This past week has flown by. I got to LA last Saturday, spent the weekend with my lovely sister, Stephanie, spent the week seeing my LA program buddies, Grace, Patrick, and Sarah, plus caught up with some other newly minted alums from my school. It was pretty much the perfect last week of freedom – watching endless amounts of TV with Stephanie, lounging by the pool with Patrick and Sarah, having one more night out on the town, and SLEEPING. Oh the sleeping…

You see, I’m already missing sleep a bit, which doesn’t bode well for my next few weeks, because yesterday, I officially started my 2-year commitment with Teach for America. This week is what is called Induction, basically an intro to the region with just our fellow LA corps members. Next week, the true madness begins when corps members from four other regions will join us for Institute, which is the actual training part of the summer. This week is all about learning about our area, our mission, our goals, and all the nitty gritty bureaucratic details we need to take care of to actually qualify to teach come August.

That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a teensy bit crazy – not overwhelming quite yet, but getting up at 5:30AM on a Sunday definitely isn’t standard operating procedure in my life, so…a bit crazy. I think the only thought I’ve been really capable of forming so far is that it is so nice to finally be around people who get it – get why I’m doing this, get what Teach for America is, and get how I’m feeling at this juncture in my life. I’ve already met some crazy cool people, and I’ve already been BLOWN away by conversations I’ve overheard and been a part of. I had no doubt coming in that the corps would be an amazing group of people, but to finally see this group and be able to start to see the possibilities of what everyone here is going to accomplish is pretty amazing. Just seeing the ’08 corps members who have just finished one year of teaching – seeing the passion they have for their kids, seeing the eloquence they have when speaking about their experiences – is insane.

And it’s only just begun. Mostly, we’ve been sitting participating in sessions about the philosophies and core values behind TFA, the kinds of goals we are going to be setting, and TFA’s expectations for us, but we’ve also been listening to people’s stories about why they decided to join “The Movement”, and it’s amazing to hear all the things that have brought people to this point. I honestly (and I’m trying not to let this get too cheesy) am SO excited to see what this group of people accomplishes in the next two years and beyond.

And yes, my title is a direct reference to my favorite cheesy high school film, “HIgh School Musical” inspired by the TFA staff members constant insistence that “we are all in this together.”