Rez Life

My undergrad alma mater, Indiana Wesleyan University has something called "rez life." It's short for "residence life," and it's geared toward the students at IWU. There's even a whole "rez life week," which involves lots of team spirit and dorm games that I never really felt the need to over-participate in.

It's been one year and four months since I walked across the stage, heard my name mispronounced, and received my empty diploma case from the President of IWU. It's been one year and a few weeks since I officially graduated with a double bachelor of arts in English and Journalism, officially ending my student "rez life" experience.

I suppose to commemorate my one-year anniversary of being a "grown-up," I returned to IWU to help with something near and dear to my heart: Sojourn staff training. Two of my favorite staff writers asked me to speak, so I drove 800 miles to spend a few hours with the student publication I gave up so much time, energy, sleep, and GPA points for. When I was in college, my housemates, editorial staff, and I sometimes wondered if all the effort was worth it. Unexpectedly and extravagantly kind words from the Sojourn staff make me think it was.

I'm now part of a new sort of "rez life," a more literal kind: life on an Indian reservation, a.k.a, "the rez." (No, this is not a politically incorrect term to the people who live here, so please don't be offended.)

The two Rez Lives couldn't be more opposite. One life is squeaky clean, the other's covered in trash. One has money and new buildings, the other is in the fifth poorest county in the U.S. One life is covered with some of the best and brightest high school graduates, ministers, and decorated academics in the country, the other has one of the highest drop-out rates in the state of South Dakota.

Both have challenged me. Both are filled with people - some wonderful, some not. But people created in God's image; people who have had a hand in shaping the person I am, and the person I'm becoming.

This new Rez Life is making me ask some of the old questions, and experience many of the old doubts. "Does what I'm doing matter?" "Am I making a difference?" "Does anyone even care?"

I get discouraged. I get stressed. I get frustrated. I get down on myself. Except, this time, I don't have my housemates checking in on me to make sure I didn't fall asleep on my keyboard when I'm supposed to be writing a paper or editing a story. I don't have the fellowship of thousands of other young believers. I don't have professors giving me constant feedback, showing me how to become better at what I'm doing.

I don't know why I'm here. I don't feel like I've made a positive impact. I've been a terrible "ambassador for Christ."

I. I. I. Me. Me. Me. I don't, I can't, I won't. I read an entry from "My Utmost for His Highest" today that made me realize how self-centered I can be sometimes. Both in college, and now, the times when I feel my personality and my joy being drained away are the times when I become completely self-focused.

As I return from my brief, refreshing visit to IWU and four of the best friends a girl could have, a couple things stand out.

1. I wasn't trying to "impress" the two staffers that I apparently made such an impression on. I was just doing what I was passionate about, which was make a better paper by building better writers. And I had no idea at the time that it made the impact on them that it did. I'm glad.
2. Even if they didn't remember me, if I'd made no impression on anyone at IWU or the paper - does that mean I should have done anything differently? Well, I should have done a lot of things differently, most likely - but nothing in the way of less effort. My only regrets are the things I didn't do, not the things I did.

So, about this new Rez Life. Nine months after leaving the old Rez Life, I started this one. Today marks the 8-month anniversary of my time here. It has been tempestuous. It has been very hard at times. It has been friggin' cold. But it has been good.

This is Labor Day Weekend, and tomorrow is the 6-month mark for this blog. As we start a new month, I'm thinking of taking this blog in a slightly different direction (which I promise will not be a string of timelines...like this post...). Up to this point, it's been mostly a record of all the ridiculous things that I witness on an almost weekly basis. Like, the lady who stashed her cigarette on the sidewalk while she went into the post office, then picked it up again on her way out.

See, when I first moved out here, it took me a month to find a place to live. When I found a place, it was a pink trailer house on the yard of a Mormon family with 10 children, and a bun in oven. (Note: pink is my least favorite color.) Then it was just a rapid succession of ridiculousness that I had to find funny, because quite frankly, I would have lost my mind otherwise.

So I started the blog to record these things, because they make me laugh. And I like to make other people laugh. And I wanted to steer clear of any melodrama or pretensions in my writing, so I steer clear of serious topics.

However, a couple of friends challenged me to write about life on the Rez. Real, honest, "this is how it is," (from my perspective) life on the Rez.

It will still include the ridiculous stories - because that's part of my life here (and anywhere, really). It will just also include some of the other, maybe not-so-funny things that happen here.