Dan reflects on what he's learned

Prior to leaving Cape Town reach co-educator wrote a paper in response to the following questions: How do you expect the experiences and knowledge gained this semester to influence your future career and life choices?; What have your learned about race and gender that you believe is important for you to know as you strive to become a more well informed global citizen?; What have you learned about yourself that you believe is important for you to know?  

Dan has agreed to post his answers as his final entry on this blog.

Coming to Cape Town was one of the hardest things in my life to do. I have a feeling leaving from here will be just as hard. It took me a long time to settle into life here. For the first time in a long time I had an identity crisis, where I could not figure out where I fit into the group dynamic, or rather I could not figure out where I wanted to fit in. I struggled with this tremendously; I was not happy and more than once questioned my decision to come here. After all, I am so well grounded at UConn with a huge network of friends and acquaintances, plus a new girlfriend, it seemed silly to give up my last semester of that. Three and a half months later I could not be happier with my decision. South Africa is an amazing country that has opened my eyes to life I knew existed but had stayed away from. In Guatemala I was exposed first hand to what living in a developing community was like through a homestay program, but I feel Cape Town provided me a much greater appreciation to the affects of poverty and oppression on a specific segment of society. This appreciation came from hanging out with Bongi in Khayelitsha, from teaching at a school filled with “at-risk” students, from talking to locals that I met in my travels, and from the countless conversations I have had with John. These experiences have helped me become a more understanding and compassionate person towards my fellow human beings.

All of these experiences have ensured in me what I want to do with my life: something in the field of youth development. Okay, so maybe it is not that defined, but it is more defined than before my trip, and I will continue to use the experiences that are allowed to me based off of my time here to specify that desire. I have always known I wanted to “help” people, working with them, for them, but I was having a hard time narrowing that down. Being placed in what turned out to be a perfect internship allowed me the opportunity to test out teaching to see if it was something I wanted to do. Coming away from my time at City Mission Educational Services I have a definite direction of where I want my life to go from here.

Further, living in a house with sixteen other people has taught me a lot about myself in a way my internship and extracurricular activities could not. Aside from the afore mentioned struggle to fit in, I had to also constantly work on my relationships with so many different people at once. I have realized that I don’t function well when I’m frustrated, which again is something I had an idea about and now am sure about. This is something I really want to work on, as I will be frustrated at various points for the rest of my life and need to be able to manage it.

I would like to think I had a pretty good grasp on a variety of different social issues before coming on this trip. I have many very socially minded activist friends and have taken sociology classes such as White Racism and the Sociological Perspective on Poverty that have all opened my eyes to a variety of societal issues. Therefore, I did not have a profound life-altering realization of all the awful things that go on in this world like some of my fellow co-educators might have had. Instead, I learned from a more personal perspective what life is like as an oppressed person and what the effects of that oppression can be. I have learned to question things because more often than not it is not what it seems on the surface. This, however, comes into play on both sides, as I do not agree with all pieces of activism. This newfound perspective came as much from classroom lessons as it did from my internship and “activist projects,” as those were the places that I was most in tune with the life and happenings of others. These encounters were further developed through the various assigned class readings. What sticks out most in my mind of all of this is our recent lessons on what a “day in the life” of an oppressed person is like. That is something I have often times wondered about, so that lesson was incredibly eye opening.

 In regards to gender, the simple fact that I lived in a house with 14 women taught me a ton about what life is like in a male dominated society. People like Nellie and Theresa always kept me on my toes with what I was saying and how I was acting, again something I had been conscious of but what really driven home here. From class, the article and ensuing discussions we covered on sexist language (and for that matter racist language) was most meaningful to me. It took me a little while, and once again I’m not completely on board with everything, but I have a changed perspective on how such innocent and seemingly harmless words like “policeman” can actually completely change a person’s thinking.  I have started to monitor my language and catch/alter it whenever I slip up.