Fátima Reyes, Grade 11
UWC Costa Rica
“UWC makes education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.”
Every UWC student has these words tattooed into their brain like one more of the elements that make up our identity. From the very moment, we joined the global and growing UWC family, we have been almost indoctrinated into understanding our lives and purposes around education, people, nations, cultures, peace, and a sustainable future. As the enthusiastic and naive younglings that most of us are when we first join the movement, we internalize this phrase without question. We believe in the promise that we can change the world because they say we can, and mostly because we want to feel like we can. So, we praise and live by these words even before we get the chance to test them, to ask ourselves what they truly mean and what is beneath them. As UWC-ers, we accept our identity before we even have one, assuming, perhaps to some of our relief, that it has been imposed on us and not realizing that it has merely been sketched, if at all, and that it is up to us to delineate, color and finally embrace it as our own.
I was once one of these enthusiastic and naive newcomers, too. I was filled with excitement and naturally took pride in a mission statement that was yet to rightfully call my own. As I began immersing myself in my new home, I was left in awe by everyone I met, call that my peers, teachers, or the Uber driver. I was overwhelmed by a feeling I would soon identify as impostor syndrome. I began fearing, and consequently repudiating, the UWC mission statement, one whose shoes I thought I would never be able to fill. It was cruel, I thought, to point such grand expectations and promises into little human beings like myself. I asked myself, how could I ever be expected to fulfil such an enormous mission.
So, in a desperate attempt to do so, I decided to build my UWC journey around this statement. I tried my best to excel at academics, signed myself up to as many CAS activities as I possibly could, participated, even if just barely, in all cultural events and even launched my own sustainability movement. I was determined to be the type of UWC student that I wrongly assumed was expected of me and, for a while, I thought I was nailing it.
However, I had failed to take in one variable. The control freak that I can occasionally turn into had forgotten one crucial element of my plan: unpredictability. The fun chaos that had become my life was suddenly and unexpectedly interrupted. My journey, like everyone else’s, was unfortunately cut short by the current global health crisis. In the midst of nostalgia and tears and laughs, we were all forced to pack up and say our final goodbyes to each other. Those last days were sentimental; you know it just as well as I do. As I stacked boxes with my name; as I saw my second years walking up the stage; and as I walked up to the gate to farewell whoever was leaving at the time, I came to a realization. Better late than never, my mom always said.
I had spent the last eight months of my life working towards what I thought was the ultimate goal, channelling all my energies into education, nations, cultures, peace, and sustainability. But as I looked back at what had been the best months of my life, I realized I had missed the most important part of our mission statement: people. It wasn’t the classrooms, the fields, or the rooms that I’d be missing and longing for. These weren’t the elements that had made UWC so incredible; it was the people whom I had shared them with. It wasn’t the test results, but the friends with whom I had studied with. It wasn’t the CAS hours or my report card, but the laughs I had shared while there. It wasn’t the food I tried or the languages I heard or music I had danced to; it was the faces behind all of that. The individuals that had taught me their ways, corrected my pronunciation of their words, and shared their plates with me.
Finally, I see the truth. I am not expected to solve world peace or populate Mars or find a cure for cancer. Our mission statement was not written for me to change the world. It was written for me to change myself, and they knew that it would be the people I have been so blessed as to interact with and learn from that would help me do so. Looking back, I don’t regret how I shaped my first year at UWC because, even if I myself was oblivious of it, I spent it the best possible way.
The UWC mission has a lot of power inscribed in it, but it does not only lie on education, nations, cultures, peace, or a sustainable future. Our power is people. It is us, every single one of us that has ever been part of the UWC family in any capacity that makes it worth living. Like any other family, we are not perfect, nor will we ever be. We fight and disagree and hurt each other and even, occasionally, split apart. But we also make-up and apologize and hug, because that’s just who we are. We keep messing up and learning and growing in the hopes that one day, these 17 words will be more than a watermark tattoo.
