Taking Stock (Written 10/9/07)

That time has finally come again…that time when I sit back and marvel at how far I've come in a year. Only this time, there's something just a little bit different about it – maybe realizing that this is my last year in Samoa is finally starting to dawn on me. As I write this blog entry, it's 11:36pm on Tuesday night and the newest group of Peace Corps Volunteers (Group 79) are 6 hours away from arriving in country. 6 hours before the end becomes a harsh reality. Everyone told me and it is definitely true – the second year goes by so fast. And you want to know the strangest thing – this just dawned on my today – for the first time in my life, I don't know where I will be one year from now. For as long as I could remember, I always had some idea where I would be in life a year from the time I thought about it. That's how organized I am – preplanned everything. When I applied for Peace Corps in October 2004, I knew I would be in another country in October 2005. In October 2005, I knew I would be amazed by the fact that I was about to live an entire year in a foreign land. In October 2006, I knew I would be hitting the end of the marathon known as Peace Corps by the next year. But now we arrive at October 2007, and I have no idea where or what I will be doing a year from now. Before, this type of situation would have scared me to death – not knowing things is not a natural state for me. When I came to Samoa, I was pretty organized and had to have things happen a certain way or I got kind of frustrated. But now, since I have had things go my way and I've had things not go my way – my mindset has changed and the unknown doesn't scare me as much (although, it's still scary don't get me wrong). It's amazing what throwing someone into the fire can do.

As I previously mentioned, Group 79 is currently on a plane over the Pacific headed for this small island. Normally we would have their welcome fiafia during their first week here, but not this time. Why? Because we will also be joined by a Peace Corps Samoa Group 2 Reunion and I don't think a lot of them will be in until next week – so we're delaying the fiafia until next Friday (October 19). How appropriate that the greatest group ever (Group 75) leaves after the biggest fiafia ever. If you can't top it – why try? Anyway, as before I will be involved in some training session for this group but this will be the first group where I am literally in the same position as a few of the volunteers I met when I was coming through training. By the time Group 79 gets done with their training, a lot of us Group 75ers will be gone – so for the most part we'll just be vague memories to them…kinda sad in a way. But such is the overturning life of a Peace Corps Volunteer.

One thing I have to mention though is the fact that we are now in our third term of school, which means that it's time for our kids to take their final exams and start preparing for their national exams in a few weeks. Now you would think that the students would be motivated to get good marks on their exams because it helps improve their grades – but school marks don't have the same impact as they do in the states, which means the kids don't really take them as seriously as they should (you can bomb your final exam and get a good mark on the national exam. The only one people really care about is your national exam results). So for my Year 13 students, I tend to give them a bit of a motivation to try to improve their grades and try harder – since the fear of failing is not there (seriously, kids think getting a 50 out of a 100 is actually good). For their mid-term exams, the prize was group based which worked for the most part but I didn't get the motivation I was expecting. So this time the prize was individual based which meant they were competing with each other instead of trying to bring each other up (somehow the competitiveness got their attention, but the teamwork part didn't fly at all). The prizes were given to me by the last person to send me a package in Samoa – one of my best friends, Jonas. He sent me 2 flash drives which were to small for me to use but would be big enough for my students to use. Since most of the flash drives in Samoa cost over $70 tala, getting a flash drive is a big deal – but they had to earn it by getting good scores and/or improving their mark from their midterm exam. So I had two criteria for winning the prize, one prize per year 13 class. The first criteria was the person who scored above a 95 on the exam, would get the prize. I had never seen anyone score above a 92 on any of my exams, so I wanted to be impressed before I left. If no one in the class got above a 95, then the person who had the biggest improvement from their midterm exam would win the flash drive. This was an important piece (instead of saying whoever gets the highest score – even if it's below 95 – would get the prize) because it allowed students who don't get the top marks in the class to have a shot at earning something special, when they are usually in the middle or bottom of the class. Apparently, this motivational tactic did the trick because my year 13 students were very interested in asking me tons of questions from the study guide I gave to them. I quickly graded the exams over the weekend and had one person who got above a 95 (Manipola) and one person who had the biggest change from their midterm exam (Sophia). Manipola is my top student and even though she said she didn't care about winning the flash drive, it seemed to spur her on to try harder and study more which resulted in her receiving a 96 – the highest mark of my tenure at Chanel. Sophia is an average student but she had a dramatic improvement from her midterm exams – she had improved by 30 marks. So it felt good to have people who met both criteria's so the students could see that it does pay to get better at something – even if you're not considered the best.

And with that, I am off. The next time you read a blog posting from me, this island will be filled with a ton of new faces from America. The biggest question will be – when and where will I run into them first? I usually see them at the fiafia, but since that's a week off I will either see them at ClickNet or at the diversity session next week. Either way, it's going to be hard looking this last group in the face – they literally represent the end for me. L8r.