Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services’s summer programming started before any of us at ETSS felt truly prepared for it, and I think we are collectively starting to understand what needs to be accomplished each week and how to better organize ourselves in order to better serve the communities we work with.

Each week, I try to list my goals to accomplish in helping coordinate ETSS’s Summer Enrichment Camp as well as my weekly goals for planning the Youth Summit. From these overarching goals, I create daily tasks for myself in order to keep myself on track. Some of my to-dos are repetitive so I keep myself interested by brainstorming ways in which I can better carry out my tasks and duties that both saves time for me and makes others’s lives easier. I love taking long-term plans and goals and breaking them into smaller, more manageable tasks that can be accomplished on weekly and daily levels, and I am thankful my work allows me to do that. In a way, I think this is helping prepare me for the long-term types of projects I will have to complete in graduate school.

I feel as if my summer with ETSS is going by so quickly. At the end of this week, I pay August’s rent for my apartment in Pennsylvania, and I only have a little more than a month before I move out of state and start graduate school. Working with ETSS, I see the practical, tangible, and meaningful work I can do based on my passions and fields of study. I can see a way in which I can create a routine working 40 hours a week, having evenings and weekends free, and time to take care of myself. I can see the ways in which I can be creative with my time and tasks to find ways to keep myself engaged and interested.

Then, I anticipate graduate school, being a full-time student, working 20 hours a week, and needing to find time to study, complete projects, maintain a presence within my department, and take care of myself. I wonder if I will gain practical experience necessary for jobs in the future, or if I will be overqualified, underpaid, and underemployed. I anticipate the stress and challenges I will encounter in graduate school, and I wonder, is it worth it? Working full-time with a set schedule in a relatively comfortable setting feels like such a luxury to me. Why wouldn’t I want to continue this?