Hello world!

So, this is the first time I’ve blogged in awhile. I hope to be able to keep this up because I’m going to be having some exciting changes in my life soon and I want to keep a record of things that are going on. The most exciting thing is that I’m about to begin my first job. I’ve just graduated college and I’m going to be working as an Americorps Vista member beginning July 28th for a great program at Millersville University. My role as a corps member will be to coordinate community service and civic engagement at the school and to work with local Lancaster non-profits to partner with students there. I think that this is something that I’ll really enjoy, but I don’t much know what to expect with Americorps. This is all uncharted territory for me. All I really know right now is that my pre-service orientation is July 28th. I am lucky in that one of my best friends has also been accepted as a VISTA at a university in PA, so we’ll be at orientation together, but I’m also really excited to see what the other VISTAs are like and I’m also interested to learn more about this program and what it’s all really about.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how quickly things can change. It seems just yesterday that I was graduating high school and obsessing over college. Now I’ve just graduated from IUP and my life is waiting to begin, but where do I go from here? I’m so lucky that I found Americorps because the rejection letters from the dozens of other jobs i applied to are still rolling in. I’m getting rejections from places I don’t even remember applying to! It just seems so depressing that a bachelor’s degree (or 2!) don’t even really mean that much in the working world anymore. Every single job I’m interested in wants candidates with experience. Experience with grant writing, experience with volunteer coordination, experience with fundraising, and even though I was extremely active in college, you just can’t get that kind of experience out of a college setting. I wish more than anything that I would have done more academically in college. More internships, more all nighters, more study groups. One thing I definately don’t regret is my choice not to go to grad school right away. yeesh, that would have been terrible. I need a couple of years to really get my shit togehter. Really figure out what it is I want to do for the rest of my life. Right now I have no clue.

If things can change this quickly and they were expected, I can only imagine what it would be like for something unexpected to completely turn your life around. My best friend’s fiancee was recently diagnosed with a serious form of cancer. Three days later he was undergoing extensive surgery, their wedding plans, med school plans, their lives together, all put on hold seemingly overnight. Good people can have their lives ruined overnight, medical bills can pile up, credit card bills add up spiraling us into debt, how can someone be expected to bounce back from something like that? Do these unforseen obstacles really make us stronger? Or are we just treading water with no land in sight…

loveaudrey