Shayna Stockton

A Life of Transition

Shayna Stockton
V.I.S.T.A AmeriCorps
Ginew/Golden Eagle Program

Support System

I think that my mom is a very strong individual. She raised my sister and I on her own. She always managed to support us, even when she didn’t know what was going on. She couldn’t really help with our homework a lot of time, but she made sure we did it. I actually lucked out on that because I was the younger one, so I could just ask my older sister when I ran into trouble. Except for in math because the both of us are just like, “We’ll figure it out some how.”

She’s a very smart individual, and because we are sisters, she’s never escaping me and my awful comma use for the rest of her life [laughs]. My sister never went to college because that was never her thing and formal education never suited her, but she is one who’s constantly reading and reads non-fiction for fun, so she’s kind of self-educated. She’s a sailor, but I feel like she almost has a college degree by proxy because she has literally read every single one of my papers. And she can comment, often times, better than some of my professors on the clarity of my writing, and how well I got my message across.

Following the Social Norm

I took a whole bunch of extra math classes for no reason in high school because teachers and counselors told me I needed to in order to get into a good college. I was always going to go for an English or Humanities based major, but I still took math up to trigonometry. I was like, “I don’t need trigonometry!” Colleges aren’t impressed that this English major had taken trigonometry, it didn’t matter! But it looked good for the schools because they knew I was a good student. I was told that I was smart so that I needed to go to college. That’s what you do, get good grades and you go to the best one you can get into.

I went and got my undergraduate at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois… Only people from Illinois know where it is [smiling]. And then I did my graduate work at Indiana University, which is where I got my master’s degree in Folklore. I didn’t know the job force when I went into college. I just assumed that I would figure it out when I got out of college. I didn’t really know the majors either. I started as an English major because English was my best class and I didn’t really understand all that was out there. I certainly didn’t understand what I was going to do with it afterwards. I had tons of ideas, but none of them were very practical because I didn’t know the market. I would’ve never gone for my master’s degree as it stands now because I’m not sure I’m going to use it. You should never go for it if you’re not going use it. I was originally going to go for my PhD. I was going full throttle and then I ran into a few speed bumps. I feel like I kind of wasted time and money because I didn’t know what I was doing or I didn’t know what I was going for. I just went to college because people told me I should.

Get Ready for the Real World

High school does not prepare you for college. I hate the five paragraph essay. Every college professor hates the five paragraph essay, they don’t prepare you for the real world. Plus high school teachers teach on a very antiquated system. There have been a lot of reforms in the younger years, which focused on making the younger kids love learning and love reading, and then we screw it up. I’ve always liked learning and once you start learning things, you want to start infecting others with it! I loved school, until high school and then everything was awful.

I definitely think if I were to go back to high school again in Illinois, there wouldn’t be the same opportunities as I do see here in Minneapolis. I like that the school system pushes you to do extracurriculars. However, unless your extra curricular is going to have something to do with what you plan to do in the future I think that it’s worthless. I mean it's worthwhile for you if you enjoy it and you're spending time with your friends, but future wise it's pointless. It’s much better to do something like get a part time job or go volunteer. Get the experience and get out in the world. That’s going to do so much more for you than going to art club.

More than changing the school system, I would change the academic system. Universities don’t allow for college to be an area of growth because of the student loan situation. Colleges are kind of are backing the students into a corner. I feel that higher education should just be accessible to everyone. People should be able to use that time to figure out what they want to do, like being able to go and audit a bunch of classes and different degrees and go, “okay which one of these is actually going to work?”

Colleges need to incorporate more experiential learning. The fact that the University of Minnesota is doing this, I think is great. My college did no kind of volunteering or experiential learning. I had no idea what it was like out our doors. I worked on campus so I didn’t even have a job off campus. I had no idea. I went from being a very sheltered child, to a very sheltered student, to going out into the world and going oh man, what am I doing. And I don’t think that that shock was necessary.

Career

I never wanted to work with kids; I kind of stumbled into that. When I was in school I was thinking I would become a college professor. Then I found out what that kind of field was like after I’d started my master’s degree. When actually I’d like to just eat food for the rest of my life and so that’s not going to work [laughing].

My current employment is for V.I.S.T.A., and that stands for Volunteers In Service To America. This is all under the AmeriCorps umbrella. Last year I worked for Reading Corps, which is also through AmeriCorps. That job was direct service, and I wanted to do more of the planning behind the scenes sort of thing, so that’s why I went looking for other V.I.S.T.A. positions. Although, Reading Corps worked out pretty well for me. One of the reasons it did was because I was put with a very good teacher. I heard from other members who got some newer teachers, or teachers who just had different styles and had a lot of trouble doing what they were supposed to do. I got a fantastic teacher who had done Reading Corps before. She had been in her position for 10 years. She also had her teacher’s assistant, who was a former Reading Corps member, so I had basically everything stacked in my favor. I had a lot more freedom than a lot of my cohort did, because of my teacher. It was that freedom that I really enjoyed. Most Reading Corps members had what book they were going to read told to them, and the vocabulary words they were going to use told to them. I picked my own books and I made my own vocabulary words.

Despite my success through Reading Corps, I interviewed at a whole bunch of places. The Ginew Golden Eagles program, where I am now, stood out to me the most because of Julie, the program director who interviewed me. The way she talked about the program and the way she presented it just really made me feel like it was some place that I could get involved and that I could see myself working. This job is definitely spoiling me over other jobs. Especially because right now V.I.S.T.A is a term position. That means I’m only here a year.

My job description is kind of fuzzy. I’m a capacity builder, I’m just helping to build the program and improve it. I feel like I tend to just factor in everything I’ve learned. The last year was especially helpful because I was working with kids and I was working very heavily with the teacher. I learned a lot about working with kids, which is very useful in our program. We were very literacy focused, and I had the literacy background. But I’ve also used things I’ve picked up from my time in retail because I run into a lot of situations where I end up thinking that there is no such thing as a useless skill. Everything about my past I believe prepared me for my position. Everything I’ve done builds up.

Picture Credits:

1. Shayna Stockton

2. https://www.google.com/search?q=be+informed&espv=2&biw=1440&bih=687&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj55_bG2fLQAhVIrRoKHW7ZDhMQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=vcb4tqI0PYrbzM%3A
3. https://www.google.com/search?q=american+indian+center+minneapolis&espv=2&biw=1440&bih=731&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiRmcPl3_LQAhWMHxoKHTbVDx0Q_AUICSgE#imgrc=o1_sTBwstVXnaM%3A