This week was one of the most emotional for me. At internship I went to Sister Castel who is the head Nurse Practitioner of the clinic. She was very nice, helpful, and let me see and do a lot. On Tuesday night we had Marita’s class which was surprisingly tedious and annoying. Marita really wants everyone to come to a consensus about everything, which means we have to get all 29 of us to agree on every decision we make which has been harder than we could have imagined. Almost everyone has their own opinion, except for mostly me and a few other people, about what time we should have class or other trivial things. It just got me thinking about how ridiculous it is and how much more there is to worry about. Talking with Ainsley this week, she was saying how she loved her internship but the fact that we have to talk to people every day about their issues that are important and feel bad about them but then we come back to this beautiful house with a pool and a fully stocked fridge. I am very happy here, don’t get me wrong, but this is just exhausting. I feel 100 different emotions a day at internship, and then it is expected of us to still put this big smile on our face and act like college students at nights.
With that being said, being a college student here is more fun than being anywhere else in the world. Going out is fun, but having the freedom of doing whatever we want, and having the actual possibility to do whatever we want is amazing. On Friday we got to go to Marita’s friend Joseph’s high school and talk to some of his classmates about the importance of education. I really liked the class and the teacher but I feel like she expected us to know all of the answers to some really hard-hitting questions. She asked us about what the students should do if they had no books for homework, the library was across town and they had no internet at their house. This got me thinking about my activist project and how I have so many unused textbooks in my house that I've been meaning to sell but will never get around to. I really would like to have a book drive in my town and have my parents send my books down here, if we can afford it. They have a room that a library could be put in but no resources or money to fund it. I hope I can make this happen and use it for an activist project because I know they need a lot more than I do.
On Friday night, I was doing homework and reading some of the articles Marita assigned us to read and reflect on. The article that affected me the most was “School Shootings and White Denial” by Tim Wise which I highly recommend. The reason this affected me so much was because I live in Brookfield and the adjacent town over is Newtown where the school shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary occurred. My best friends/cousins live in Sandy Hook, I had been to that school a million times, and my cousin babysat two of the girls that got killed in the shooting. I have talked about this a couple times with other UConn students here but I never really understood that it happened until I got here because even some of the people in the townships knew what Sandy Hook Elementary School was. The article talks about racial profiling in school shootings and how you literally never expect it. Newtown is a town in the middle of nowhere and was voted one of the safest towns in the U.S. These situations are just so ridiculously preventable. I've said it multiple times but a greater emphasis on loving one another regardless of petty flaws or social awkwardness can prevent people from snapping. I also think the fame we so graciously give these psychopaths, added with a hard childhood only aggravate these situations. I just want to tell anyone who might be reading this back home that people are still praying and still hopeful for the future of our country. I've talked to countless people who start off by saying how sorry they are for the people of Connecticut and anyone affected by the shootings. I think that knowing people who don’t even know who you are or your story are praying for you half way across the world will help the healing process of our country.
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