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First Person: Working to Make a Difference............................ By Erin Krasik '93
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When I was accepted for a Smith Internship in the Public Interest at the end of my senior year, I must admit I was too excited about moving to a new city and actually having gainful employment (at least for two months) to stop and wonder how my summer internship might shape my career path. Looking back, I can see that no other experience has had such a profound impact on where I am today professionally and where I expect I will be in the future. Early on, I think we realize what a privilege it is to attend Smith and, more important, how this privileged education is not for ourselves alone. After all, from day one, we are reminded that we are attending an institution founded to encourage and help women to pursue absolutely anything in life and one that boasts more than a century of experience in doing just that. By the time I was a senior, I knew that somehow I, too, wanted to "give back" to others-especially those who did not receive the same advantages or opportunities as I. Ashamedly, I did little volunteering while I was in college. So before my graduation I determined that the four years I spent "to become the best I could be" were reasonably justified only if professionally I gave the most of myself to others. In many ways, however, I didn't know how to go about this plan, and like many students I felt that my seriousness about this desire would be dismissed as a college student's idealism. When Jane Pearsall '59--a woman I am glad to call my mentor--began Smith's internship program in the summer of 1993, she did it because she thought students could have a positive impact on many of today's urban problems if they were offered the right opportunity and the right forum. I saw a lot of the real world my first summer after graduation. I was one of a handful of white employees out of more than a hundred staff members at the social service agency in which I was placed on the west side of Chicago. The neighborhood of more than 50,000 people the agency serviced was predominantly poor and African-American and characterized by rates of high school dropouts, teenage pregnancies and unemployment all higher than the rest of the city's. Among the programs on the agency's menu were health services, child care, counseling, parenting classes, social workers/case management for at-risk families, job training, tutoring and classes to prepare for the General Equivalency Degree (GED) exam. I never before had known that such full-service organizations existed nor imagined the range of programs needed in neighborhoods like that. Nor could I have realized the wealth of viable career opportunities for college graduates in the public sector without first having worked in a nonprofit organization myself. The exposure I received, seeing the world through a perspective and set of experiences far different from my own, was perhaps the most important instruction I gained from the program. As my future employer would say, "Don't let your schooling get in the way of your education, Erin." Fortunately, I didn't. Before the summer was over, I helped write a grant for a teen pregnancy prevention program, coordinated a summer youth program for neighborhood youths aged 12 to 18 and developed a promotional brochure for the agency describing all the services and programs offered. I also co-taught GED classes to 10 adolescent high school dropouts-by whom, I should note, I was frequently ignored. It took several weeks for them to get past the fact that I was just about their age but college-educated, without a "record," unmarried and still without children. Nearly half the girls in class were mothers or pregnant; at least two of the guys had gang affiliations. Had I let my own background or my college theories and assumptions about urban youth cloud my perspective, I don't think the students would ever have listened to me. It was sometimes difficult not to be judgmental, but by suspending my own biases and letting the students verbalize their own needs and desires, we were able to work together toward tangible goals. Trite as it may sound, I couldn't have asked for a more diverse, eye-opening and relevant first job experience. As the summer internship was ending, I entered my job search with a far clearer idea of the career path I wanted than most recent graduates probably have. The network I had built with professionals in nonprofit organizations, the contacts I had gained through Jane Pearsall and the firsthand experience of working in a community agency all reinforced my desire to work in the public sector. I had learned that nonprofit organizations do not offer the fast-paced environment of the corporate sector, but they are characterized by a dedication and a desire for success that rival and surpass those of private companies. Nevertheless, the measurable output is slow and sometimes difficult to gauge quantitatively compared to that of corporations. But the results are far more important because the capital produced is human capital: personal growth and development, individual and community empowerment. I found my first full-time job less than a month after my internship ended. As director of a civic education program for a community organizing agency, I was able to help transform a program that once served seven Chicago public high schools and about 3,000 students into one that served as many as 35 Chicago and suburban high schools and 50,000 students. I enlisted 250 social-studies teachers, created a three-volume classroom curriculum about voting and the election process, helped coordinate citywide mock elections using official voting apparatus (through a partnership with local election officials), and registered student voters so they, too, could apply what they were learning in school. Now I'm off to school again myself. Having worked with teachers and students and having seen what truly happens in our public schools, I am determined that we draft meaningful legislation to improve public education in this country. After I receive my master's degree, I hope not only to affect such laws, but also to write them. ............................ Erin Austin Krasik '93 grew up in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio and since graduation has lived in Chicago. She is former director of Students for an Educated Democracy with the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute and is currently a consultant and graduate student at the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. She also volunteers as the coordinator of Smith College Internships in the Public Interest. |
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