Apreciating Home

I head back to the USA in three weeks. It has been a year like none other. I left on September 17th, 2007 and threw myself into the most frightening notion to pervade anyone's heart: the unknown.

The thought of ever taking on such a goal was as huge as it was scary. To straight up leave the sphere of comfort I've enjoyed my whole life for something I had (at the time) no real grasp of. No point of reference, nothing to call my starting point. Nothing except for my older brother's stories of his past experience. When I stepped off that plane in Hanover, Germany everything was truly foreign to me.

When I decided to embark on my adventure, I went into it thinking that it would be a much needed vacation from the norm. The endless overlapping trade off at home between classes at the local university and the part-time-during-school- and full-time-during-summer job was wearing on my nerves. I was waiting for it to end, looking forward to the point where I would reach the next level of my life.

Everything had seemed so prefabricated. It was as though I was supposed to be doing the things I was doing. My life was already planned for me, I was just following the path. Taking these classes, then those. They'll prepare you for what's out there, I told myself. This is just what you have to do, you'll be doing this stuff all the time when you're out there. Better be prepared, I said.

As I continued to loathe the idea of such monotony, I slowly began to grasp that I would be on the other side of it sooner than I actually wanted to be. My safe cycle of school and work would crumble away from me, and while it did I'd be clawing at the floor that was giving way beneath, pleading it to return to it's normal state under my feet. What better to do than to delay the inevitable by a year? I leaped at the opportunity.

What I didn't see coming was the appreciation I'd realize for my situation back home. Much to my chagrin, the existence of the cultural division between nations that everybody talks about is actually out there. In short, it has caused me to take a good look at what makes me love where I live and the way I've grown up.

My classes, though seemingly boring, are at least in my mother tongue. Although the weather's hot in the summer, we at least have a clean beach five minutes from my home in which to cool off. Putting gas in my car, though painful to watch as the prices go over four dollars a gallon, allows me the autonomy that I've missed so much since leaving.

One thing that has frequented my mind lately is my true appreciation for the last job I had while in the States. I realized one very important thing. That job, that I had held for the past three years, proved to me the reason why I'm earning a degree. Like any part time job, I had never liked it much, and had always eagerly counted down the hours, minutes and seconds until I'd be able to go home.

That, however, never stopped me from being the best at what I did. I will bet on the fact that my employers have never had a harder working part timer. The amount of effort that I put into that job taught me countless things about the many facets of work. Every year I was trusted with increasing responsibilities, taught about the basic politics involved in work, how to treat customers face-to-face, and learned a plethora about myself and my boundaries.

I was given the ability to truly test what I was capable of as a person. I was taught things that allowed me push myself to my mental and physical limits. I was allowed to experiment, listen, speak and interact.

In a microscopic, day-to-day point of view, the job was a grueling experience. Every waking hour spent there was mentally equivalent to two hours not at work. I treated each day off as if it were a lavish holiday designated just for me. But, as any hard working individual does, I kept going. It gave me the freedom to do what I wanted and provided me with that freedom well after the season had ended.

When looking back on it, the sheer wealth of knowledge that I pulled from it has sculpted my persona as it is now. It humbled me and showed me that there is way more going on in the world than I initially thought. The job wasn't my first summer or part time job, however. I had had five or six others throughout the years before those three, but I'm proud to say that it was my first "real" job.

Now here I am in Stuttgart, Germany, writing about the fact that my year away from it all has given it a brand new worth.