Sometime in March I Received a Mysterious Email

I applied for Americorps NCCC at the end of January after speaking to two Americorps Team Leaders. When I applied, I was interning (almost) full time at the Volunteer Center of Bergen County and working two jobs through Montclair State University Residential Education and Services department (Community Assistant [aka RA] and Service Assistant [aka desk slave]). I was also a full time student in my last semester at Montclair State, maintaining my GPA of 3.89 as an English major and Philosophy and Women & Gender Studies minors. I also had a stint being a Education major, but I dropped that the summer before my senior year. Oh, and I was on senior status in my sorority.

Wait, let's start over, I sound boring and really serious. So, while I am really serious about my work (I'm sure there will be more stories at some point), I also like to have fun (no, really, I'm serious about that...wait, here I go with being serious again).

Back to my point, rewind to early January and I'm working over winter break as an SA while the Americorps teams from Sacramento are moving into Bohn Hall to help in Little Ferry and Moonachie for disaster relief (because of my internship site, which was so cool to find out the first day there). I had the pleasure of talking to the Team Leaders from Americorps NCCC Class XIX, Green 6 (Kim) and Americorps NCCC Class XIX, Green 5 (Taylor). I cannot thank them enough for all of their kind words and encouragement - and a special shout out to Liz from New York, who might have been my sister in another life.

Three months later, I was sitting in the front office of the VCBC, working through Spring Break, when I received an email from Americorps NCCC. I shrugged this off immediately because (1) I had already been receiving mysterious emails telling me that my status had changed, go to my page to see, and then I would go to my page and there would be no change AND (2) I had already figured out that I would not be notified of an acceptance into the program until mid-May, close to when I would be graduating. You must imagine my shock when the email actually contained this:

So, I started screaming and crying and called my parents, because that seemed appropriate. 

This has been my dream since the start of my Junior year at Montclair - I started by looking into the Peace Corps, and with much coaxing from my mother, turned to Americorps as my in-state alternative. I had been reading about, talking about, and dreaming about getting accepted for so long that I didn't think it would actually be a possibility: but here I am. I'm 48 days away from Americorps. 48 days away from helping Americans and doing the good work. I'm 48 days from traveling and meeting new people and networking. I'm starting an adventure - my first adventure - at 22 years old. Who knows, maybe I'll even figure out what I actually want to do with my life (thinking of Environmental Science/Environmental Engineer)? But let's not get ahead of myself, right now, I'm still getting ready to start this part of my life.