But because I believe I am better than that, here's the whole song rather than just a vague, out of context quote. Because instead of reverting back to pre-teen methods of self expression, I'd rather introduce y'all to this band. I saw them live at the end of June and it was basically the best thing I've done so far this summer:
"The word for not changing is death."
Anthony de Mello, S.J., funnily enough, says something very similar:
"On the day you cease to change, you cease to live."
It's fun when punk rock and Jesuit spirituality agree, isn't it?
I've written a bit about the changes I'm noticing this year (See: ruined for life). They are slow and they are weird. But mostly, they are a constant, wonderful reminder that nothing, whether it's good, bad or ugly, is static. A year ago, impending change truly terrified me. Now? Yeah, I'm still scared, but change is exciting. Change is as expected as it is refreshing. As "Pat" the "Bunny" in all his Ramshackle Glory (ha) and Fr. Mello so eloquently put it, changes are a reminder that we are alive. The changes in my life remind me that though I recently turned the ancient age of 23, my life is far from over.
The inclination at the end of my JV year is to say it's done. It's not. Not by a long shot.
This was all leading up to post about how the Chicago Bernardin community moved to a new house in Lawndale. You were probably expecting something different after all that drama, huh? Something a little more exciting? Nope. Moving. A blog post about moving. You can stop reading now if that's not your jam--I understand. Moving is actually my least favorite thing, and I'm sure reading about someone else's move wouldn't rank much higher.
But if you can stick it out and wade through my lackluster narrative of relocation, I'll give you a clue about what I'm doing after my JV year...
I'm moving to Washington DC to get a Masters in Political Communication at American University.
What? I said I was getting better at change, not surprises.
Or incentives, I guess.
I'll keep it simple. Some bullet points:
Moving was awesome because:
Moving sucked because:
Sure, we're a lot father south now, living in an area that garners reactions like "Really? Aren't you scared?" But this new house is so. much. better. than what we left behind. It already feels more like home than our crappy old apartment ever did.
In The Guide (I mean James Martin's The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything here. I personally think it would be cool if those who run in Jesuity circles could start calling this book The Guide. It would be like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, only about Jesus and would say AMDG rather than "DON'T PANIC" on the cover. I understand I am likely the only one who feels like this is a great idea, but now you know what I mean when I say The Guide. All righty then...moving on...), Martin S.J says that when it comes to Ignatian Discernment, Ignatius believed that the decider would inherently feel a sense of peace when making a decision if the decision was relevant to God's goals for them.
Whether or not God sponsors your mission, it makes sense that a well-reflected-on decision would leave the decider with a sense of satisfaction with their course of action. That much Ignation results-oriented mysticism I can get behind.
This is not how I make any of my decisions. I wish it was, because then every decision I make would be significantly less stressful. My decision making process usually goes one of two ways: I either wallow in indecisiveness until something happens which leaves me with only one option, or I make a decision driven by panic and anxiety that is so sudden, even I am surprised when it happens.
The later is how I ended up applying to American University in DC.
Twas the day before I was set to take the GRE way back in March.
My decision to apply for graduate school was unfortunately born out of the "only option" route. What I thought I'd end up doing and what JVC had me doing were clashing on an idealistic level.
Going into media, my original idea for a life, suddenly didn't seem like what I was supposed to be doing. I don't mean that there isn't some wonderful, social justice- motivated work that could be done with media. But after a few months of working with a homeless population, a well-crafted feature story about the perils of Chicago homelessness no longer seemed like a good way to tackle the problem.
For short moment back in the Fall, I thought maybe I would go into social work. After all, that's what all the cool kids in my life were doing. But it has become apparent to me that, though I am well intentioned and generally give a damn, I am not equipped to fix people's lives on such direct a level. Besides, the problems I encountered had more to do with broken systems and bigger pictures than individual cases. It's not that there isn't enough housing in Chicago, it's just that they won't sell to felons/won't subsidize/ don't see housing as the "first priority" when tackling homelessness (a problem that even freaking Utah has gotten over. Come on Chicago...). And after doing some work with SNAP outreach and watching as my clients benefits were cut in November annnnnd again when Congress passed further cuts three months later, I began to think that I might function better working with something more...oh I don't know, policy driven.
