Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The Longest Journey

I am applying to University of San Diego's M.A. in Higher Education Leadership and I planned a trip to their campus to attend an information session and sit-in on a graduate class.  The stars seemed to align just for me in preparation of my trip.  My class at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday was cancelled and I had no school on Friday because of Veteran’s Day.  Brittany, my friend lives in San Marcos, just 30 minutes away from USD, so I planned on meeting up with her afterwards and spending the night.  

According to the directions on Google maps, my GPS and friends who have driven to San Diego from Cal Poly Pomona, it should have taken me around 2 hours to get to San Diego.  Just in case, I decided to leave by 2:00 p.m. so that I would have 3 and a half hours to get there in time for my information session at 5:30 p.m.  However, someone decided that my will power needed to be challenged during this trip and traffic was horrendous.  Unknown to me at the time, there was a Chargers game in the stadium off the 5 freeway in San Diego and it took me four hours to finally get off the freeway.  It was dark, I was already late for my information session, and I had gotten off the freeway early to avoid the traffic.  Needless to say I was worried and disappointed that my plans were not going smoothly.  I finally decided to pull over to call my supervisor from San Diego to get a better idea of how to get to USD.  Together we finally figured out that my GPS was correct and it was still about 30 minutes away via side streets.  

I finally arrived at the information session late, but I was not the only one as a result of the traffic.  Even though my journey getting there was not the most ideal, I had finally arrived and I decided to make it count. I talked to a faculty member for the program after the information session and sat in on the Leadership and Organizational Change graduate class.  This class was truly hands on as the students created their own organization and worked on a project which encompassed several organizational theories and the "occupy" movement around social justice and change.  As part of their project, the class is involving the community through a "Occupy ?" Facebook and blog and closing with a meditation/prayer event.  I was inspired by the passion behind this learning process and I could envision myself as a graduate student in USD's program taking that class.  

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