Hey Y’all,
I’m Bianca, and this is the part where I am supposed to introduce myself.

Here we go! I am an upcoming Junior majoring in Psychology… I’m also Pre-Med, which means I love myself *note the sarcasm*.

Okay, to the main point of this all: I love people. All people, but specifically women. Women are so strong, we go through so much and are just so resilient. When picking something for the summer I wanted to do a program that didn’t necessarily just benefit me or my resume. I wanted to do something to help build bridges for women to have the resources and pathways they needed for success. After submitting my application for Duke Engage in NYC, I then got interviewed by Ada and Shannan, and they brought out pieces of my application that I thought would make me unqualified for this program i.e. my inexperience with nonprofits or my inexperience working with social justice, but somehow through my inexperience they picked me to work with this program and I couldn’t be more excited! 

I have always felt like social injustices were such an important aspect of my life for many reasons i.e. being a black woman and growing up in a small southern rural town, but with everything else on my plate, I kept pushing it to the back burner mostly out of fear of incompetence. I have grown up with this dual personality–one for home and one for the public. It wasn’t necessarily something my parents enforced as much as I did to be accepted in school and around town. I realized that with that I had neglected my beliefs and values. Upon arrival at Duke, I saw the route to a deeper understanding of what social justice meant and how I fit into that picture. This program has given me an avenue to explore feminism, to explore social justice through non-profits, and most of all to explore what it means to break barriers set up for girls of color.

There are many differences between rural Arkansas and New York City, but here are a couple things that I’ve noticed most:

1. I have no idea what Lower Eastside means… I’m from Southeast Arkansas we really only have towns.

2. I have no idea how to ride a subway or a city bus. Everyone drives in Arkansas.3. I love to cook, but the idea of surviving totally from my own cooking is SCARY.

4. I’ve never really lived in a city before which brings me to question will I even be able to sleep? (Because I can only sleep in total silence.) This is where I’ve really drawn a line: I love my sleep! So, I’ve already bought earplugs.

With all the things I don’t know, I am excited about the new city: new noises, new people, and new feelings. Oh, I almost forgot one more difference… life in the south is very slow. I walk like a snail, and word is that people in New York tend to walk “a mile a minute”. Will I be fine? Probably. Will I get pushed over? Probably. But like the title of this post says, everything is fine.