Which meant I'd have to learn about policy. Which means I have to go back to school.
Which meant grad school. Which meant applications. Which meant GRE. Which meant having to re-learn Math. Womp.
So I retaught myself the Pythagorean theorem, learned how to find the volume of a cylinder, and never really managed to figure out what the hell a permutation is, but there was a formula, and I knew it.
I promptly forgot everything exactly five minutes after I took the test, but that's coming later.
Due to my late-in-the-game decision to go back for even more school, I was a bit limited in where I could apply. Didn't matter though-- despite the mountains of snow everywhere, coupled with the apparent incapability of residents to shovel their sidewalks, I liked Chicago enough to figure I'd stay here. And as briefly mentioned, I'm also pretty fond of the Jesuits. So, I filled out the app for Loyola Chicago. It fit the bill nicely and well...I knew I'd get accepted. Nobody goes to Loyola to study public policy. I mean, people do, but the school's program doesn't even register on national rankings of any kind. And I'm not exactly the dumbest or least eligible person I know (ladies). All I would need to do was achieve a marginally decent score on the GRE and get the app in before July and I would be all set.
This was all leading up to post about how the Chicago Bernardin community moved to a new house in Lawndale. You were probably expecting something different after all that drama, huh? Something a little more exciting? Nope. Moving. A blog post about moving. You can stop reading now if that's not your jam--I understand. Moving is actually my least favorite thing, and I'm sure reading about someone else's move wouldn't rank much higher.
But if you can stick it out and wade through my lackluster narrative of relocation, I'll give you a clue about what I'm doing after my JV year...
I'm moving to Washington DC to get a Masters in Political Communication at American University.
What? I said I was getting better at change, not surprises.
Or incentives, I guess.
I'll keep it simple. Some bullet points:
Moving was awesome because:
- JVC caved and let us get a Uhaul. This made everything about 800 times less stressful.
- Colleen Kennedy of JVC administration fame brought us bagels and coffee.
- We had some incredible people from the Tolton community, some F(ormer) JVs and some F(riends of) JVs help us move all of our crap. We quite literally could not have done it with out the people who showed up. Each and every one of them is a beautiful, valuable human being.
- The new south house is incredible. It has four bedrooms, two full baths, a backyard, functional temperature control, walls without cracks/hole, laundry appliances that actually work and all-in-all is not a shithole.
- We are next to an El stop. Finally. Sure, it's the Pink Line, but a year in Chicago has taught me that the only thing worse than being next to the Pink Line is not being next to a train at all.
Moving sucked because:
- Fuck moving.
Moving is the leading cause of death among friendships. Moving turns the place you call home into a nightmarish cardboard jungle that is barely navigable. Moving creates tension about stupid things like "should we keep this weird finger painting of a sailboat we just now found in our bathroom?" Moving can turn otherwise laid back, rational people into demanding control freaks who come to community meetings with a freaking two-page long agenda in which they've broken down the moving process into a bullet pointed schedule (This was me. I was that crazy person. Because like I said--fuck moving.)
But we made it. What I thought was going to be a community-shattering experience ended up being only mostly awful instead of totally terrible.
Besides, check out our sweet new digs (excuse the mess):
 |
| Spacious upstairs living space! |
 |
| Giant functional kitchen! |
 |
| Cozy downstairs den (made complete by our killer VHS collection) |
 |
| Backyard! With grass and things! |
 |
| Best of all...NEXT TO THE PINK LINE. |
 |
| Not scary looking! |
Sure, we're a lot father south now, living in an area that garners reactions like "Really? Aren't you scared?" But this new house is so. much. better. than what we left behind. It already feels more like home than our crappy old apartment ever did.
Alas, I'll only be living in the new house for a month before I move. Again.
