Volunteer Explorer

When I was six or so, I had to memorize a string of nine numbers. About a year earlier, I had learned to count to one hundred by rote as a requirement for entering kindergarten at the public school. My oldest brother, Mike, helped me with both of these tasks, as well as tying my shoes, another pre-req for kindergarten. The string of nine numbers was broken into chunks of three numbers, two numbers, and four numbers. Mike had me repeat each chunk over and over until I had each one tattooed on my mind and could call it forth on command. Of course, I was learning my Social Security number. There is little a person can accomplish in the US without a Social Security number. School enrollment, bank accounts, any kind of credit, and all interactions with local, state, and federal government require it. In grad school, we graduate assistants had to type the last four digits of our SSNs into the copy machine for it to function. And it tallied our paper usage according to the number, re...

I think Karma has a vision problem. That sounds like an incredibly deep statement, until you realize that Karma is the name I am using for one of the adult students in the Basic Life Skills ESOL class I volunteer in. He is tall and thin and shy, usually seated next to his wife, who is much more adept at speaking and understanding English, and who always feeds him the answers to questions in class. I include him in my small group work when I can—sometimes he won’t join us or goes to the bathroom for half an hour instead. I once had him copy all the letters of the alphabet on his own; it took him forty-five minutes to get through letter G. Yesterday, we worked on the days of the week. Susan had distributed a hand-out with calendar grids that had different days of the week marked with an X, topped by the question “what day is it?”; the students were to identify which day of the week was marked, then write the sentence, “it is Monday (etc.)” after it. I circulated among the ...

So I graduated last week. I mean I really graduated: wore a cap and gown and Master’s hood, listened to speeches, heard my name called after the words “receiving the Master of Fine Arts,” walked across a stage, and shook the hand of the university’s president. My family took me out for a special dinner afterward; we took pictures and exchanged cards for my graduation, mother’s day, my husband’s birthday. After that heady weekend of lofty speeches and heartfelt congratulations, I’ve experienced a lull. I am now officially unemployed. I do not know how to handle that. I’ve been a student for almost eight years. Before that, I went from job to job with no downtime in between. From the time I finished high school until last weekend, I was unemployed for maybe a total of three months. And that’s over a span of some twenty-five years. No wonder I feel at loose ends now. A lot of people have asked me over the past few weeks: “what’s next?” I’m sure these people have the best of inten...