At that moment, however, I didn’t care about any of those things... I was going to Disney, and that was all that mattered to me. All of my vacations up until then I had spent at home. My family didn’t own a beach house, and my mom was fiercely against store bought plastic toys. I did have an easel, butterfly wings, an endless supply of costumes, and my most valuable assets at the time: our building, my sisters, and neighbors. But even so, there was always that summer day where the time didn’t tick, and I was bored. |
You would think that we all jumped towards these opportunities. It seems logical that if we’re given autonomy, we take initiative, don't we? I’m afraid to say that a lot of us didn’t at the beginning and several of us are still struggling to do so today.
Therefore, when you analyze the culture—the “nurture”—it becomes easier to understand why several people have a hard time taking initiative, and why the summers of haunted houses, directing plays, and selling brownies have come in handy for me.
And it’s for this exact reason that for some of us, the IA has been a place where we’ve learned to start taking initiative, for others it’s been more of an opportunity to unleash it. Either way, I strongly believe that each of our experiences in the IA is unique to how much we’ve taken advantage of the autonomy we’ve been given. For me, its been one of discovery, and being able to discover what you want is something that shapes the rest of your life.