple months were an adventure as I tried to learn the language and to get used to being so far away from home and everything that was familiar to me.

Being a missionary in Argentina was a lot of fun, but also heartbreaking. One time we were working with a woman whose husband was abusive. She had five children and was struggling to take care of her family. They lived in a house with dirt floors and walls made out of sheet metal. Her husband worked sometimes but he often spent the money on alcohol, leaving little for them to live on.

I wished so much that she could have a fresh start but she had so few options. She couldn’t work because she didn’t have anyone to take care of her five children when she was gone. She didn’t have any family to support her. If she left, she would most likely live on the streets and have no food for her children.  As I saw how she was trapped in an abusive situation because she did not have any other options, I wished that I could do something to help her break free. This experience, along with other experiences, ignited a fire inside of me to help women in less-developed countries.

When I got home from Argentina and went back to school, I wasn’t sure yet what I wanted to do with my life. However, I knew that I wanted a career where I could help people in less-developed countries. I had developed talents for organizing, speaking in front of large groups of people, and working with people from different cultures and from all different levels of society, so I decided that I want to go to graduate school for a Master’s of Public Administration and work for a non-governmental international humanitarian organization.

I am excited about my plans but still not sure how it will all play out. A friend of mine told me that after graduate school, a lot of good organizations look for MPA graduates from places like Harvard or Princeton. I really would like to be in a position to make a difference and if they are looking for people from Harvard or Princeton to fill those positions, then that is what I will shoot for. I have a strong GPA but I haven’t taken the GRE yet, so I don’t know if I even have a chance. I have been involved in college but I haven’t started my own charity or nonprofit organization. I have been a teaching assistant and a research assistant for one of my professors and this fall, I am doing an internship in Geneva, Switzerland with an international humanitarian organization (which I am really excited for!).

Sometimes when I consider all that I will have to do in order to get the kind of position that I want where I can really make a difference and help people, I wonder why it has to be so hard and if I’ll ever make it. I never cared much about going to a prestigious university for graduate school, but now that it could be an important factor in determining the kind of career opportunities I have for helping people, I would like to go to a school like Princeton or Harvard.

I don’t really know yet how this will all play out. Sometimes that is a little scary, but I believe that things will come together how they are supposed to. I know that I am moving in the right direction because things keep falling into place—like my internship this fall. I believe that if I continue with the desire to do good and I don’t give up my dream of having an administrative position in an international humanitarian organization, somehow I will find a way and it will be worth all this work to get there.

My purpose is to spread happiness.  Making people happy is pretty much my favorite thing to do because I can’t stand it when people suffer.

One thing that I love is to stand up against injustice. I remember in my tenth grade advanced writing class my teacher had us read excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. Afterward, she played his speech and as I listened, I was overcome with the desire to stand up and shout, “I’m with you Mr. King! I’ll fight for that too!” At that moment, I felt something stir inside of me that has never gone away.  I don’t know what I will do with my life, but I know that I will fight oppression in every way that I can.

That decision to fight injustice was strengthened when I spent a year and a half helping families in Argentina and I realized how different life can be in other countries. For the first time in my life, I felt embarrassed telling people that I had my own car back home because people there could work a lifetime and never save up enough to buy their own car. I was ashamed of myself for complaining to my parents about not having my own room when I saw families of eight living together in a one bedroom house. My experiences in Argentina showed me that the fight for Martin Luther King’s dream continues today and that I can play a part in making that dream possible for others.

My ideal job would be to live in a less developed country and run an orphanage. I took a child development class my freshman year of college and we learned about the importance of the first few years of life in a person’s development. I still remember reading in the textbook about orphanages in less-developed countries where babies stared at white walls all day and were only touched when they were fed or when their diapers were changed. The studies showed that the children that grew up in these conditions usually experienced developmental delays and stunted growth.

Since then, I have had the dream of one day opening up my own orphanage in a less-developed country. Then, I could hug those babies and play with them and they wouldn’t have to stare at white walls all day. Moreover, I could help them learn how to walk and talk. When they were older, I could teach them how to whistle and do cartwheels in the grass. I could have a special store of cookies for when they had bad days or when they just felt down. When they misbehaved, I could teach them why it is important to be kind to others or why they shouldn’t lie or cheat or steal.  If I had my own orphanage, I could help those children to feel special and important and most of all—loved!