This is the part where I talk about the next big change in my life, otherwise known as "the rest of my life post-Jesuit Volunteering."
I already ruined the surprise, but you made it this far so you might as well keep going, right?
Okay fine. Be that way.
For the rest of my favorites readers, allow me to indulge in the story of how I ended up with plans to move to DC.
Whether or not God sponsors your mission, it makes sense that a well-reflected-on decision would leave the decider with a sense of satisfaction with their course of action. That much Ignation results-oriented mysticism I can get behind.
This is not how I make any of my decisions. I wish it was, because then every decision I make would be significantly less stressful. My decision making process usually goes one of two ways: I either wallow in indecisiveness until something happens which leaves me with only one option, or I make a decision driven by panic and anxiety that is so sudden, even I am surprised when it happens.
The later is how I ended up applying to American University in DC.
Twas the day before I was set to take the GRE way back in March.
My decision to apply for graduate school was unfortunately born out of the "only option" route. What I thought I'd end up doing and what JVC had me doing were clashing on an idealistic level.
Going into media, my original idea for a life, suddenly didn't seem like what I was supposed to be doing. I don't mean that there isn't some wonderful, social justice- motivated work that could be done with media. But after a few months of working with a homeless population, a well-crafted feature story about the perils of Chicago homelessness no longer seemed like a good way to tackle the problem.
For short moment back in the Fall, I thought maybe I would go into social work. After all, that's what all the cool kids in my life were doing. But it has become apparent to me that, though I am well intentioned and generally give a damn, I am not equipped to fix people's lives on such direct a level. Besides, the problems I encountered had more to do with broken systems and bigger pictures than individual cases. It's not that there isn't enough housing in Chicago, it's just that they won't sell to felons/won't subsidize/ don't see housing as the "first priority" when tackling homelessness (a problem that even freaking Utah has gotten over. Come on Chicago...). And after doing some work with SNAP outreach and watching as my clients benefits were cut in November annnnnd again when Congress passed further cuts three months later, I began to think that I might function better working with something more...oh I don't know, policy driven.
Which meant I'd have to learn about policy. Which means I have to go back to school.
Which meant grad school. Which meant applications. Which meant GRE. Which meant having to re-learn Math. Womp.
So I retaught myself the Pythagorean theorem, learned how to find the volume of a cylinder, and never really managed to figure out what the hell a permutation is, but there was a formula, and I knew it.
I promptly forgot everything exactly five minutes after I took the test, but that's coming later.
Due to my late-in-the-game decision to go back for even more school, I was a bit limited in where I could apply. Didn't matter though-- despite the mountains of snow everywhere, coupled with the apparent incapability of residents to shovel their sidewalks, I liked Chicago enough to figure I'd stay here. And as briefly mentioned, I'm also pretty fond of the Jesuits. So, I filled out the app for Loyola Chicago. It fit the bill nicely and well...I knew I'd get accepted. Nobody goes to Loyola to study public policy. I mean, people do, but the school's program doesn't even register on national rankings of any kind. And I'm not exactly the dumbest or least eligible person I know (ladies). All I would need to do was achieve a marginally decent score on the GRE and get the app in before July and I would be all set.
And that was going to be that. Apply to a school was I familiar with. Stay in Chicago. Study policy so I could do more of the same, but in a flavor I thought sounded better.
And I felt nothing about that prospect. Like, hell, you think I'd have another emotion about kicking off the rest of my life than "Yeah okay. That sounds fine."
And maybe it was that incredible apathy that developed into blind panic. Maybe it was the relief of settling that sent the strongest desire to not settle tearing through me. Maybe I'd actually blown a fuse trying to force math into brain space that had willingly discarded it years ago.
Whatever it was, I picked the absolute worst time to strike. With less than 24 before I was going to take the GRE, something in my comfort snapped.
What the hell was I thinking? What was I doing trying to settle anything the age of 22? Why was I satisfied with a next step I even felt reasonably secure about?
