11 months ago, it was January, and I was beginning the winter quarter of my third year at SCU. It was my first time on campus in seven months. In that gap I had spent three weeks on an Immersion trip in India and 4 months studying abroad in Paris, France. To say things had changed since the last time I was at Santa Clara would be an understatement. It was a very confusing time for me. I was in a major transitional state. I was processing all the changes and growth of the previous seven months, trying to integrate that into my old reality at Santa Clara, and also trying to look forward and make decisions about how I would spend the upcoming summer and the rest of my time at SCU. The Global Social Benefit Fellowship had been tucked away in a corner of my mind for a while. I’d been curious about social entrepreneurship for about a year and was very interested in the fellowship. But I never considered it long enough to say “I want to do this.” For the most part I think that boils down to a lack of self-confidence. I felt like I wasn’t qualified and so there wasn’t a point in really going after it. I was also unsure if another experience abroad was really what I was looking for. I had barely gotten back to the U.S. I hadn’t had a chance to process my experiences and the way they applied to my life at home. How was I supposed to know where I would want to be 5 months from then? At the same time, though, those transformative experiences I had in India and France had really gotten the gears turning for me. My time in India sparked a passion in me to contemplate my vocational journey more intentionally. I left that trip frustrated by how helpless I felt when faced with deeply ingrained, systemic social justice issues. I was hungry to explore ways of initiating systematic change to address such injustices. While my time in India inspired me to start questioning the world and my place in it, the growth spurred from my time in France was much more personal and inward-looking. During those three months, I experienced immense happiness. I saw what it was like to live a life free from my usual stressors and fears. I was immersed in history and art while creating beautiful new friendships. I also discovered a strength in myself that I hadn’t realized before. I learned that not only could I survive in a foreign country for an extended period of time, I could thrive.
According to Gregory Dees, a key component of social entrepreneurship is “engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning.” Over the past 9 months, I’ve learned that this is the type of environment that I can truly thrive in. It’s the type of environment that feeds off of my skills and talents for empathy, critical thinking, collaboration, and problem-solving. In Rwanda, Nick and I operated in this type of environment full-time. For each community visit, we would arrive with a lesson plan that we worked together to create. As we interacted directly with the cooperatives, we had to adapt those plans to best fit the co-ops’ needs. We were constantly learning; we’d leave every visit knowing something that we didn’t know when we had arrived earlier that same day. This process of creating, adapting, and learning encapsulated our entire experience in Rwanda. Our work was never finished, and while we would leave our visits with answers, we’d also left with even more questions. And I loved it. Joy is the delight one takes in being dissatisfied. It’s the deep delight that one feels in being called to something still before you. Reflecting on my experience, I realize that it was indeed a sort of “dissatisfaction” that contributed to fueling the joy I felt. Since our work was never finished, since there were always more questions to be answered, we were constantly “being called to something still before [us].” I was overcome by a delightful restlessness. And this restlessness was coupled with a newfound confidence. Since the work I was doing fed on my talents and my skills, I’d realized a sense of self-efficacy I’d never experienced before. Just a few months prior, I was hesitant to even apply for the fellowship because I felt like I wasn’t qualified. In the field however, all of that insecurity had vanished. My Marketing education; my experiences in India and France; my work as a writing tutor and peer educator; and my skills for empathy, adaptation, and collaboration had all prepared me to successfully fulfill my role in this research project alongside Nick. We filled in each other’s gaps and worked together to accomplish what we had set out to do. I went from doubting my own abilities a few months earlier to knowing that I was the best person for the job I was doing. I combined my skills, talents, and passions together to address a real and meaningful need while working directly with others in a collaborative learning environment. And from that sprouted pure joy and restless desire to continue learning and growing. From my time in India and France to my GSBF experience, this past year and a half has been the most transformative of my life. The growth I’ve undergone has been at a rate unlike anything I’ve experienced before, and as a result, the growing pains have been brutal at times. However, I’m watching myself emerge from it stronger and more in-touch with myself than I’ve ever been before, and that is irreplaceable. It confuses me a little bit, how a few months from now, I’m supposed to graduate and then begin a job where I’ll be doing the same thing for three to five years. In January of this year, I didn’t even know that in just five months I’d be spending my summer living in Rwanda. It scares me—the thought of committing to doing one thing for so long, when I’m so used to constantly pursuing new experiences. This fear constantly looms over my head as I contemplate my future. After spending the last four years doing so many different things, chasing such a wide array of adventures, how am I supposed to just do one thing for so long?
It’s funny because, when I look back on my time in India, France, and Rwanda, countless memories of true, unadulterated stillness come rushing to the forefront of my mind. It’s true in fact, that these “adventures” of mine were actually ripe with stillness. The nights in India when I’d sit in my room with no phone, no roommate, just myself and my thoughts. The Tuesdays in Paris when I’d get out of class at 10am and spend hours sitting in the corner of a café reading, writing, doodling. The mornings in Rwanda that I’d wake to watch the sunrise by the farm or journal under a shaded tree. These are just snippets of the countless ways I experienced stillness in each of these places. I’ve seemed to master stillness in all of these adventures, yet I haven’t figured out how to integrate it into my life back in the U.S. It’s funny because in India, France, and Rwanda, stillness was never a goal. I was never conscious that I was being “still.” It’s only now as I reflect that I am noticing the role stillness played in many of my favorite memories. In contrast, I have made many failed, conscious attempts at stillness at SCU. I’ve tried to force it, but I guess maybe it is something that cannot be forced. In all of these abroad experiences, I’ve been able to let go of many of the stressors, fears, and baggage that I have at home. As a result, I’ve been more authentically me. I’ve been able to be still, to focus in on the present moment, on the types of things that truly fill me up rather than overcommitting my time with meaningless tasks and activities. While I look to my future, while I confront the fear of committing to something for several years, I will keep this realization alive in my mind. For a long time, I always thought “growing up” happened in your childhood and teenage years. I imagined I’d come out of college a full-blown adult, the kind of adult that my 12-year-old self-imagined had it all figured out and knew the answers to all of life’s questions. I see now that all the growing I’ve done is just the beginning. And I’m excited to put in the work so that, hopefully, ten years from now, my 30-something-year-old self can look back thankfully for the steps I took to make her the woman she will be.
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AuthorEmily Fagundes | Marketing Student & Global Social Benefit Fellow at Santa Clara University Archives
November 2019
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