On the Completely Unattainable Goals that I Set for Myself and then Unsurprisingly Failed to Achieve

When I first came to Turkey, I wanted to do a few simple things on top of the normal duties of a DEKAMER volunteer. I wanted to learn to speak conversational Turkish, write a research paper on turtles (which I have never studied before in my life) and publish in a Duke journal, and write at least ten poems. I have accomplished, at most, 20% of any of those goals and, hint, I wrote two poems. For a long time, I must admit, I had a knot in my chest. Always, in the back of my mind, I felt the pressure of accomplishing these goals. This thought weighed on me as we learned and reflected an enormous amount about both loggerhead turtles and the impact of conservation. I couldn’t shake it as I, along with my peers, spent night after night finding and protecting over 500 loggerhead nests, taking the overall nest viability on this beach from 15% without our efforts to almost 90%. And this knot twisted and tightened as we traveled to incredible historical sites, had fascinating and deeply thought-provoking conversations with Turkish volunteers about culture and our differences and striking similarities, and made a manual for new volunteers in order to help their transition and improve the organization and efficiency of the center. Why was I so incapable of making the most of my time in Turkey?

This slightly absurd mental battle continued to rage in me until one night patrol while talking to a volunteer from England. He is a smart and ambitious university student, just like any of us. Yet he didn’t feel this discomfort that comes with the assumption of future regret. Furthermore, he didn’t feel the need to do way more than he could ever reasonably expect to do in his short stay in Turkey. Instead, he was just enjoying the heck out of the opportunity to come to a beautiful place in a foreign country and make a measurable difference doing something he loved. And slowly the knot loosened as I remembered the obvious. I am a college student who has time, energy, and some knowledge to offer to an organization like DEKAMER. But I also know far less than any employee or Ph.D. student here because they spend their lives working with loggerhead turtles and conservation and I do not. I also am not some linguistics genius who can just pick up a language in a few months in a center where the major language is English and by only practicing in my spare time. And most importantly, none of these facts are a problem because, while I like that I try to always make the most of my experiences, my time isn’t quite as valuable as I sometimes like to think it is. So was this trip a failure or a waste of time? Not even remotely. In fact, it was pretty darn close to being mükemmel, which is Turkish for “perfect” (20% conversational here I come).