Up until two weeks ago, my internship had hit a lull. I had settled into my routine, familiarized myself with the copy machine, and exhausted the 20 free monthly articles on the New York Times website.
And then, my internship began. I mean really began, in the sense that my duties jumped from making copies and spreadsheets to facilitating a job-training program for non-custodial fathers, almost all of whom have a criminal background. The first day was jarring to say the least. I, a middle-class college student from a nice suburban town stood at the front of a room full of men ranging from 24 and up, sporting in doo-rags, tattoos, and reluctant expressions. Some had been mandated to the program by their parole/probation officers. Others were simply tired of always being jobless and broke and were ready to make a change.
In the last two weeks, I’ve heard stories of despair, frustration, and disgust. I heard how one man’s father forced him to fake insanity at the age of 14 so he would be diagnosed as manic depressive and receive certain health benefits. I heard about one man’s struggle through drug treatment, and listened as another recounted how the cops swarmed his house in a drug raid.
Despite the past convictions and histories, I’ve also heard something else from these men; they’ve shared with me their dream jobs, visions of futures filled with cars, money, and stable families. One day, the class created collages from magazines of our “future dreams and visions,” and presented them to the class. This task seems better suited for kindergarten, which my supervisor acknowledge when she explained it to the class. Yet these men didn’t seem to think so. One participant stood at the front of the room with his collage, proudly displaying his dream of becoming a personal trainer and said, “I never got to do these projects in school. I was always too busy getting in trouble.”
By far the most rewarding moment was when this same participant completed an exercise in Microsoft Word. He had never used the computer before, and I sat with him for over an hour as he labored to type a short cover letter. It must have been under 500 words, something most collegiettes could scribble off in ten minutes. But the look on his face when finally clicked print, the pride in his voice when he asked for his own copy, and the way he floated out of class made such a small accomplishment into something much more profound.
At the end of each week, we ask the men two questions: What did you bring to class this week? What did you get?
Everyone said they brought something different to class. Answers ranged from energy to uncertainty to frustration. Yet the answers for the latter question were very similar. “I got hope,” one man said. “And an open mind.” I’d say for certain that I got the exact same things.