In less than four months, I will no longer be an AmeriCorps VISTA. For me, this is a monumental, world-shifting change. I think it’s due to the fact that every second I’ve been in Montana, my identity has been related to being a VISTA. But it’s time. The legacy binder for this service site is jam-packed with nostalgia. Email addresses of contacts in other organizations, affordable and wonderful places to visit, the site supervisor’s birthday – all the important bits. If a VISTA fills this position, I hope some of it proves useful.

For a type-A, change-averse Virgo, that’s a big if. But one of the most important lessons I’ve learned during my time at this service is to accept – really accept – that there are things I can’t control. And whether or not a VISTA comes to take my shoes, I will have done everything I can to make this program run smoother. My VAD boils down to that goal: to build capacity in the program so that it can continue to support students in need in perpetuity, regardless of who is running it.

The last blog post I wrote was a desperate critique of the mental strain put on AmeriCorps members. There is definitely a lot to criticize about AmeriCorps (read: the classist, exclusionary, pretentious, exploitative excuse that to affect poverty you have to live in it), but there is so much more that I have gained that I am choosing to write about instead. The most important takeaway that I have from service is that anything you can do, no matter how small it feels, does make a difference. It definitely doesn’t always feel like it – there have been countless days where the enormity of the problem of youth homelessness completely eclipses the idea that I can do anything about it. But sending emails, keeping the office space organized, and simply being there for the students makes a difference for them. I can’t fix the problem of youth homelessness, and I can’t help these students out of their situations, but I can make their day a little bit better. It isn’t up to me to fix the problem; all I’m tasked to do is show up every day and do what I can to help.

A book that I recently read sums up the other major takeaway from this experience. The book interviews a doctor who has spent his career designing health programs for homeless people in Boston. A main theme throughout is the underlying hopelessness in the Sisyphean effort to help the homeless population while watching policies on homelessness move backward. Homelessness is constantly being more strictly criminalized, health care costs keep rising, and more and more Americans are in imminent risk of crisis. Working with individuals, or programs, that address basic needs is a task that will continue to repeat until homelessness itself is eradicated. It’s Sisyphus all over again – pushing the same rock up the same hill and knowing that you’re going to keep doing it without much hope of any change. The doctor says that he has learned that it’s about enjoying the walk down the hill before you have to push the rock up again. Finding the joy in what you do, taking moments of relief when you need to, and continuing to do what you can.

In less than four months, I will no longer be an AmeriCorps VISTA, but I will carry what I’ve learned under that title for the rest of my life.