Expectations vs. Reality

            One of my goals for this year was to be more involved, one of the ways I wanted to do that was by participating in CCSJ. When I found out that part of my class work for English would include either an Event on campus or weekly Service learning, I knew right away that I wanted to do the Service learning option. Unfortunately, my preferred option, Soccer Without Boarders didn’t fit with my schedule. So I decided to sign up to  volunteer at Tunbridge Public Charter School, which was always a close second choice.

            Since the Tunbridge program has not started yet, I have no experience volunteering, and only have expectations and hopes. I hope to have fun, to help the kids in school, to make some sort of positive impact on the kid’s lives.  I expect some kids to not like me (no matter how hard I try some kids just don’t like me!) and I expect to be humbled in some way.

            Having these expectations and hopes especially reminds me of Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall”. This poem describes neighbors who are obviously very curious about each other, yet one feels like he is not allowed to make a new friend because his apple trees cannot mix with the pine trees on the other side. It sounds ridiculous, because how could apple trees be harmed by pine trees? Or vice versa?  Yet, we see a similar parallel in Baltimore with the neighborhoods. There are the beautiful million dollar houses clustered on two or three streets and one turn later you are on a place like York road that is impoverished. We are all neighbors, humans, living in the same space, but the city is divided by theses invisible walls and pockets that separate socio-economic classes.

            Now is where you could tie in Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach “The Service of Faith and Promotion of Justice in Jesuit Higher Education”. He spoke about the Jesuit mission and how its statement carried a certain connotation. Almost the same way that “York Road” has its own connotation, and “Loyola” has its own connotation. Every place or institution that has connotations must work to make sure who they really are and what their real messages is gets across.

            The Jesuits endorse “promotion of justice”, and to apply that to the Baltimore area, that could be someone like me, a Loyola student, volunteering to help who go to school on York Road to learn and understand the importance of a good education.

            Finally, you can connect Jill McDonough’s poem “Accident, Mass. Ave.” with the expectations versus reality of teaching kids in Baltimore. One might approach this opportunity and feel scared or sketched out having to go to York Road, so they show up with a certain expectation or even attitude, but I bet as time goes on and they start to help and get to know the same kids, they would understand they are just kids and learn the same way and tell the same jokes, and have the same the same problems with friends as any other kids. Just like McDonough realized the lady she got in a car accident with was just a scared human being, like herself, despite her tough Boston attitude and mannerisms.

            I guess this all boils down to the fact that we have expectations for just about anything in life, even if the expectation is simply “none” but most of the time when you do something outside of your usual routine, despite expectations, you will be surprised by what the world and other people have to offer. How you can find similarities in two seemingly different places, and how different things you thought were the same, actually are. So, everything may not be as it seems.