Transfer Student

It was the summer before my sophomore year of high school.

My parents had just learned that the company that my dad worked for was transferring him. Uprooting us from our charming small-town Minnesota life :: packing up our possessions into stale cardboard boxes and a forest’s worth of packing paper. Men I had never seen before were loading my earthly life onto a cold, lifeless semi, bound for the suburbs of Chicago. Tearing us from our friends. Our (within an afternoon’s drive) families. Our charming 1930′s bungalow that my dad so lovingly put sweat and tears into making a comfortable home.

I struggled with the change at first. It was uncomfortable. Days before classes began, I walked into my first varsity practice as a sophomore (as my athletic reputation had already preceded me) and gasped. The other girls looked so much bigger. Stronger. More athletic. And the same went for my first weeks of classes. Everyone seemed smarter. Prettier. Had nicer friends. I was just the new girl from Minnesota who made everyone giggle when I said “about”.

Fast forward a few years. (okay. a LOT of years.) And all those feelings came rushing back to me when I entered my first WPPI class of over 1200 people. You read right. Twelve HUNDRED. It looked a little something like this ::

(Thanks, Doug…my iphone photos are terrible.)

But you know what? It wasn’t long and that seemingly enormous high school with a graduating class almost quadruple the size of my former, suddenly didn’t feel so big. I found I had a voice. Maybe it wasn’t the highest pitched voice, the loudest, or the most appropriate at times. (Hey, I’m keeping it real here.) But I found my place. A warm and open community. Fun people. Big, new opportunities. Amazing adventures.

That experience of so many years ago taught me that it’s OK to feel like the new kid. That, yes, while it can leave you a little shellshocked at times, it also opens up volumes of possibilities that I never even dreamed were possible. And last week, I felt like I was standing in that same place, all over again. That there, among that room of twelve HUNDRED other people, sat people who were maybe in the same place as me. Feeling like they’re a tiny fish in a sea of big fishes. I met some of those fish. They were beautiful. Vulnerable. Open. Willing to take the experience for everything it offered. I met some big fish too. Their beauty and honesty was no different than those of any other fish people I met.

And in those conversations, I had this realization :: You are what matters. And the fact that you are here, sitting in the seventy-second row on the left hand side, willing to be a part of something so much bigger than yourself is powerful. That you are here to commit to your dream of being a better photographer, a better person–that speaks more volumes than anything else.

That’s part of why WPPI was a great experience :: yes, the classes were amazing and the tradeshow was huge :: but I was reminded that I do have a voice.  And I will be back next year. With that same clear, proud voice, filled with grace and gusto, that I learned to speak with so many years ago.