I thought I would end the internship exhausted. I have had a host of internships, and the endings of them have always been bittersweet. There is a bit of “glad I did that” and a bit of “glad I don’t have to do that anymore.”
It’s also refreshing that an internship always ends, and that you can return to school where you delay adult life for a little bit longer. I’m hoping adult life can be tackled with the same strategy of organizing my room. I know it’ll happen eventually, but I would like to push it back as much as I can until it is absolutely imperative. I’ll keep coming up with excuses, “I would clean my room, or I could play guitar and use the pile of dirty clothes as a couch” or “I could be an adult, or I could run across the country Forrest Gump style.”
Instead, I’m leaving this internship energized. The last few nights I have not been able to sleep, from meeting people, reading articles, and being in an environment that challenges you. I go to sleep and think questions like “Who am I and what is my place in the world?” Basically, small questions that can be easily answered or Googled.
After consistently Googling “Who is Esteban Gast” for a few minutes and finding out I really need to delete some embarrassing YouTube videos (a Single Ladies dance seemed like a good idea at the time…), I know that these questions can only be answered internally. Being in my generation and neglecting to realize that technology sometimes doesn’t immediately provide an answer, I panicked.
When I stopped panicking (after watching the Single Ladies dance) I knew why I felt energized and why these questions are good.
During my Kalu Yala internship, I had a chance to really articulate and define my passions and dreams. I also learned something incredibly valuable: “whatever my dreams are, I should take them seriously.”
If you only read one thing, let it be this: Whatever your dreams are, take them seriously.
Jimmy started Kalu Yala because he wanted to create a better world and took that dream seriously. There’s a feeling in Kalu Yala that anything is possible. Throughout my time here I have realized that if I really do like media so much, I can go down that path. I’ve always considered a career in education (perhaps disrupting traditional education models), and that was encouraged. I am currently launching a social business with my brother (more on that later…details are not released) and saw that being an entrepreneur is simply saying YES to the adventure that is life. I was a comedian back in the States, and had never taken the possibility of being a comedian seriously, until I was encouraged by everyone here. I’ve had dreams of walking on to a stage and telling jokes for a leaving, but thought that was a just dream shared by any attention-seeking 5 year old who grows up, not something legitimate and something that (gulp) could be achieved.
It’s not blind optimism, it’s just an acknowledgement that perhaps there is a reason I have so many passions. Perhaps there is a reason why I get that feeling in my stomach that says “THIS is where you’re supposed to be” when I’m being silly or making a video or teaching kids or hiking through the mountains. Also, if there is anything Kalu Yala tells us it’s that we are young, and with incredible amounts of hard work, we can most likely achieve these enormous dreams. So let’s go for them.
So, I finish my internship energized. Energized to chase my passions. Energized because I have understood that I should take my dreams seriously. Energized because there is coffee in the kitchen and I had a cup.
I have no idea where the future is, but I’m going to try to push off this whole adult thing for a little while later and find a way to keep going on adventures in the meantime.
Until then, keep an eye out for my socially-conscious products, my revolutionary education idea, latest web-series and comedy skits. Because I’m taking all those pretty seriously now.