If not me...

I haven't told very many people this, but I want to work in the inner-city with a high poverty school. I never mention it, and only tell people if the expressly ask. I'm certainly not ashamed, it just seems like one of those things that it doesn’t matter if they know or not. Part of my hesitation to tell people stems from a surprising number of people who are against it. They seem to be under the impression that absolutely no good can come from it and that only terrible things will happen. Honestly, I have no idea what will happen when I go, I understand that it will be difficult and that it may not go well but that’s not a reason to prevent me from going. At some point in their explanation people seem to think that they have changed my mind and that I will be more “sensible,” but I remain firm on my stand because no one has ever given me a good answer to the question, “if not me, then who?” I know that sounds like a bumper sticker but I really think that. I have visited these schools and I have seen the hurt and the despair and I really have no idea what I can do but I certainly know that I can’t go to a happy suburban school when there are schools with a greater need somewhere else.

            This is far from bravery and certainly isn’t naïveté, my desire stems from a discontentment that I have when I see these schools and students hurting without anything to look forward to. I also know that there is a self-sacrifice aspect to this, I know that I will be living around poverty (with a teacher’s salary, I won’t be far from it myself) and seeing things my sheltered, middle-class eyes have never seen. There is another cost that I rarely mention; in fact I make jokes about it more than anything. That is the fact that I can’t get married yet. The places I want to go are hard enough to live in when you have the desire and drive to be there. It would be unbearable for a person who just went to follow her husband. I was looking at a school once and was looking up apartment prices for the place I wanted to live and the first thing that popped up was an article about two murders that had happened there the Christmas before. It’s fine for me to live there but that is not a place I could take a wife and certainly not a place I could ask a father to allow me take his daughter to. That really stinks because I do want to be married I just can’t right now.

I know it’s going to be hard, but I’m at the point where I have to go and try because I can’t bare the thought of waking up twenty years from now and wondering if I could have done more.