It’s like a weird confession of sorts but my last semester of college, I finally learned how to swim. My best attempt at swimming was floating on my back or wading around in the shallow end of the pool. I was always afraid to jump into the deep end of the pool because I thought [...]
Read moreMy time in Los Angeles thus far has been nothing short of spectacular personal growth. I am loving my my work site at eCALS high school and my living arrangements in Hollywood with my three housemates. I suppose I am so content because I didn’t have have any extravagant expectations of how my life would [...]
Read moreI was recently told that around mid-October national service corps members should start feeling the end of the honeymoon phase. We should start to realize that the work we are being asked to do is too huge, that we are actually not making as much of a difference as we originally thought we could. We [...]
Read moreWOW! We have been here for a little over a month and I swear that it feel s like so much less time and so much more time than it has been. This is a very confusing feeling, but I appreciate it. To be able to say we are only a month into a 12 [...]
Read moreEarly on in my college career I had a plan for exactly what I wanted to do with my life, and strict requirements and goals that would have to be met in order to succeed. While I quickly learned that I was not happy while working towards my pre-veterinary major, I felt as if I [...]
Read more“Be Here Now” This has been the Hollywood House mantra for this year. It first became a part of our community’s vocabulary close to the beginning of our year together. It was mid-September and we were all gathered in the Lucy/Anna room, sitting in a circle on a sheet on the floor. It was one [...]
Read moreI just experienced a mass layoff at my job. Had I not been working for free already, I would have been on the streets clutching an outdated resume with the rest of the childcare providers at my worksite. Instead I’m left behind in the empty shell of a daycare, moving furniture around and watching, waiting, [...]
Read moreWhen I think of my ideal community I think of the Muppets. In their movies (and I’m pretty sure in real life) they live together in big old houses or buses or hotels (in Muppet Caper, the Happiness Hotel) and make a giant ramshackle family out of a bunch of weirdos. They are imperfect and [...]
Read moreI believe that diversity is an integral part of God’s plan for us. Think about it, every time we think we’ve gotten everyone integrated, that we’re all one big happy family there enters another category or group of people who are feared for being different. For my parents’ generation who thought they had opened their [...]
Read moreIt took Dorothy but a moment to realize she wasn’t in Kansas anymore. I realized before I had even left New Hampshire. I clearly remember that cold April day last spring, when the realization struck. I was sitting on the bus riding from Dover to Durham, just 8 miles up the road. I greeted the [...]
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