No, I'm not in hiding, Nashville. I'm in Fort Worth, Texas, for the summer. I'm interning at Fortress Youth Development Center, an organization that is dedicated to showing at-risk youth in inner city Fort Worth that God is more powerful than any of their circumstances, and that poverty and misfortune are not life sentences. Fortress operates a number of programs, including an after-school literacy program and a program for pre-kindergarten kids.
The program that brought me to Fortress is Summer JAM (Jesus and Me), a six-week summer program that runs during June and July. Summer JAM serves about 70 kids who are entering the 2nd through the 8th grades. I'm working with the Junior High age group (their group is called Air Force), and I'm also co-games master with Payton, one of my fellow interns. I'm kinda like a camp counselor crossed with a P.E. teacher. Kinda. My real job is to be the kind of role model that these kids might not have had in their lives without Fortress.
So why Fortress? Why Texas? Why the inner city? Why kids?
Good question.
Going into my spring semester, I knew that I needed to find either a solid job or an internship for the summer. I waited most of the semester before I made any effort to nail down my summer plans. When April came around, I started to get a little more motivated. I decided that I wanted some sort of internship instead of a job doing random work like I had last summer. I briefly looked into some opportunities that I found through Vandy's Office of Active Citizenship and service (OACS in Vandy's language of acronyms). I found a lot of listings for internships in the administrative offices of various nonprofits around Nashville. They looked really boring. Boring enough that I never sent in any applications.
During this time, I saw on Facebook (this has been the year of social networks actually being useful) that my the organization where my cousin Daniel works was still looking for interns for their summer program. They had my attention. I knew that Daniel worked with kids at some kind of nonprofit; that was all I knew. I went to the website and did a little research. The job wasn't back in an office filing and faxing and filling out paperwork. For the summer, these interns would play a big, direct role in an awesome mission. Fortress had me, hook, line, and sinker. I called Daniel, and a few days later I sent in my application.
An internship should have something to do with a person's intended career. At least, I thought it should. My problem is that, at 19, I don't know what my intended carreer is. And I don't think I should have to know. Not to dog on Religious Studies, but I sometimes tell people (jokingly, mostly) that when I realized I didn't want to work in government, I changed my major to something that doesn't lead to a job. When people ask what I want to do after college, my answer is usually 1) I don't know (truer than they think), or 2) Move to a village in Africa and be happy about it (not as much of a joke as they think). So, summer camp in the Metroplex doesn't exactly seem to fit in perfectly with the master plan (I do have one, even though its vague and a little ridiculous), but I can make it make sense, to me at least. I'll say here what I said to my fellow interns when I was introducing myself to them:
I don't necessarily feel called to work with kids. I do feel called to work with people, and kids are people, too.
(Keep up with Fortress on Facebook, on Twitter @FortressYDC, and at http://www.fortressydc.blogspot.com/. Seriously, do it).
The program that brought me to Fortress is Summer JAM (Jesus and Me), a six-week summer program that runs during June and July. Summer JAM serves about 70 kids who are entering the 2nd through the 8th grades. I'm working with the Junior High age group (their group is called Air Force), and I'm also co-games master with Payton, one of my fellow interns. I'm kinda like a camp counselor crossed with a P.E. teacher. Kinda. My real job is to be the kind of role model that these kids might not have had in their lives without Fortress.
So why Fortress? Why Texas? Why the inner city? Why kids?
Good question.
Going into my spring semester, I knew that I needed to find either a solid job or an internship for the summer. I waited most of the semester before I made any effort to nail down my summer plans. When April came around, I started to get a little more motivated. I decided that I wanted some sort of internship instead of a job doing random work like I had last summer. I briefly looked into some opportunities that I found through Vandy's Office of Active Citizenship and service (OACS in Vandy's language of acronyms). I found a lot of listings for internships in the administrative offices of various nonprofits around Nashville. They looked really boring. Boring enough that I never sent in any applications.
During this time, I saw on Facebook (this has been the year of social networks actually being useful) that my the organization where my cousin Daniel works was still looking for interns for their summer program. They had my attention. I knew that Daniel worked with kids at some kind of nonprofit; that was all I knew. I went to the website and did a little research. The job wasn't back in an office filing and faxing and filling out paperwork. For the summer, these interns would play a big, direct role in an awesome mission. Fortress had me, hook, line, and sinker. I called Daniel, and a few days later I sent in my application.
An internship should have something to do with a person's intended career. At least, I thought it should. My problem is that, at 19, I don't know what my intended carreer is. And I don't think I should have to know. Not to dog on Religious Studies, but I sometimes tell people (jokingly, mostly) that when I realized I didn't want to work in government, I changed my major to something that doesn't lead to a job. When people ask what I want to do after college, my answer is usually 1) I don't know (truer than they think), or 2) Move to a village in Africa and be happy about it (not as much of a joke as they think). So, summer camp in the Metroplex doesn't exactly seem to fit in perfectly with the master plan (I do have one, even though its vague and a little ridiculous), but I can make it make sense, to me at least. I'll say here what I said to my fellow interns when I was introducing myself to them:
I don't necessarily feel called to work with kids. I do feel called to work with people, and kids are people, too.
(Keep up with Fortress on Facebook, on Twitter @FortressYDC, and at http://www.fortressydc.blogspot.com/. Seriously, do it).
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