Where I Am Coming From

as i mentioned on monday, this week i went through Pre Service Orientation for my VISTA year. we covered various topics such as: the mission and history of VISTA; poverty concepts, insights, and strategies; capacity building; volunteer development; civil rights and responsibilities; and finished up with an official swearing in ceremony and oath of service.

so it is official. i am a vista. i rose my right hand, repeated after the trainer, and signed a piece of paper. let the fun begin.

with covering so many topics during training we also did a zillion different exercises exploring those topics--it was all part of expanding our minds. many of the issues and conversations were ones that i had already gone through as part of my social work education, but something about this training stood out to me with the levels of honesty and range of conversations being had.

i wanted to share with you one exercise we completed on values. we discussed core values that we hold in our lives, how we express those values in our daily actions, and how those values may be misinterpurreted by others looking in... an exercise on cultural competence.

3 Core Values i hold in my life for who i am...

1. PASSION for whatever i am pursing


2. being TRUE to who i am and my goals


3. constantly PUSHING myself to be the best i can

How I Express these values in my life...

1. working in the field of ending Domestic and Sexual Violence --strong passions for me!


2. moving to nyc to take this vista position--even though i have an amazing partner in MN, a supportive family in WI, and wonderful friends in both states!


3. instead of staying in MN and at my previous job, i decided to move to NY and try a new position with public health.

the finial part of the exercise was then identifying how my actions could possibly be interputed in other ways than my intended values. Examples of this include how many people i encounter sometimes view my passion as being "emotional" or they may see my leaving my amazing partner as me not truly caring about him or our relationship.

the take away point from this exercise is fairly obvious, but i still feel powerful.

someone's actions may be viewed multiple ways by different people. we can all be so quick to judge before we truly know where someone is coming from. i am learning that the world is full of so many different people and i will never be able to completely understand other's lives.

as a social worker and advocate i need to remember that instead of running out and saving the world, sometimes the best thing is to just sit down and listen.