Essential Question: Who Am I?
For high school, I went to The Graham School (TGS). All four years, students would go on internships. The first three years the internships were only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but seniors would go every day for the second half of the school year. This was called Walkabout. In preparation, the first half of the year, seniors would research what kind of site they wanted to do, update resumes, interview prep, etc.
After a site “hired” the student, they had to write a “Walkabout proposal” and turn it into their parents/guardians, homeroom teacher, and site mentor(s). The proposal provided information about TGS, what led the student to the specific site, and the student’s essential question. An essential question was basically just a question that related to both the student and the site and the goal was to answer the question by the end of Walkabout. For example, mine was: Can I be a teacher for the rest of my life?
In 2019 my “sister” Arden moved to Colorado and my “sisters” August and Aspen were on their way out. After Arden moved, the inevitability of the other two leaving caused me a lot of stress. To cope, I made a three-part plan for me moving forward. Part 1: Survive the girls leaving and the emotional fallout. Part 2: In 2020, make new friends and spend time with them. Part 3: In 2021, ask one of the previously mentioned new friends to be my roommate.
Obviously, Covid interfered with my plans a bit, but what is important for the sake of this installment is not how the world stopped, but what happened when it slowly started back up. It started on April 24th of last year when I officially became a published author. Then on May 20th, I started dating a girl. At the end of June, I was a groomsman in my “brother” Greg's two weddings (Nigerian and Western). The next weekend my “sisters”, myself and my best friend Marshall, stayed with Arden in Colorado for the 4th of July. Upon returning from Colorado, I started my job at New Story as a teacher support.
On August 5th, I broke up with the girl that I had been dating and she went crazy. She started harassing me through text, email, and social media, and she even showed up at Kroger where I worked a couple of times. This whole thing went on for about a month until I finally changed my number, and got a restraining order. After that I quit Kroger after four years and almost immediately after quitting, I moved in with my former coworker Shane. In summary, I spent a year doing nothing followed by a year of being incredibly busy and I have been experiencing a lot of whiplash as a result.
Now Shane also went to TGS and when we first met we bonded over that fact. After a particularly intense session of reminiscing when I first moved in, I went to my Google drive and I started looking through my walkabout stuff. I found my proposal and I was inspired. I have always based each season of Rules for a Greattastic Life on the goal I am trying to reach that season. I think I'm going to start framing them as essential questions from this point on. My essential question for this season is “Who am I?” My reasoning is I think I need to get to know myself a little better after the events of the last two years before I try to reach any more major goals.
One last note, the season finale of season 2 was called “Don't Wait.” Covid had just hit and I wrote that installment not only to try to give people hope but to tell the future me to learn from the lockdown we were all currently in and never wait to do anything. In that spirit, even though the main point of this season is for me to take a little break and do some self-discovery, I'm still going to be trying to get started on some other long-term goals.
Have a Greattastic day and be safe!
J. Mitchie Ulibarri
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