The littlest birds...

Today was my last day in the office with SLC-IT.  I wish I could say I was sad but, unfortunately, today couldn’t have come soon enough!  I am at the ending stages of my final report for them, now at 54 pages and still a few more to go!  I’ve been dragging my feet at finishing – very unlike me, I’ve never been much of a procrastinator but it seems India has made one out of me.  I will finish the report up and then wash my hands of it all!  And I am particularly excited because my brother and Ryan are currently en route to Leh and arrive tomorrow morning to start two weeks of pure adventure... finally the holiday I have needed!

I suppose its natural, when experiences are ending, to reflect back on what I’ve learned here and what I will take away with me when I go back.  It’s been no secret that this internship has gone much differently than hoped.  If there is anything that has been further enforced in me, it’s adaptability.  Luckily, I began as a pretty malleable person but this project and internship has further shown me the concept of ‘making plans and having them go your way’ is not based in reality - despite efforts for it to be.  To say the least, it has been a self-made summer.  Maybe I came with unrealistic expectations of being taken under the wing by SLC-IT and that this project would be a collaborative effort.  I wasn’t and it hasn’t.  There have been moments where I have felt a victim of circumstance.  I know people who live their lives as victims, and it’s very unattractive and exhausting to be around.  I refuse the victim mentality!

I told a friend once that I believed life could be boiled down to definitions.  The question ‘what am I defined by?’ haunts me.  At times, I have felt insignificant and a failure.  But I have been defining significance and success by my relations with this organization and with the outcome of a project (and, lets just be honest, who is really going to ever read my 60-something page report, so what does it matter anyway!).  It’s not a circumstance problem or an organization problem; it’s a definition problem.  And it’s mine to fix.

So, I reject society’s definition of success and significance.  Time to re-define.  I expect that this will be difficult upon my return to the competitive culture that revolves around Duke.  But it’s no measure of health to be well adjusted in a profoundly sick society anyways…