We Wonder Where We Are

“Summer ends, and we wonder where we are/ And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in you car/…It’s just that time of year, when we push ourselves ahead, push ourselves ahead…”

Those lyrics, from Dar Williams’ song “The End of the Summer”, have been running through my head a lot lately. Not only is my summer winding down (I leave for my Yale Pre-Orientation trip a week from Sunday), but so is my gap year. It’s a poignant moment, although happily not completely unwelcome. I’m so excited to go to college! But I think that, while I still have time and head-space to do so, it’s important that I take a moment to look back, and reflect.

Starting with this summer. Since returning to the States, I haven’t been posting at all, partially because I wanted to take a break from reflection, but mostly just because I’ve been super busy! The camp I worked at, Chinatown Adventure, or CHAD, was a phenomenal and transformative experience. Living with the amazing team I was working with, dedicating most of my non-camp time waking hours to planning curriculum and activities and bonding with the other staff, getting to know eight rising 6th graders very well (their good and bad sides….), working with a great junior counselor to make the summer a success…. Frequent field trips, and a camping trip, and staff retreats, and an intense two-week training…Figuring out how best to communicate with parents through translation, trying to get my kids excited about learning and reading and the world…And then, on top of all that, trying to find time and energy to process my experiences from this year, prepare for college, and squeeze in some time to see friends and family. Needless to say, I’ve been pretty much consumed. But in the best way possible.

I can’t think of a better way to have finished out my gap year. How perfect (and not just in symmetry…) to get to close out a year begun studying Chinese at Harvard, and then living in China, with a program run by Harvard students, engaging with the Chinese immigrant community in Boston’s Chinatown. How perfect to end this year that began with so much learning, with teaching. And with learning, too, since I learned so much this summer, about myself and my kids and Chinatown, about how HARD teaching is, about how to truly let go of best-laid plans, about what service and social change looks like in practice, and how rewarding it is.

There are too many thousands of special moments from this summer for me to document them all. There are too many amazing people who have entered my life because of this experience for me to introduce you to them all thoroughly. The staff, 8 other college students and 8 high school students--six other SCs (Senior Counselors), the two directors, and the 8 JCs (Junior Counselors)--bonded incredibly well considering how short our time together was in the grand scheme. David and Sue, our incredible directors; Alex, Darry, Esther, John, Norman and Raymond, the amazing SC team; Cindy, my JC, and Amy, Bonnie, David, Helen, Lori, Philip, and Raymond, the other JCs –what a wonderful group, a close-knit family. And, of course, Adam, Andy, Jacky, Kathy, Raymond, Sammi, Silvia and Wesley, my campers. Part little kids, part pre-teens (such tweens…), alternatively delightful, adorable, obnoxious, brilliant, awkward, amazing, whiny, smiley, energetic, sleepy….what a group. ☺ CHADLove.

Up until June 14, when CHAD training began, my gap year had been almost entirely me-centered. Which was exactly how it should have been, I think; my year off was about me exploring new places and situations and ways of learning and growing, on my own. It was the ultimate “me-time.” And although those adventures brought some new friends into my life, none of the different parts of my year was really about working in a team, none was a “corporate” experience—until CHAD. By working at CHAD, I got to see, immediately and intensely, how I have changed this year, and how I have stayed the same. It was in so many ways incredibly validating to experience my growth this year reflected back at me in the relationships I formed and the impact I had. Furthermore, I think having such a transformative experience so close to home (I was living for most of the summer at Emerson College, a couple blocks from my house, and the pick-up and drop-off point for my camp everyday was about a block from my house) but not actually at home—being outside my comfort zone so much of the time while still in a part of the world that is the definition of my comfort zone, the part of the world, and Boston, that I know like the back of my hand—really threw into relief how much this experience was the inverse of all my travel experiences.

Working at CHAD was most comparable to my experience working as a waitress this winter; like my job at Highland Lodge, I was doing something I’d never done before in a highly familiar setting, and with people very different from me. My time in Vermont, however, was the “hermit stage” of my gap year, and my summer has been anything but hermit-like. This summer was my re-emergence—re-emergence into Boston, and also a return to my peer group, to the world where I’ll be living and studying and striving for the next four years.

So, what about my gap year in total? What do I have to say about that, in the final week of this 15-month saga? As usual, I have tons to say, but I will strive for pithiness. Strive, rather than succeed, being the key word, most likely.

Let’s begin with the sound-bites. I’ve thought a lot about ways to sum up my gap year (for conversational purposes…answering the question “How was your gap year?” = kind of the bane of my existence), and this is what I’ve come up with.

China was the most important part of my gap year. Vermont was the most perfect. Argentina was the most fun. And CHAD was the most intense.

