In February and March, Step Up chapters across the country held the annual "I Dream To..." Conference presented by AOL Charitable Foundation. One of the conference's main objectives is to introduce girls to women working in all different industries, including those that the girls have dreamed of entering as well as those that the girls are not yet familiar with. In Los Angeles, our theme was "Dream Big, Dream Bold," and we were particularly focused on empowering girls to reach for their goals even in the face of obstacles.
As the day approached, one of the things I was most excited about was introducing my student Julia* to women working in her dream job. Up until that point Julia had been unwilling to speak to anyone besides me about her career goals, but I hoped that on this day, when she was in the company of her role models, that would change. (For more background, check out this blog post.)
A special mission
I set Julia up for the day as best I could. She'd be with the women in her dream career for a half-hour small group session, and another mentor for the rest of the day. I assigned her to a friend of mine who's a therapist, figuring that if Julia had a rough time at the conference, at least she'd be with someone supportive. A few days before the trip Julia warned me she was likely to sleep through her alarm and miss the entire thing, so I enlisted all her friends in a "Get-Julia-to-I-Dream-To" mission. I called her parents, and her friends rotated calls and texts the night before and the morning of. When she showed up five minutes early at the pickup site, we all felt pretty victorious. She didn't want to write her dream career on her nametag, as I'd asked all the girls to do, but I was too thrilled about her attendance to worry too much about it.
Overall, the day was a blast. With 70 girls and 50 mentors present, the energy was amazing. Octavia Goredema, founder of Twenty Ten Talent, gave an engaging workshop on overcoming obstacles. Later in the day, girls got the chance to interview their mentors. While girls were in small group sessions, mentors made vision boards for their girls. All my coworkers knew how concerned I was about Julia, so throughout the day, I got reports from them. From what I heard, Julia smiled or half-smiled at least five times before lunch.
Keeping my expectations in check
After lunch was when I was expecting the real excitement with Julia to happen. That's when she would meet with three women working in her dream career. When the time came, though, I was a little concerned by her reaction. Or rather, her lack of reaction. I did my best not to hover, but every time I glanced at her group, Julia was looking down at her hands. Afterwards, when I casually asked her how it went, she gave a typical Julia shrug and said, "It was okay." Okay. I'd been trying not to let my expectations get too high or my reaction get too low, but that was hard to hear. I'd really thought this day was going to be special for Julia, especially after I'd set it up with the blog post. My hopes had been so high. (I guess I didn't listen to what I wrote in my previous post, because the message in it was clear: Forget my ideas of what should be and just focus on and appreciate what is.)
And that's how I learned about Julia's dream. (Sorry, for now the specifics are still a secret.) That's also how I started to understand Julia. Initially, all she could say was that she was too embarrassed to tell anyone else her goal, but over the next few weeks, her thinking started to unfold. Julia wasn't really embarrassed—she was scared. Scared to admit something that other people might scoff at ("What if it's too big of a dream?"), and scared to say something out loud that she might potentially fail at. As it turns out, Julia's fears aren't so different than mine.
I did give it one more attempt on the way home, when I tried to engage Julia in a conversation about the day. She was more interested in my car's backup camera, though. After I dropped her off, I made the conscious decision to focus on all the things that had gone well – which was most of the day. I didn't actually think about Julia's experience again until the next Tuesday, when we unrolled the poster that the girls had made at the end of the day. We'd asked them all to work with their mentors to complete the following sentences on a blank piece of paper, then tape it up onto the same huge piece of paper: I dream to ______. I can because ________. For the first time, I got to read everything they'd written. And I'll be honest – when I saw Julia's, I cried.
Julia shares her secret and more
In case you can't read her writing, this is what it says: "I dream to become an FBI agent and a therapist & I can because I have self-confidence and the power to achieve my dream and to not let anybody tell me I can't achieve my goal." And then, the most amazing part: She signed her name (we covered her name in the photo above to protect her real name). On a poster that everyone could see, not only did she write down her secret dream, but she added a second dream and, even better, admitted to having self-confidence.
I still don't really know what happened for Julia at "I Dream To..." I think it was something significant, though. And for me? I've heard that you'll keep being shown a lesson for as long as you continue needing to see it. For me, that lesson is clear: Do my job as best I can. Forget about the results, because I'm no good at interpreting them anyways. And for goodness sake, stop doubting Julia.
*Name has been changed!
Paula Kashtan is a regular contributor to Step Up's blog.
