real people

Be prepared for something so confusing but personal.  And a ton of sentences that start with “and.” And no gramatical correctness at all.

Today I was talking to a student about his freshman year.  Honestly, I was being kind of typical about it. Asking the classic questions.

We talked about it and he gave some really insightful answers.
He realized –

That’s the best part of my job.
And it made me start to think.

Remember when I started this job?  I went to a week of training and then they threw to the crowd. And  all I had were a bunch of pictures of students with faces. I tried to memorize them all ahead of time but I couldn’t do it.

And then we had New Student Orientation.
And I thought – oh my goodness these names have faces.  They’re real people. Here we go.

And then I sit down to talk with them and I totally fall in love.

Because they’re all trying so hard and have such huge aspirations to get perfect  GPAs.

And as the semester progresses they’re freaking out because that test was a lot harder than high school and that 8 page paper seems so daunting.

And then we meet at the end and we say – you did it. We did it.

I’ve learned a little bit about love.
Because I can reach out and people can reject me.  I have so much to offer them but only they can take it.

And at first it hurts, because, hey, you don’t realize how much of my time I spend thinking about you and ways to help you.

So I’ve learned a little bit about love.  A lot about myself.  And a lot more than I’m saying here.  But if anything, I’ve learned that
relationships with people make life rewarding. (At least for me.)

so this is my best friend Kamree and even though I don’t like this pic of me we are mentors together we are in the Hub she has taught me so much about relationships about loving everyone and about seeing the best in people

We’re not just dealing with names on a page, or faces in a crowd.
We’re interacting with real people.

And that my friends, makes life beautiful.