Why was China the most important part? I use the word important because I think the experience of living in Shanghai is the one that will have the biggest impact on my future, and the education of living in modern China is something that will prove significant again and again, just by dint of my being a citizen of the US and the world in the 21st century. China is the most important, most relevant place on Earth right now, and will be for the rest of my lifetime, I am sure. In more concrete terms, because of my new-found interest in China, I will certainly be studying Chinese during college, and will hopefully have the opportunity to return to China to study and even work or intern.

Why was Vermont the most perfect part? Simply put, I got everything I could have wanted or expected from my time in the Northeast Kingdom. Living on my own, with just my bird and my thoughts, was incredibly powerful. Working as a waitress was a hard, interesting, fun, demanding, and maturing experience for me—just exactly what I wanted and needed at that point. Getting to spend time in a place I love so, so, so much, immersed in nature and silence, was what my soul needed. It’s so cliché, but that doesn’t make the experience less valuable. My time in Vermont is the part of my gap year that I miss the most, that I was least ready to leave. Luckily, it’s also the most easily repeatable part of my gap year.

Why was Argentina the most fun part? Even with the bed bugs, Abby? Seriously? Yes, I’m for serious. What is not fun about getting to live in an amazing, complicated, fun, interesting city, without any limitations except your limited budget and your rather unlimited interests and energy? Not that my two months in Buenos Aires were all fun and games; after all, I definitely had some challenges to deal with, and dealing with those challenges definitely made me more mature and independent.

Why was CHAD the most intense part? Because there is nothing that is not intense about being in your home environment, on your home turf, and yet feel completely out of your comfort zone, feel challenged and stretched in a place where you’re used to feeling the opposite. Returning to Boston and the US and jumping into an experience that made me dig deep into Boston, into current US culture and issues, into my home neighborhood, and brought me into close contact and relationship with people my own age, was SO intense after the previous nine months away from all those things. Being challenged on a daily (hourly?) basis, having to think on my feet and always be on top of my game was so intense—and just as rewarding.

So, lastly, what would I do differently? What are my take-aways?

The first question is a lot harder than the second question. I don’t think I would do a lot differently; I ended up really appreciating the way I organized my year, and I loved the variety of places and experiences. My only regret is that I wish I had more time! But on the other hand, I am so ready to go back to school. Maybe I wouldn’t have done CIEE (soo expensive, so sheltered, but at the same time….I think I needed that structure…or did I? Will I ever really know? No.), maybe I would have done something more intense in Buenos Aires (and lose all that café reading and long walks time? Never!), maybe I would have found a way to see my family more this year (a real regret…but probably just one of those realities of post-high school life that can’t really be changed). The hardest part about facing the end of the summer and going off to college is thinking about how little I’ve seen my family and friends, and now I’m jumping into four years that I’m sure will have very few lulls or resting points…

My take-aways are so many. I think my major take-aways will come out sounding like fortune cookies, but here’s a shot:

- Question yourself, keep your ego in check, remain grounded in reality, but never think that something will be too hard just because it’s foreign, new, or different.
- People are always more similar to you, and also infinitely more different from you, than you assume at first.
- Don’t be afraid to spend money on yourself—but if you’re twice as ready and excited to save money, it’s that much better.
- You can be a great teacher for yourself. But you need other people to truly expand your horizons.
- Introspection is never a waste of time or effort.
- God is always speaking, even in the most unlikely situations. And sometimes the most unlikely situations are the best places to listen and hear God.
- You don’t have to go to China—heck, you don’t have to leave a one-block radius of your childhood home—in order to be transformed. Whole new worlds could be waiting to be explored, right in your backyard. For serious.
- Self-confidence becomes deeper and more meaningful when it’s built on a platform of intelligence AND competence, rather than just one or the other. That may only make sense to me, but I gets it. Sorry bout it.
- The line between when you stop being a teenager and become a young adult is anything but obvious. And that transition is really hard. And it’s a process. Taking a gap year has made me a better young adult—and has also let me acknowledge the ways in which I am still very much a teenager.

Thinking back to my Dar Williams lyrics, I think I can say this: Before taking my gap year, I was pushing myself ahead. Now, after taking a pause and a breath, I’m striding ahead. I’m nervous about going off to college, but it’s a type of nervous I am well-acquainted with at this point: the nervousness of going to a new place, where you don’t know the people or the expectations or the culture, but you’re excited, because you know some things are going to go well, and some things are going to be hard. And then the plane takes off, and you’re watching the clouds pass by, and your heart is pounding a little bit, and you can feel the airplane seat digging into your back a little bit and you’re leaning back against the head rest, you’re bracing yourself, and then suddenly you know, you absolutely KNOW, that it’s going to be OK. And no matter what, it’s going to be interesting.

“It’s the end of the summer/ When you move to another place…”

That’s all I’ve got, and that’s the end of this blog, and the end of an incredible journey. Thank you for reading.
Peace and love,
Abby