Week 10: Well Here We Are

The first thing that I noticed when reading the letter that I wrote to myself was that I used to write so much for these blog posts, but who actually wants to read that much. Most of what I said was descriptive and had a charismatic tone which was nice but it was unnecessarily long which deterred me. Nevertheless, I got a lot from the letter, the most important being how much more that I’ve done with DFA than I expected. For the first few days I was just expecting data input for the whole summer which was troublesome but soon I got to things that actually made an impact on the organization like fixing the surveys that are used every program term. I also ended up doing things that were very unexpected like leading a self-reflection portion of the summer program. Along with my initial project of interviewing all of the students, I got to learn some skills and try new foods. Just today I plated a piece of cake that turned out to look really nice.

I enjoy DFA much more now that I know I didn’t have to just input data this summer and actually got to help with the students in such a hands-on manner. DFA has made me try new things in terms of food and also in terms of socializing. I say socializing because DFA had made me take on the role of the adult in a situation filled with students my age or a few years younger. This has allowed me to become more professional and allowed me to learn skills like putting together interviews and lesson plans which are things that could be incredibly useful in the future.

My expectations of DFA were exceeded greatly from my first blog post. I never thought of how attached to the students I would get. I never thought that getting a random shout-out at the end of the day would make my day so much better, or that I would end up eating foods that I thought that I hated. I never thought that I would enjoy a teaching situation like this. I never knew how much I liked this feeling of being able to help and influence someone’s day by creating an activity. I never knew that I would get to see so many people’s eyes light up as they talked about how DFA has become a large part of their life. And I am so happy that I had this opportunity to be a part of such an amazing organization.