In the hopes that they will become us.
Every UWC student has these words tattooed into their brain like one more of the elements that make up our identity. From the very moment, we joined the global and growing UWC family, we have been almost indoctrinated into understanding our lives and purposes around education, people, nations, cultures, peace, and a sustainable future. As the enthusiastic and naive younglings that most of us are when we first join the movement, we internalize this phrase without question. We believe in the promise that we can change the world because they say we can, and mostly because we want to feel like we can. So, we praise and live by these words even before we get the chance to test them, to ask ourselves what they truly mean and what is beneath them. As UWC-ers, we accept our identity before we even have one, assuming, perhaps to some of our relief, that it has been imposed on us and not realizing that it has merely been sketched, if at all, and that it is up to us to delineate, color and finally embrace it as our own.
I was once one of these enthusiastic and naive newcomers, too. I was filled with excitement and naturally took pride in a mission statement that was yet to rightfully call my own. As I began immersing myself in my new home, I was left in awe by everyone I met, call that my peers, teachers, or the Uber driver. I was overwhelmed by a feeling I would soon identify as impostor syndrome. I began fearing, and consequently repudiating, the UWC mission statement, one whose shoes I thought I would never be able to fill. It was cruel, I thought, to point such grand expectations and promises into little human beings like myself. I asked myself, how could I ever be expected to fulfil such an enormous mission.
So, in a desperate attempt to do so, I decided to build my UWC journey around this statement. I tried my best to excel at academics, signed myself up to as many CAS activities as I possibly could, participated, even if just barely, in all cultural events and even launched my own sustainability movement. I was determined to be the type of UWC student that I wrongly assumed was expected of me and, for a while, I thought I was nailing it.
However, I had failed to take in one variable. The control freak that I can occasionally turn into had forgotten one crucial element of my plan: unpredictability. The fun chaos that had become my life was suddenly and unexpectedly interrupted. My journey, like everyone else’s, was unfortunately cut short by the current global health crisis. In the midst of nostalgia and tears and laughs, we were all forced to pack up and say our final goodbyes to each other. Those last days were sentimental; you know it just as well as I do. As I stacked boxes with my name; as I saw my second years walking up the stage; and as I walked up to the gate to farewell whoever was leaving at the time, I came to a realization. Better late than never, my mom always said.
I had spent the last eight months of my life working towards what I thought was the ultimate goal, channelling all my energies into education, nations, cultures, peace, and sustainability. But as I looked back at what had been the best months of my life, I realized I had missed the most important part of our mission statement: people. It wasn’t the classrooms, the fields, or the rooms that I’d be missing and longing for. These weren’t the elements that had made UWC so incredible; it was the people whom I had shared them with. It wasn’t the test results, but the friends with whom I had studied with. It wasn’t the CAS hours or my report card, but the laughs I had shared while there. It wasn’t the food I tried or the languages I heard or music I had danced to; it was the faces behind all of that. The individuals that had taught me their ways, corrected my pronunciation of their words, and shared their plates with me.
Finally, I see the truth. I am not expected to solve world peace or populate Mars or find a cure for cancer. Our mission statement was not written for me to change the world. It was written for me to change myself, and they knew that it would be the people I have been so blessed as to interact with and learn from that would help me do so. Looking back, I don’t regret how I shaped my first year at UWC because, even if I myself was oblivious of it, I spent it the best possible way.
The UWC mission has a lot of power inscribed in it, but it does not only lie on education, nations, cultures, peace, or a sustainable future. Our power is people. It is us, every single one of us that has ever been part of the UWC family in any capacity that makes it worth living. Like any other family, we are not perfect, nor will we ever be. We fight and disagree and hurt each other and even, occasionally, split apart. But we also make-up and apologize and hug, because that’s just who we are. We keep messing up and learning and growing in the hopes that one day, these 17 words will be more than a watermark tattoo.
In the hopes that they will become us.
www.unitedworldwide.co