SEAD III Reunion

As I mentioned in a previous post, I headed up to Dartmouth this weekend. It was freezing! It was cold and windy. I went up on Thursday morning and left Sunday afternoon. All the students I worked with over the summer were there and even some of the people I worked with on the staff. I was overjoyed to see everyone again. The program is called SEAD, Summer Enrichment at Dartmouth.

Thursday: Failed blood giving attempt. That night, I went to the opening dinner. I got there a few minutes early. The bus from Boston was a bit late in getting to Hanover with the students. Once everyone got there, it was great. I was pretty anxious while waiting there for them. I was wondering if we would still have the same dynamics or how much they had grown and changed. I got a chance to catch up with a lot of the students. One of them in particular, one of the ones I am closest with, showed me her engagement ring. Yeah, she's engaged. I was the first person from her extended SEAD family to hear the news a while back, but that still didn't prepare me for the shock of actually seeing a ring on her finger. She's so young. While I wish the best of luck to her and fiance, I obviously have my concerns. We've talked about said concerns, and I am confident in her decision making. After all, there are many people who marry young and have great relationships. One example is one of my English teachers in high school; he married his high school sweetheart and is still happily married. I know she has a good head on her shoulders. This weekend, I've heard stories of students from previous SEAD groups that got pregnant and skipped out on college. This thought is incredibly discouraging, but I'd like to think that the program has gotten more comprehensive since its start in 2001. Hopefully, this means the program has instilled the necessary mindset and skill set for them to think about college more than before. Each of the 27 students is applying to college, which is a great start for them and their futures. Seeing those kids was the highlight of an otherwise not worth mentioning last couple of months.

Friday: The students went to Hanover High School in the morning for some classes. I was very tired from not sleeping much Wednesday night in combination with driving, so I met up with them after lunch. They had workshops with Jay Davis, the program director. He also runs the secondary school training for Dartmouth's Education department and is the father of Katie and Andrew. That last part is a SEAD joke, so don't worry about it if you don't understand. The workshops were about Obama and professionalism. During Study Hall, I basically went around chatting up the kids which I wasn't really supposed to do. They had homework to do and other tasks they needed to have done before the weekend was over. I don't think I was too distracting; I even helped a few with their homework. The ones that had less work and I would just talk amongst ourselves just like I did in my study halls back in the day. I actually managed to get a lot done. I finished a Thursday and a Friday Sudoku and, with the help of a few staff members, also completed the Thursday and Friday crossword puzzle. After dinner, a few of the kids went to see the Women's Hockey team play Cornell. The rest of us went to hang out at C and G, an off-campus senior society house. Some of them watched a movie while the rest of us just relaxed and enjoyed each other's company. I tried teaching a couple of people how to solve a Rubik's cube. I didn't force them to learn either, they were genuinely interested and asked me to. I think it's difficult to explain every little step. You just have to learn the method and find your own way of getting there. Several people made fun of my cube because it has been fairly worn in. After hanging out, the students had to leave and go back to their host family's houses. I stayed in East Wheelock with a '10 friend. She was nice enough to let me crash on her futon. She had an Organic Chemistry midterm that night and a paper to write for Saturday by noon. When I got back to her room, she had already had a lot of the paper done. We ended up hacking with a hacky sack for quite a while. I haven't done that in so long. My buddies and I used to play all the time in high school. We once got yelled at by a mall security guard for playing outside the movie theater, waiting for our rides. He said "no Koosh ball playing!" I'm pretty sure we snickered and giggled as he walked away. I really miss hacking and found that my flexibility is nowhere near where it used to be and I wasn't even a flexible adolescent.

Saturday: I got up at 10:30 to get lunch before meeting them at another Study Hall. They were in two different rooms: one room had computers for them to work on a survey to reflect on their experience with SEAD and the other room was for finishing up any homework and writing letters to the SEAD group that will be in their second year of the program this coming summer. Some students even worked on college application stuff such as their essay, common application, and short answer sections. It was nice since there were staff members there to help those in need. I walked around a lot between the two rooms, helping with whatever I could. Towards the end, I got to sit down with a few of the people I worked with last summer and even the summer before that. It was nice to catch up with them and talk about what everyone was up to and fond memories we had of each other. I'm not doing anything so that part was quick for me, but I have too many fond memories to write out. One fond memory I think about often is line dancing in the Lodge on Mt. Moosilauke. I'm say it right now, I DO NOT like to dance. It takes someone or a group of people I really care about for me to dance. I've just never liked it, but I have enjoyed it in the past in certain situations when I'm surrounded by those I feel comfortable with. I feel safe making a fool of myself in front of them. I actually even volunteer to make a fool of myself for their entertainment because I know that my insecurities and doubts about myself are safe with them. That is such a rare and wonderful feeling to experience. There are things I don't tell anyone, not my family, not my classmates, not even some of my closest friends that I have offered to these kids. And it's not that I don't trust my friends and family. I trust and love them entirely. There's just something about the unique circumstances of this program that allowed me to be exactly the person I wanted to be, someone that could share fears, doubts, and insecurities. A lot of people have at least one person they could go to for anything, but I always looked inward rather than seek someone out. In the past couple of years, I think that I've made great strides towards opening up. I usually joke and laugh away any feelings that weren't happy. Just writing about it is liberating. I know I still have a long way to go, but I'm seeing progress which fuels the process. I want to thank SEAD, but especially this group of students for allowing me to be myself and making me feel comfortable. Their incredible ability to open up and talk about themselves and how they feel inside made me ashamed of myself for being so scared. How are they supposed to look up to someone that can't be himself or tell how he feels? I feel selfish and guilty sometimes when I think about how much they taught me and how little I actually taught them in return. Sorry, back to the rest of Saturday. We had a scavenger hunt outside in the cold. They split up into their 5 schools and each group got a camera to take pictures of the destinations. The clues all hinted at various locations on campus. I went with the Claremont group and was delighted and surprised by how well they knew the campus after only about 8 weeks on campus, stretched over 3 years. I missed the next activity (I think it was an arts and craft activity having to do with their SEAD memories) because I went to help cook dinner. I applied a very uniform half peel (alternating strips) to the cucumbers, chopped and steamed broccoli, and helped with the cookies and the baked pasta. Then we all hung out. I played some Rock Band, Cranium, Twister, Connect Four, and Boggle. I also had peach cobbler for the first time; it was as delicious as expected. Then the kids got picked up by the host families. I went to Lone Pine Tavern with two people I worked with and listened to some live music and asked each other Trivial Pursuit questions. Then I went to bed because I had to get up at 6am the next day.

