Great (non)-Expectations

Hi all,


The end of third year and the beginning of my Vietnam adventure is drawing nigh. This week I'm in full exam mode and taking care of any last minute errands I need to do before I leave next Monday. Fortunately, there is not much left to do beyond just going.

Last week, I had one last meeting with my liaison for SMU before I left and we firmed up all of the stuff we needed to take care of before I went. During the meeting she asked me a question that I had been hearing throughout this entire 4 month build up to Vietnam. "What are your expectations from this experience?" I have had this question asked many times from friends, family, and colleagues leading up to the trip yet I was still unsure how to answer that question specifically. The truth is I don't believe there are any concrete or specific expectations I have from this trip. The only thing I can suggest is that I expect this internship to be a highly valuable experience for my own personal growth for better or for worse.

Since this is the first development internship I have ever been on, I think it's a good thing that I don't have many expectations towards the experience. I don't want to prematurely define what I want out of this opportunity when I most likely will not be fully aware of all the possibilities it may present me with until I get there (or even after I get back upon reflection). I may come out on the other end of this with an invigorated passion for some area of international development I previously had not considered. I may come back home in 3 months completely disheartened by the internship and completely turned off from my major (not likely though as I'm pretty turned on by all things IDS). Who knows and how can I make that judgment? One thing is for certain, however. Wherever this internship takes me in 3 months, it will help give me more clarity and direction in what I want to do in life and that is something that makes it well worth the 3 months away from home.

I am hopeful that this policy of letting the experience define me instead of vice-versa will allow me to gain more from it and I am basing it on personal experience.

In my last year of high school, I did a cooperative education placement in an elementary school and was assigned to a class as an assistant to the teacher. I was heavily considering teaching as a profession going into the placement but I was still quite unsure about what I wanted to do. By the end of the placement I was pretty turned off by teaching as a professional career path. This is not meant as a slight against any teachers or teaching as a profession. My placement was awesome and I really enjoyed the job and the people I got to work with/for. Some of my most important mentors growing up have been teachers (as they have been for most people I'm sure). I just realized that I wasn't enthused enough about the job to pursue a career in it. The job demanded a set of personal skills and traits of which I felt I neither had nor wanted. I may not have come to this conclusion had it not been for this placement and I am grateful for that now in reflection. I now have more clarity and direction as a result about what I want to do in life as a result of it.

That's what opportunities like this one are most valuable for I think.


Noah