Sometimes quitters win

As a child, I was really good at quitting. I quit ballet, tap, jazz, gymnastics, clarinet, karate, ice skating, Brownies, yearbook (only after being editor in 8th grade), tennis, singing, speech team, and swim team. There are probably some other after-school activities that I'm forgetting, if only because they made such a brief and meaningless impact on my life. I did hold onto a couple of activities for great lengths of time. Though I would be hard-pressed to eke out Heart and Soul today, piano was a constant in my life for ten years or so. Horseback riding also stood the test of time, until I got tired of having frozen toes in the winter, even while wearing two pairs of socks under my riding boots. Besides, once I finally convinced my parents to buy me my own horse (which they later sold while I was at camp one summer), the challenge was basically complete. I also managed to stick around Hebrew School for much longer than most kids my age, taking greater-than-normal interest in tutoring the younger kids and helping them prepare for their big milestone days.

I recognize that I was so lucky to have the opportunity to try all of these different activities, and nobody is going to enjoy everything they try, but I still think it's a bit funny that I was such a good quitter. Of course I still managed to fill my resume with plenty of quality extracurricular activities so that the colleges I applied to would be impressed enough to admit me, but I still sometimes feel a twang of regret at not having a cool skill or impressive talent to showcase. Thank goodness YS and AM have an incredibly athletic father who can pass along his sports genes to them!

The thing is, when thinking about writing this blog post, I realized that there is something I never did quit. It's a passion that I have now turned into a career, even though there's no way to show it off at a talent show.

Since a very young age, I have been committed to social justice. I'm not sure where it really came from - while my mother is definitely socially-minded and has always been involved in important Lexington non-profits, she never exactly sat me down and said, "this is right, and this is wrong." I guess that's the thing about really great parents; they don't have to tell you those things directly. Instead, my parents were able to teach me right from wrong just by following the right path themselves and hoping I was paying attention. In the sixth grade, after starting a mini-revolution against a racist ballroom dancing school, I was given a humanitarian award. Later, as a senior in high school, I won a small scholarship for my social justice work. I went to diversity camp, led diversity clubs at school, participated in leadership workshops, and created and implemented a self-esteem/diversity appreciation curriculum for local middle school students (with my best friend and partner-in-crime, HL, who was by my side during most of the activities on this list). I was deeply passionate about teaching young people the importance of tolerance and valued every opportunity I had to participate in related activities or trainings.

Then I went to Brown.

Brown manages to attract some of the most liberal-minded and progressive young people. Some say it's one of the most liberal schools out there. Others say it's only liberal for the Ivy League. Still, I found myself surrounded by people who already valued tolerance and diversity, and appreciating each other's differences was something that was expected. There didn't seem to be the need to sit around and discuss it to death like I had in middle and high school. So, I didn't. Instead, I stayed busy with Hillel and my sorority and studying my butt off. Sure, I walked out of class in protest of the war in Iraq, but then I boarded a plane to the Bahamas the next day and enjoyed Spring Break without giving much thought to Democracy.

Before my senior year at Brown, I was faced with the awful predicament of choosing what to do after college. After college?! Uhhh....CRAP! I considered my options and decided that I really wanted to become a lawyer who somehow "fixed" the foster care system. Okay Rachel. Good idea. So, my parents shelled out big bucks for an LSAT class, I studied my butt off, and before I knew it I was walking out of the test feeling good about my efforts but fairly sure that I had no desire to be a lawyer. The next plan involved taking a "year off" with HL, where we would spend half of it backpacking around Europe and the other half working in Australia. We soon realized we were way too poor for that idea! HL changed her plans to teaching English in China, which seemed like a good idea until SARS broke out, so she headed to law school, and I headed to New York to join AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, where I would spend a year living in a strange intersection of MTV's The Real World and Americorps. I lived with strangers (awesome, amazing, incredible strangers), spent my evenings in facilitated discussions about Judaism and social justice, and worked full-time at an alternative high school in Brooklyn for students with severe drug addictions and mental health diagnoses. I decided to become a Social Worker, spent the next year applying to graduate school, and cheerfully enrolled in a dual degree program for Jewish Communal Service.

Now I work at an incredible organization that truly makes a difference. I work with a team of dedicated people who collectively agree to put up with sometimes less-than-ideal working conditions because we know we're doing good things and helping people who need help. I spend every day pursuing the thing I never quit: fighting for a better life for everyone.

I may not be able to hold my own in a tennis game with D, turn a perfect pirouette, play a piano sonata, or kick ass like EJW, but I can go to work every day and feel good about what I do, knowing that I am still the person I was in middle school when I decided that everyone needs a voice and someone to stick up for them when life isn't going their way.