Retrospective
If I had to sum Gobabeb or the DRFN up in one sentence, it would be this:
When you go to work for the DRFN you are asked to work a job and live a life that should be worked and lived by someone much older and experienced than yourself.
When you finish this fellowship, you will be much older and more experience than you could have imagined. (Doug might disagree with me owing to some of the emails I have sent him, in particular the "Visas? We don need no steenkin visas" email.) The DRFN's motto is sink or swim, it is not what Grinnellians or Americans our age are really used to. Growing up we are taught and see that everyone around you learns to swim just some slower than others and if you sink someone will save you and help you. I would be hesitant to say that this fellowship exposes you to the real world; I would rather say it exposes you to this world here.
This world is the toughest one I have lived in probably because it is not the one I was from. As a sophomore, I lived with a guy from South Korea. In my intro education class we had to do interviews with people who had different backgrounds from our own...I forget whyâ¦don't we all. During the interview the one thing he said that I really remember was that, "Americans have it so easy here." I did not understand it at first; he explained that we have this amazing support structure, even if we are really major screw-ups we still have family and friends who help us find a job, who will help us survive in life. Someone coming to America does not have that same support. That struck me as true and interesting at the time and I remembered it, but I did not understand it at the time. No, I understood it, but it was an academic understanding, not an experienced understanding.
At Gobabeb you are given a job and expected to sink or swim, you may not have any idea what that job is but you are expected, after about a month of grace, to be able to do it. There are people to assist in some things but ultimately when it comes down to planning something, laying the groundwork, executing, finishing, you are alone here. You have people to ask for help but sometimes it ends there, sometimes you just have realise that you are horribly under qualified, have 2 weeks to get qualified and that is all there is to it.
It is these really hard steps that are the most rewarding. Sometimes you can't see past the difficulty of the present assignment or situation. When you manage to see past that difficulty you realise you are doing something that you didn't know how to do before. Once you realise you are doing something you don't know how to do you are already in it and doing it, you are already getting better at it. Sometimes though you just can't see that even when you are done.
I realised a few days ago that the next Grinnellians are coming in about a month. Then I realised I was going to have to unplug from everything here. All the friends, projects, the work, the people, the landscape, the pain and the difficulties have become what feels like an irretractable part of me. Not giving it up but unplugging from it. It is not really an issue of letting go it is figuring out how to let go of the physical connection but keeping the experiences and memories.
Shoot man, I've got better things to be doing right now than writing this quarterly report. I have the pleasurable difficulty of a UNAM field course to plan and prepare for.
