Bad Grades and Awesome Fulfillment

My worst grade ever in college was on a paper I did for World Politics...or something like that. The class was required for graduation and obviously did not make a big impact upon me as I can’t even remember the specific name of the class.  My major was Child and Family Studies with an emphasis on Child Development.  I was in my senior year and I could care less about World Politics and World Relations. I had found my beloved, we were already married and I was counting down the days until I finished college and we could start a family. Literally, as I was pregnant (intentionally!) during my last semester in college.  

We were told to pick a topic for this paper, so being the child development focused person I was, I chose to write a paper on UNICEF.  Out of all the branches of the UN, being a white privileged young woman who couldn’t wait to have her own children I thought I could most identify with the ICEF part of the organization. The International Children’s Education Fund.  So in between my practicum for the other classes I was taking, and my real life preparing meals, budgeting as newlyweds and working out interpersonal communication skills, I researched for my paper on UNICEF. 

I read, studied, and most of all thought about the children and families across the world and I wrote the paper.  My self-evaluation, when I turned it in, was, “I did well!” 

 My teacher however did not think the same.   

He was a short older man descendent from some type of Middle Eastern, Indian, or maybe it was Lebanese background. I couldn’t really tell back then, anyone outside America was simply NOT American. He had wild longer gray hair and even wilder eyebrows. --Though I really can’t fault him for the wild eyebrows. I come from a lineage of good, thick, albeit bushy if left to themselves, eyebrows :) 

His evaluation of my paper was that he gave me a D.  

An actual D, in bright red ink and quite large on the top of my paper! 

From what I remember the reasoning was that I made the paper too emotional, too passionate. He wanted a more technical paper that stayed on the intellectual level that could be discussed and debated. Functionality and Policies. 

He didn’t want so much feelings on children that don’t have access to proper schools or even to a decent education. He didn’t actually want me to think about the girls that have to skip school for a week when they have their periods because they don’t have access to proper sanitary products or even bathrooms. He didn’t really want me to think too hard and feel too much about children that have no water at homes. Children that have no toilets. Children that are exposed to Cholera and Malaria. 

I guess in the end, the paper was more of an emotive research paper than a scholarly one and he graded me accordingly.   A big fat D. I was really disappointed. Truth be told, not because I was actually going to do anything after college that was going to need me to have a knowledge of UNICEF, or World Politics, but because my fairly good grades and my image didn’t have room for a D.  Oh well. I ranted about it for a few days, packed my college life up in a small box and started my family life. 

I never thought about that D again. 

Until last week. 

Fast-forward 20 years and I am researching online how to teach children about proper sanitation and using the toilets. I come across an excellent resource - 80 pages that is exactly perfect for teaching children in SubSaharan Africa. Illustrations, visual aids, understanding of the culture and the organization promoting this material ? 

UNICEF

I am still smiling now, a week later at the pure irony of that situation. 

We just completed a sanitation project for a school that was closed due to cholera and not having running water and toilets. Children that never have been able to use a toilet or have running water, or use a shower now have access to those things! That is HUGE. 

I was teaching 13 and 17 year old kids as well as 3 year olds, how to wash their hands with running water and how to use a toilet and flush it. Kids that at home have to carry water from a community pump every single day and sometimes twice a day. Now at school all they have to do is turn on the faucet. When I think of that, I am amazed. 

The following is from the water.org website 

Water connects every aspect of life. Access to safe water and sanitation can quickly turn problems into potential –unlocking education, work opportunities, and improved health for women, children and families across the world. Today, 1 in 9 people lack access to safe water; 1 in 3 people lack access to a toilet. More people have a mobile phone than a toilet. We can change this. Let’s work together to make the power of water available to all.

We did work together to make it available to a small mission school and church in a shanty town in Lusaka. WE, the donors and supporters, helped to give the gift of water and sanitation to people on the other side of the world. 

I am still laughing about the D.  Who ever would have thought? Certainly not me. 

The fact that I could be involved in the very thing that I passionately wrote about and then forgot about all those years ago, is just so awesome and fulfilling. And I don’t use those words lightly or often, but it really is.