Super Human Moments: Peace Corps

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 09:13:00 -0500
super-human-moments

Everyone has had them: moments when things have gone wrong partly because of our own lack of experience or perspective. In this new series of posts, I'm asking members of the UMBC community to reflect on their own 'super human moments.'

Name: Delana Gregg

Q: What is your current title (job or student organization position)?

A: Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars Assistant Director, Co-instructor of Civic Imagination and Social Entrepreneurship

Q: In 12 words or less, what role(s) do you play on campus?

A: Hopefully nurturing in students a sense of public service and leadership

Q: What title would you give your Super Human Moment?

A: How I grew in the Peace Corps

Q: What happened?

A: Six months after graduating from college, I left my little midwestern town for 2 years of service in the Peace Corps in Lithuania. Having never traveled abroad, I had little idea what to expect, but knew that I would work with English teachers to help them improve (read: westernize) their Soviet-style teaching methods, and I would also teach English conversation in a high school. The Peace Corps lives up to its slogan...it really is the toughest job you'll ever love, though the love part took a while to discover. Sure I was charmed by the country, people, culture, and new experiences, and after three months of training and language immersion, I and my rucksack headed to my new home, the town of Telsiai. I had an office at the local County Department of Education, lovely co-workers who only spoke Lithuanian (you can pick up a language quickly this way) and I headed off on bus and foot to my new school. I met my teacher-mentor, an older woman who had lived in the US, Ponia (Mrs.) Zardeckiene. She was a chain-smoking tornado, given much leave by the principal to basically do whatever she liked, and her age granted her the freedom to schluff of restrictive Lithuanian norms of how a woman is "supposed" to act. We routinely smoked in the dark school basement with the custodians, her translating my broken Lithuanian to their delight. I would teach 2 sections of her classes, helping prepare the juniors and seniors for the all important state exams.

Our honeymoon soon came to a screeching halt when Ponia Zarkeckiene's irrepressible personality got too big to handle. She dressed me down forcefully for some forgotten cultural faux pax and the months of homesickness, culture shock and a frustration (I WAS HERE TO HELP!) started the waterworks...I began to cry. She continued to scream at me, telling me I needed to go to a psychiatrist because I was obviously unstable. I walked back to my second job at the Department of Education in a black mood. Here I was, on the other side of the world, trying to serve others and I get the brunt of this woman's temper...I never ever wanted to see her again, and asked to be assigned to another teacher. I did not come to the school on days that she was there, and our planned friendship (two American-type outsiders together, swapping stories) disappeared. I continued teaching, though my heart was never in that school, and created new relationships with other teachers and co-workers (I even continued to visit the janitors in the basement), but I never got over this initial broken trust.

A few months later, Ponia Zardeckiene passed away. I did not attend her funeral, though one of my favorite students who was close to her told me all about it. I could have buried the hatchet, and grown to understand and perhaps cherish this woman for her life of experiences and her gateway into Lithuanian culture, but I just couldn't get past my own hurt feelings. To this day when I think of Lithuania, I regret this incident, but I know I had to find more productive and nurturing relationships if I was going to survive two years in a different country. Your mentor-teacher/co-worker in the Peace Corps is supposed to be your cultural guide, your life line in a sea of new and hard to navigate cultural waters. But I gave up on mine and worked hard to create new and more helpful relationships on my own.

Q: How have you applied what you learned?

A: I struggle with having to let negative or hurtful people go. I realize this may be cold, to judge a person as a positive influence or not, and then cutting them out of your life, and I always feel a tug to go back and repair the broken trust, but I do not. This is a lesson my father taught me and one that is still with me today. Keep your friends close, nurture those relationships to keep them vital, helping others and asking for help when you need it. But once someone becomes a detriment to my goals and self-worth, I have to let them go. Perhaps as I grow older and wiser I'll find a middle ground, a bag of second chances, because I do believe that everyone has good aspects to their soul, but I'm scared of getting burned two times right now. I see myself less as a tornado, and more of a cool calm sea, and I like that.

Q: Do you have any advice you can pass along to others?

A: You can't change other people, you can't make them like you or be good to you or to themselves. Everyone is on their own path; sometimes you walk together, and sometimes you have to keep going your own way.