Sunday: I was so scared that I wouldn't wake up to my alarm this morning. But I guess that I've always gotten up to an alarm whenever I really needed to. I went to good old EBA's. There was a breakfast buffet set up and we had the whole back room of the restaurant to ourselves. Everything was pretty tasty, but I didn't have much of an appetite. I realized that I was much quieter than usual after two students sitting across from me called me out on it. Before breakfast even started, the California kids had to leave to catch a flight home. They have the longest to travel and are always the first to leave and are the hardest for me to visit, being the furthest away. Dorchester and Spartanburg left together. Claremont took a van back, only 30 minutes away. I got to spend an extra couple of hours with the Bronx kids, which was nice. The first time I cried in a long time was two summers ago at their graduation dinner from SEAD II (their second of three summers in the program) and also hugging them goodbye when they got on their buses and vans. I still have trouble recalling exactly what it was that set off my long dormant tear ducts. For as long as I could remember, I've always thought of crying as a sign of weakness. I didn't think of myself as a hard dude or anything (well, maybe a little bit), but I would certainly say I was stoic in these types of situations. I would maybe sometimes feel sad that I was moving to a new school and never seeing old friends again or sad to graduate high school, but I never let my feelings show through me. I'm good at lying, very good. I can usually hide how I'm feeling. It's not a very good skill or character trait to have, but I have it and I can't help it. As I was saying these goodbyes, I almost didn't know what to say. Of course, I found some words of advice about working hard or continuing to work hard. I told them to stay in touch and keep me updated on college stuff. And when I say these things, I do mean it. However, I say it with the experience and expectation of only hearing from some of them. It's not their fault. They're high school seniors (teenagers) and have better and more important things to do than to update me every time they get a college letter in the mail or a report card. But for the few that I've gotten to know the best and have developed close relationships with, I do love to hear from them and do on a semi regular basis. Not having a job, I welcome any sort of communication from anyone. You could even copy and paste something interesting to read onto an email and send it to me. I would be thrilled to have gotten an email and then also happy to have something interesting to read. Anyway, the goodbyes this time didn't make me tear up; I wasn't even that sad. I wondered to myself: Am I just reverted to the same exact emotion-hiding person I was a few years ago? I think part of it is that the kids left in waves so the totality and impact of their departure escaped me for the time being. I got to hang out with the Bronx kids until almost 10:30, and it still failed to hit me then, although I did notice my stomach was in knots. I packed my stuff up, thanked my host and took off. I can't stand to stay on the Dartmouth campus after anything SEAD related, I associate SEAD too much with Dartmouth. SEAD was the best thing I did at Dartmouth. It was in the car, 20 minutes outside Hanover, that it finally hit me. On Thursday, Jay mentioned that this was the last time the kids would all be together at Dartmouth and that came rushing back to me suddenly. Not to be a pessimist, but I realized that I would never again see many if not the majority of these kids that have become such a big part of my life in such a short time. I might never hear Brandon tell me to stay black again or learn Cambodian words from Savy. I might never share a fruit by the foot with Ashley (we shared two over the weekend) anymore or be called Kitten by Ishaya. I really wish I could say that I will see them all again, but I think that would be setting myself up for some serious heartbreak. I don't really know what else to say, I've said a lot. I just want to wish these amazingly wonderful kids the best of luck in their future pursuits. At breakfast, Jay read from their surveys where they put down where they thought they might be in 10 years. Some answers were funny, some exactly as I expected, but mostly, they were incredibly selfless and socially responsible. They don't want to simply better their own lives but also the lives of others in their communities and the world around them. I'm really sad that they're gone, but I think they're going to do wonderful things and I'm very proud to have known them and been their friend.