Me hanging with a baby in between interviews in Mahabar, Rajasthan, India.
Me on my vacation to visit my brother at the Gateway to India in Mumbai, my favorite tourist spot.
As this fellowship is closing, it brings me back to the beginning, when I first heard about it. I thought that this was the greatest hidden gem Santa Clara University had to offer, and I couldn’t believe that more people didn’t know about it. I pulled all of my energy into figuring out how I could do it, how I could become part of this community trying to change the world. I made my excitement clear to everyone around me, I couldn’t stop talking about it throughout the entire application process and even now through the end stages of deliverable writing. Even though my specific project didn’t completely light my soul on fire, the community and mission of the Miller Center do, and continues to
Me, freshman year, at my first maternity ward in a slum in Mumbai, India.
And thinking back to my field experience, thinking about what lit my heart on fire, some things clearly come to mind. I loved the small moments of being in community, the meals in women’s homes, the openness of mothers with and about their babies, the conversations with others who had similar passions. The real human connections are the social engagement that feed the fire in my soul, especially when they involve women and children. I can connect with them over the simple things, and they make me happy. They are what I keep talking about, and they are the pictures I show when I tell my friends and family about what I’m excited about from my trips to India
How does this kind of social engagement fit into the greater world of social change though? Talking to people and bonding over simple meals is great, but what does it do to change the lives of others?
I feel like a lot of the time, social change is either far too clinical, i.e. dropping off food at a person’s door, or faceless, nameless policy change that hopes to make a positive change, or not nearly clinical enough, i.e. mission trips that aim to meet as many people as possible and build a school, never to return to the region again. Both are necessary, and both need to come together. The big picture needs to meet the small picture, the policy needs to meet the people, the ideas need to meet the practical implications necessary to follow through and make a positive impact.
My favorite photo from this summer, with a 15 day old baby named Prince in Barmer, Rajasthan, India.
I feel like I sit at that intersection. Through my time sitting in classes at Santa Clara, I have learned about policy and procedure, models and movements, development across the world and in my own neighborhood. Through my experiences in the field, through immersions, and multiple fellowships on campus, I have learned about and from the people who are affected by policy, start the movements, and are pushing for development in every way in their own backyard. This social engagement of having the privilege of a college education in the United States, in addition to the privilege of being able to travel and learn from different communities has sat me right where social entrepreneurship has the potential to
create even more impact than it already does. To bring together the dreamers and the doers, and get stuff done.
At the Amber Fort in Jaipur India my freshman year, again with a baby randomly placed in my care.
As I look forward to my next year, I see this same pull affect my decisions. Half of me wants to go travel Europe and go straight to graduate school and move directly into my field of choice, working directly with women and newborns around the word. The other half of me wants to pay off my student loans as quickly and responsibly as possible, even if that means working in a job I don’t like, or am not crazy about, until that happens. It is possible to match my dreams with my realities, and I need to figure out how
to do so. But looking back over this fellowship, and my college career as a whole, I know I need to follow what makes my heart swell.
My second trip to the Taj Mahal over the year, a fabulous way to start out my third summer.
I can’t be 100% practical, and I can’t be 100% impractical, and as I look into my vocation and my future, my goal will have to be figuring out how to match the dreamer in my heart with the doer in my brain. I always assumed that when people said “if you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life” were trying to make the best out of their
situations, but now I truly believe it. Seeing great examples of people loving what they’re doing and making changes in the world makes me believe that we can have it all. We can change the world, not be crippled by debt for our entire lives, and love what we do. Its simply a matter of following what feeds your fire.