When I step back and reflect on the significant events of my past, valuable contributors to my present, and of my future goals, the underlying themes that prevail include that of balance, moral tenor, and justice.
When injustice occurs, we often think- what did he do to deserve such tragedy? Embedded in the question is trust that those who are visited with such grave misfortunes deserve it, and those who are innocent will be spared. That naïvely held myth once gave us comfort & safety. When it does not hold up our sense of balance in the world waivers as well. The vignettes of my lifetime accordingly illustrate my personal struggles to balance these dualities of light and dark into harmony and the concurrent calibration of my moral compass, comprehension of the wonders and mysteries of the cosmos, and my attempt to find my place in it all.
Consistent with my quest for selfhood and exploration is Lewis Carrol’s tale of Alice in Wonderland, where we follow Alice down a rabbit-hole to a land that pushes her boundaries of reason. She longs for familiar landmarks of an intelligible order amidst the chaos. To survive, she must establish some sense of harmony within a morally suspect world. Herein, Carrol compounds the notion that although tragedy reminds us that the world lacks law and order, it offers consolation by showing us that we’re no different from the rest of nature. There is, in the world, both night and day, light and dark, good and evil.
With an adventurous will to transcend the commonplace, like Alice, I fell into my own rabbit hole of self-actualization at the age of eighteen when I joined the US Army. Here, I too encountered a myriad of authority figures and tests of personal courage. I savored my surroundings, and learned the due resignations to guide me through the necessary stages of metamorphosis to my identity as a soldier. A noble sense of loyalty, duty, respect, self-less service, honor, integrity, and personal courage were the fruits cultivated in my symbolic Wonderland garden of this experience where I lost my child-like innocence and emerged virtuous and refined.
In my job as a Paralegal for the Army JAG Corps, I gained valuable insight into the legal system and a beneficial skill set in the areas of claims subrogation, legal assistance, military justice, international law, ethics, laws of war, and taxes. Furthermore, I was enrolled in part-time college classes spanning my time in service, I competed in and won numerous “Soldier of the Month” boards, I maximized my physical fitness tests, excelled in weapons testing as a sharp shooter, and fast-tracked to the rank of Sergeant in-under three years. I devoted countless hours of off-duty time by participating in community activities to include serving as a panel member for a local high school’s JROTC promotion board and color guard. I plunged myself into endeavors that supported personal and professional growth and furthermore, a sense of fulfillment.
In October of 2005, I was chosen to fill a critical billet with a unit deploying to Iraq. After a yearlong tour of duty and with the end date of my obligated time commitment to the Army approaching, I found myself at a cross roads of whether to continue my career in the military or seek new undertakings. After being in Iraq and feeling a marked sense of dissonance from a valid purpose there- like I was serving someone else’s ulterior motives and thus held no true context connecting me to the mission- I decided to seek an alternative path to my personal development.
With my newfound freedom in hand, I decided to explore collegiate opportunities. Here, my life took a dramatic shift toward true self-exploration and redefining myself. Though I’ve never abandoned the honorable values it instilled in me, I could no longer fulfill the roles mindlessly handed down to me by the Army. I applied to George Mason University in my hometown in the fall of 2007, and was excitedly accepted. Upon meeting with my academic advisor, I found that the transference of my prior completed college credits was a matter of indifference and would not be endorsed by them. I lost a significant number of credits due to this apparent disregard for my hard earned efforts. Again, I found myself at a cross roads, puzzled by the institution’s lack interest in my prosperity and disappointed with our conflict of interests.
Later that fall, I had a date with destiny. I traveled to Austin Texas for a wedding and I fell in love with the city. I enrolled at Austin Community College and upon meeting with my academic advisor, (who had earned a BAAS herself) she informed me of the BAAS program and of its nature of affording students individualized academic programs and awarding college credit for nontraditional forms of learning. I felt it was a perfectly suited fit for me, allowing me to tie in my military experience and prior completed course work that was previously ignored by George Mason. It accepted and built upon them with course work intended to meet my individual career goals. Now equipped with context to truly invest in and appreciate the experience, I flourished.