Next thing I knew, I was pouring over the US News rankings for grad schools with policy programs. Realizing I had already missed deadlines for most programs only increased my panic. There had to be something better still out there. I couldn't settle. I wasn't ready, man.
Okay, yes, I was thinking super catastrophically about my impending "rest of life." But when I think about the time this was occurring-- neck deep in Chicago winter, spending 8 hours a day in a basement trying to meet needs that often just couldn't be met, seeing maybe a half hour of sunlight a day (before frostbite became an issue), and to top it all off, trying to do math, I'm not surprised I snapped. I'm just pretty happy my sudden descent into panic manifested into a strong desire to revamp my life plan rather then, oh I don't know, setting my desk on fire or something.
American University is currently ranked 12th for public affairs, so by the time I got to it on the list, I was starting to think that all policy programs at schools I could feasibly go to were the same. I wasn't looking for something radically different, just something I could safely say was better. But when I got to American, I found something different-- a joint program between the school of public affairs and the school of communication.
I had majored in communication. I discovered that I wanted to work in politics. Such things do not usually fall into place so...perfectly.
It was everything I didn't know I wanted to be studying in a location I didn't know I needed to be in.
Despite recent scandals surrounding emails from a campus fraternity, I was under the impression that American was a pretty decent school. I mean, on a scale of one to Ivy League, it's not, but it's nothing worthy of scoffing at either. My point is that in the same moment I reached for a pen to copy down American's test score reporting code, I realized I was actually going to have to put effort into this application. Damn.
Looking back, the fact that I wasn't going to put in any effort for something like this was an astounding disservice to the rest of my life. Any positive change takes effort. Not that settling on a school I knew I could get into in a city I knew I liked was inherently negative, but it just wasn't exciting.
Spoiler alert: I did better on the test than I though I would. Not on math though. Math was just average. And that was with studying. I shudder to think how I might have done had I not relearned the difference between median, mean, mode and range. Even if I probably couldn't tell you the difference now (which I can't can! Just tested myself. Suck it, haters. I can still do the maths).
A personal statement, application fee, and acceptance letter later, I finally have an answer to the question of what I'm doing next year. Next two years, actually. Really, this is just an excuse to not be a real person for a little while longer.
In reality, I just wrote about a thousand words addressing what was, really, an average grad school application experience. But in my own mind, it was evidence that being willing to embrace this big scary thing called change usually yields something good, or at least something new and exciting.
Yeah, even I'm impressed by my own ability to be routinely surprised by obvious life truths.
I'm ready for a change. Not that I haven't loved JVC. It's been an unparalleled experience in so many ways. I'm ready for this change partly because of the changes I've witnessed during my JV year. Whether it was a guest deciding to make a change and go to detox, or a community member deciding to change their schedule to make time for something they love, or an FJV who's experienced the typical JVC changes and keeps moving forward, looking for their next adventure.
It's the new things that make waking up everyday worth it. And it's the changes, both slow and weird and fast and panicked, that remind me that there's still so much more to look forward to.
So cheers to not being dead yet. Life is better when lived anyway.
As a closing, here's another song from Ramshackle Glory. About anarchy. Because irony is fun.
In reality, I just wrote about a thousand words addressing what was, really, an average grad school application experience. But in my own mind, it was evidence that being willing to embrace this big scary thing called change usually yields something good, or at least something new and exciting.
Yeah, even I'm impressed by my own ability to be routinely surprised by obvious life truths.
I'm ready for a change. Not that I haven't loved JVC. It's been an unparalleled experience in so many ways. I'm ready for this change partly because of the changes I've witnessed during my JV year. Whether it was a guest deciding to make a change and go to detox, or a community member deciding to change their schedule to make time for something they love, or an FJV who's experienced the typical JVC changes and keeps moving forward, looking for their next adventure.
It's the new things that make waking up everyday worth it. And it's the changes, both slow and weird and fast and panicked, that remind me that there's still so much more to look forward to.
So cheers to not being dead yet. Life is better when lived anyway.
As a closing, here's another song from Ramshackle Glory. About anarchy. Because irony is fun.
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