Suggested Blog: What is the impact that this experience has had on your life?

When I was in Peace Corps training in Namibia, we were visited once by a group of veteran volunteers who were about to conclude their service. One of the volunteers wore dreadlocks and tattoos, talked about how she was deciding whether or not to marry her village chief (who already had four wives!), etc. When one of my fellow trainees asked how the experience had changed them, all the other volunteers gave reasonable responses you don't necessarily tell funny stories about. This one girl, the one who was contemplating a polygamous marriage into a Himba village, where the women go bare-breasted, paint their skin with red ochre, and plait their hair with mud, she claimed quite adamantly the experience had not changed her at all! It was pretty funny.

Well, at the risk of sounding like that crazy Peace Corps girl, I feel like I am pretty much the same. (If anything, I probably looked even more like a "deranged hitchhiker" last summer!) My goals and plans have not really changed: I plan to continue teaching. I want to move to New York City when I finish MTC. And after a few more years teaching high school, I plan to apply for Ph.D. programs in mathematics, with the ultimate goal of teaching collegiately (or perhaps in a math and science academy). If anything, my plans have solidified.

Mostly, I feel one year older, and nothing really big has happened. I simply plodded forward on the course for which I first set out, to obtain my teaching certification and a free master's degree. Some students have benefited from my being here, and some have not. I am probably a better teacher than I was 12 months ago, but the difference does not seem as dramatic as I wish.

Mind you, I taught before in Peace Corps, so my experience is not necessarily typical. I have noticed in my classmates a rapid growing-up over the past 12 months. The glow of youthful optimism is dimmed slightly as one realizes one's own small insignificance against the big, hard world. You cannot solve every problem, and you cannot be and do everything you once dreamed. Many of your students will most likely fail, no matter what you do. But there is also a resilience that comes from sticking it out. Your ideals become tempered by the experience of reality, and in the end, you are stronger for it.

The biggest impact of Mississippi on me, personally, has been cultural and environmental. I once told someone, "You have to forgive Mississippi before you can love it." In all honesty, I have not been as open-minded toward Mississippi as I probably should. One of my goals for next year is, with guidebook in hand, to seek out more cultural, historical, and natural highlights of the state. Doing so will most likely mitigate one of my least favorite things about being here: I feel like my town and the state has so little to offer me socially, recreationally, and culturally.

I think it is one thing to know that a place like the Deep South, and especially the Mississippi Delta exists, but it is quite a bit something more to live and experience it. For instance, one of the hallmarks of the developing world is that things in general do not work like they should. The Mississippi Delta shares this characteristic to some extent. Even well-established legal principles, such as the separation of church and state or the desegregation of schools, do not necessarily apply like we expect.

I have not made out-of-school friends in Mississippi as I probably should. So another goal for next year is to get involved with something of interest that will get me interacting with people completely outside of school or Teacher Corps.