In the winter of 2011, while in attendance at a Mardi Gras party, I met a remarkable woman who was in the midst of retiring from her job as a private investigator. I was very intrigued with the notion of being a private investigator as I had recently been doing some online background/social media research, searching “internet presence” of key witnesses, plaintiffs and defendants, as well as providing data on prospective jurors for my step-mother’s law firm. I asked her if she would pass my resume along to her boss. It wasn’t long before I was hired and working as a licensed investigator and certified legal process server. Many girls, including myself, grew up watching heroine sleuth spies Honey West, Lois Lane, Dana Scully, and Nancy Drew, who dispelled the old damsel in distress personas often seen in films- fairing more like a female equivalent of James Bond. I was honored to join these leading ladies in serving the American ideals of truth and justice.
I found the work to be highly lucrative for a female. You hold an advantage over males on numerous perspective taking vantage points. You’re unsuspecting and less likely to arouse suspicion on surveillance, and seen as trust worthy by other women who would be otherwise apprehensive to open to door for a man. We’re more tenacious, observant, sensitive, intuitive, and compassionate. I was able to pass into male territory smoothly with boldness, concurrently armed with the intuitive, instinctive, and charming conveniences of being a woman. I got to work on cases involving insurance fraud, cheating spouses, child custody, and murder. I honed my skills of creatively leveraging the internet to track persons’ whereabouts, connections, inclinations, and “next moves;” static and vehicle surveillance, witness interviews, data collection, research, and writing thorough and accurate reports detailing investigation results.
While I was thriving in my career at this time, working two jobs and trying to go to school became a predicament. After multiple attempts to juggle both, school, unfortunately, fell to the wayside. These challenges and my response to them, letting school slip through my fingers when I was so close to being done, assuredly wasn’t my most shining moment. I’m sure I could have handled it with better judgment and tact. It’s important for me to reflect on the struggles of this period in my life, as while I lost my grounding and fell behind, I never let it keep my down. I’ve heard it quoted, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
After more than a few dangerous episodes while serving legal papers, I wasn’t wild about process service, and I was getting to the point where I’d rather have poked a stick in my eye than sit on lengthy surveillance in the Texas sun. I spent over eighteen hours in the car at one point. In reflecting on my dismay with work conditions and my need to focus on finishing school, I decided to move back home temporarily so that I could focus on school and not have to worry about working and managing classes.
Courses that I had to withdraw from previously because I didn’t have the time to invest in the challenging coursework were first on my to-do list. I got a tutor and met him for two-hour sessions three times a week. With a sound commitment, I breezed through the courses, earning esteemed grades. With these triumphs under my belt, I surely related to Alice, who had navigated her way safely to Wonderland’s garden- a beautifully cultivated oasis where she now possessed wisdom, virtue, and dignity. Basking in her glory, she begins to think, “That very few things indeed were really impossible.”
With the challenging courses behind me, I still had some classes left to take, but felt I could manage working concurrently as they were not as demanding. My job search indicated to me that if I wanted to secure a worthy job that I was going to need to get my Paralegal Certificate. I enrolled in an accelerated summer program at George Mason University and obtained my certificate in August 2014. Shortly thereafter, I was offered a position to work as a contractor for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a Paralegal. As much as I enjoyed the position, I missed investigating and the fulfillment/mental stimulation it gave me. While I loathed being in the car all the time, what I did love about investigating was the research- digging for evidence, finding the clue, the missing piece, solving the case. Furthermore, through my progress working on the assessment tests for OCED4350, my answers made me contemplate if I was ready for a shift toward something more fulfilling.
I recently applied for a Army DOD Civilian job working as a Tort Claims Investigator and was offered the position. Not only will I be doing a job that I know I will love because I worked in Claims as a Paralegal for the Army, I got a huge raise, and will have great benefits. I couldn’t be more happy. I found engaging, meaningful work that’s in line with my foundation and interests.
In conclusion, my life has been a balance of ups and downs, summing the median on which I travel today. I am ever changing, and with each year, I learn more about myself. I have begun to recognize life’s patterns, and as a result, I feel capable of handling its ebbs and flows with grace. Failures may arise, however, I no longer see them as defeats, but veiled opportunities for growth. Naïve fairy tales of salvation, poetic justice, and semblance of order no longer enchant my consciousness- I know it’s an unrealistic expectation and a recipe for disappointment.
Like Alice, who discovers the useful faculties of the Wonderland mushrooms and negotiates her way through a nonsensical climate, I’ve learned that what makes wayward conditions in life tolerable is that they can be mastered with a readiness to encounter reality on its own terms. Willingness to discard my preconceptions in exchange for curiosity has bestowed me a Queen of my domain.
