Samantha Williams currently serves as the Senior Health and Well-being Director at the University Y Student Center. She shares her thoughts on the struggles of the past year and a half and where we are as an association today.
When approached about writing for our Y’s blog covering the topics of experience, struggles and wins, I was immediately transferred to the scene in the film, "The Breakfast Club," where Anthony Michael Hall’s character is asked to write an essay about who he thinks he is. You know the scene. “No less than a thousand words.” The parameters around writing for the Y weren’t as steep but I did find myself procrastinating and clipping a pen to my lip while I pondered on this incredibly apropos time to be writing about my experience with the Y. You see, I have tendered my resignation. My last day is August 13.
Instead of listing off several adjectives or adverbs or colorful statements, I’d like to state simply that my career at the Y has been hard. In every sense of the word. When I became a full-time staff team member, I remember my supervisor stating that it would take at least six months to learn my role and that I’d be drinking from the proverbial firehose the whole time. Boy was she wrong! It took at least a year to feel like it was all starting to gel. For one, I finally understood how a teacher feels at the beginning of each school year. Getting to know the names of all of my coworkers was a challenge in and of itself. It still is to this day. It takes a lot of people to do the work at the Y, and remarkably, it’s the work that keeps us coming back.
What we do is hard, however, what we do to help transform lives on a daily basis isn’t without joy. And it isn’t for everyone. We are all special individuals who are dedicated to the art of serving others. It’s quite allowed to say in one breath that our jobs are anything but easy, but that we love what we do. Sure, I have felt like giving up way too many times. With the support of some amazing coworkers, dedicated members, and world-class supervisors, I have been able to remain accountable to a team and to a cause during one of the most inauspicious periods in our history. Whether that was a phone call every Friday at 9am from someone just checking in, or finding a way to open up and have a cry in a gym closet, or finding the humor in an accidental paper shredder incident, or not feeling up to teaching but giving it my best shot anyway, or writing an email to someone special stating plainly, “11:11”, I’ve been incredibly lucky to have had this hard journey with the YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties. Incredibly lucky.
This piece didn’t even come close to 1000 words but sometimes less is more. And while my time in Washington state is fading with each passing day, I know I will always have this rich experience to lean back on when the going gets tough. Because you know what they say? The tough get goin’!