Teamwork Make Dream Work

“Are you moving to Philly?” my Uber driver inquired while glancing back at me in his rearview mirror. “Well,” I said slightly chuckling, “I am moving.”

A 3:30 am alarm clock, two planes, and a rainy ride into the city from the airport later, the full weight of my decision was finally dawning on me. It was nearly a quarter til 7 and the check-in window for volunteers was supposed to end at 6:30 pm. I lugged my bags into the hectic lobby, quickly gave my name to the front desk, and rushed up to the 4th floor to try and conceal some of my jet-lagged appearance in the 5 minutes I had before I definitely needed to be downstairs. When I walked into the conference room, it was clear that I was the last of the new volunteers to arrive. Once I signed in, I sat at the first open seat I could see and sheepishly introduced myself to my table mates. It was hard for me to focus during that first 2-hour block of our staging session. On top of my exhaustion from my marathon travel day, I was attempting to gauge the personalities of everyone around me and try and conceptualize what our next 27 months together might look like. I recognized some from social media and from our online discussion forums, but essentially, I was sitting in a room full of strangers. A room full of strangers with whom I was about to embark on an unknown adventure. As all of this was swirling in my head, our tables were instructed to work in groups to come up with 4 words that described a positive group dynamic.

“Communication”

“Respect”

“What’s a good word to convey like teamwork makes the dream work?”

In my barely coherent state, I miscounted the words and earnestly suggested that we just use that phrase.

“I mean that is 4 words, right? Can’t we just say that?”

“I think that it’s actually 5 words,” one of my table mates corrected gently.

“We could change it to ‘Teamwork Make Dream Work’” another tablemate joked.

We all erupted into laughter and any ice that had been present amongst us was shattered. It was probably our collective sleep deprivation and nerves that made such a stupid bit seem like the funniest thing we’d all ever heard, but regardless, it was exactly what I needed at that moment.

“I’m sorry y’all I am not operating at my full capacity,” I explained and we all agreed that none of us were quite in our normal head spaces.

From that first interaction, our small but mighty cohort of volunteers have gotten closer to one another in 5 days than I have with some people that I’ve known for years. There’s nothing like spending 12 hours on a cramped plane together, navigating the Qatar airport, and journeying through the Armenian mountains at 1 am to really bond a group of people. We’ll be spending a few more days all together before being separated into smaller groups and sent to a trio of villages to live with our host families for the remaining duration of our Pre-Service Training. We’ve already begun planning the logistics of how we will all meet in the middle to get the whole gang back together. There’s a special energy that arises when people with similar values, goals, and passions come together in one space for a common purpose. That energy has only grown more electric as we continue feeding into it with our shared anxieties, aspirations, and anticipation of service.

Before we arrived in Armenia, one of our staging facilitators encouraged us to reflect on the fact that sitting in that hotel room with our fellow volunteers was probably the first time in months that none of us felt like we had to justify our decision to join the Peace Corps to anyone. That realization flooded me with relief. I felt my jaw untighten for the first time in weeks. My fears and doubts were no smaller than they had been before I left home. In fact, there were even more stress-inducing unknowns being introduced with every training session. I have been attempting to connect these hypothetical puzzle pieces together to imagine the image of my life in service. The difference now was that I didn’t have to solve this puzzle alone anymore. One of the first things we all learned about each other was that we were all scared of the same things. What if I can’t communicate properly with my host family? What if I get too isolated and homesick? What if I fail? These questions are still pounding around in my head as hard as they were a week ago, but knowing that my head isn’t the only one aching from uncertainty and excitement sure makes it feel a lot lighter.