basic training retreat: big bear lake, CA

Last week we traveled to Big Bear Lake, CA (see above photo) for our Basic Training Retreat (BTR). Here, we learned which teams we were on, challenged ourselves, did some team building, and learned about inclusiveness. We arrived at the office at 10 a.m. and left for BTR at 11 a.m., spending 3 hrs in HUGE yellow school buses. Once we get there, we're ordered to meet on the basketball courts. They called our names in 4 different groups and at this point, I was 100% positive that I didn't get the team I applied for (which made me slightly angry, but I didn't want to jump to any conclusions so I tried to relax; which as most of you know, is extremely hard for an impatient person like me). Once in these groups, we had to line up single file while they blindfolded us. After this, we were led into the woods and guided to this maze, which consisted of a piece of yarn tied to a series of trees that we had to follow. Once we completed the maze, we were each handed objects. They gave me a sharpie and other people standing next to me had either a paintbrush, a squishy ball, a piece of wood, etc (all types of random stuff). After everyone finished the maze, we were allowed to take off our blindfolds and we had to run back to the basketball court and find other corps members with the same object. I found my 5 sharpie people and then a program manager gave us strips of paper that had the song "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey on it. We had to arrange the lyrics of the song then sing it aloud to the Program Manager. Once completed, she instructed us to go inside the conference building and find our team leaders who would be holding up a sign with our object on it. In this moment, I knew I had made it on the Civic Engagement Team. I was beyond ecstatic!!!!!!!!

After this whole long interesting ordeal, we met with our new teams and had "Hour One," which was basically a "getting to know each other" session. Our Program Manager, Jeremy, told us that we were the cream of the crop and that more than half of the corps had applied for the Civic Engagement Team. He basically fed our egos for a few moments and it felt great! Then we were quickly humbled once he laid out the Rules and Expectations: a) Be present--on time and bring our "can-do" attitude; b) Leave your negativity at the door; c) Be honest-with the team and yourself; d) Be ready-always have on the proper uniform and come prepared for the day; e) RESPECT-yourself, each other, and the work that we do. It's important that we're always getting the work done and constantly pushing ourselves beyond our happy mediums. In 10 months, we plan to engage 33,000 volunteers in 22,000 hours of service. Jeremy encouraged us to be go-getters and leaders on our team. In a typical week day, we will start work at 8 am and work until 6:00-6:30 p.m. On Mondays and Tuesdays we will run after school programs at middle schools from 2:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. On up to a couple Saturdays per month, we will conduct our large scale service projects with volunteers from all over the community and typically have the following Monday off. Despite the long hours, I'm extremely excited about getting started!!

On Thursday, we did a ropes course from 8 a.m to 12 p.m. with a trained instructor. Before we started the ropes course, we had to go around and say a strength, a hesitation/weakness, a goal, and if we had to be a cartoon character, which would we be. I said that my strength lies in my interpersonal communication skills and a hesitation/weakness was in my ability to at times commit to too many things out of excitement. I said that a couple of goals of mine were to 1) be the most genuine person I can be and 2) commit to serving the people of Los Angeles to the best of my abilities. Lastly, I said I would be tweety bird if I could be any cartoon character because she's small and everyone likes her. Before we climbed up this super high pole we had to mention something we were working on in our personal lives and steps we would take toward solving it. I mentioned how I'm impatient and am really trying to work on it (which I'm starting to realize is a constant struggle for me). My teammates offered ideas on how to slowly become a more patient person such as trying to count or talk myself down when I feel like I'm about to act out of impatience. We'll see how this works in the future. Easier said than done, of course...

That evening, we had a visitor from City Year Boston who was a former corps member there and now works on their staff. He highlighted the fact that 50% of our dropouts come from 12% of our schools, meaning that fixing the problem of the drop out rate is an attainable goal. He talked about how the work we do at here at City Year is invaluable and how we will carry our year of service with us for the rest of our lives. He spoke to us about several things: 1) people often see diversity just as a M&M's: a bunch of colors; 2) people are not born prejudice, prejudice and biases are learned; 3) guilt immobilizes-in the sense that if you feel guilty for being more privileged than the people you're serving, you can't get anything done because it detracts from the goal of what you're trying to accomplish; 4) there will always be diversity of difference and the only way to appreciate diversity is to appreciate these differences. Then we did a "Privilege Exercise." If you've never hear of this/done this before, this is how it works: Participants line up in a single row, everyone facing the person who will be giving the instructions. The instructor says a series of statements which tell the participants to take a step forward or backward depending on the statement. For example, the instructor would say a series of statements such as, "Please take a step back if you have ever been called bad names because of your race, skin color, gender, or ethnicity;" "Please take a step forward if you have graduated from college;" "Please take a step back if you or your family has ever received welfare, Medicaid, or food-stamps;" "Please take a step forward if your family makes more than $100,000 annually;" "Please take a step forward if both of your parents have college degrees;" "Please take a step back if you have ever been arrested;" "Please take a step forward if you grew up in a 2-parent household." After about 100 statements like this, when everyone looked around the room, there was a large gap between the person in very front and the person in the very back. We then had an open forum/discussion about reactions from the exercise. There was a range of emotions, including anger, hope, sadness, frustration, and happiness. But the general consensus of the group was that no matter where you stood on the privilege line, we are all here doing City Year and have come together on one accord in order to change the system which currently exists in society today.

On Friday, we did team Olympics (my team lost because there are only 6 of us and all of the other teams have around 18 people) which was fun despite the outcome. We drove back to Los Angeles around 2 p.m. and I spent the rest of my weekend resting from an exhausting and eventful yet fun-filled 3 days of training.

This week (first week of getting paid, Hallelujah!) we will be doing more specific training with our teams and learning about what the next 10 months will look like. I am excited but am slowly adjusting to this whole "8 a.m. to 6 p.m." workday thing, as well as learning the highs and lows of public transportation and traffic in LA!