- You will STILL be a victim of street harassment when it’s over: “God BLESS YOU, yo legs are GREAT. DANGGG. Have an AMAZING day.” Thanks. I hope God still blesses me when I don’t work out 7 days a week.
- Conversations about oppression and privilege are EXHAUSTING. You may leave them feeling guilty, useless, oppressive, and oppressed. And even when you think you have spent sufficient time on the subject, you will be required to sit through more and more speeches and exercises that make you feel guilty, useless, oppressive, and oppressed.
- If self-reflection isn’t your thing, neither is Moxie. A reflection every week can be difficult to put on paper when you feel like your life is a random assortment of shit-show moments. That’s how your life may feel when you’re sitting in a cubicle all day, totally strapped for cash in an expensive city, and constantly noticing how NASTY the culture we live in is.
- When you encounter older feminists, they will either be shocked that young feminists exist or they will commend you on your feminism in a way that makes you feel like the fate of women/girls/humanity now lays in your un-weathered hands. Haha- sux 2 b u.
- Non-profits are totally broke, so even if you want to be low-key during your unpaid internship, it’s simply not an option. One second you feel unneeded, the next you are told to prepare a presentation for an off-site meeting. What???
- You will never have 2 days in a row off, so if you are not from the Northeast and you think it would be adventurous to do Duke Engage New York and discover a new part of the country, that exciting trip to Boston that you imagined is VERY stressful to pull off (I tried, but only because I live up here and had all resources handy, see my blog post titled, “I wore the same dress for 5 days straight”).
- Duke students from another Duke program live in the same NYU dorms as you, so if you thought you’d be escaping the Duke scene for the summer LOL & don’t even get me started on how many Dukies you will see if you go out.
But if you DO partake in The Moxie Project, the advantages are uncountable. The young women that surround you are UNREAL and will make you pee yourself with excitement JUST THINKING ABOUT running into each other on campus (I LOVE YOU LADIES SO MUCH, I’VE NEVER FELT MORE APPRECIATED BY A GROUP OF PEOPLE IN MY ENTIRE LIFE). Your organization will appreciate you in ways that you’d never expect. And lastly, the women supervising you, from the program (shout out to Ada and Anna Marie) and your non-profit (Francoise Jacobsohn is my hero), are there for you. Basically, you never struggle alone. This program is designed so that quite the opposite happens.
