Why do you @?

"Are you even listening to me?" "AMELIA!"
"hmmm.... sorry give me a second I'm @ing."
This is the constant refrain in my dorm room. My roommate rants, I @. My roommate facebooks, I @. My roommate sleeps, I @. After getting fed up with my ignoring her, she finally asks "Why the hell are you always '@ing'?!" Honestly, thats going to take years of therapy and rehab to sort out, but in the mean time I'll flashback.
****
2 years ago...
My sister keeps telling me about a group she's joined I-sick? sounds gross. Apparently its an international group, cool, I guess. Internships abroad? Awesome, can I have your room? Cambria leaves for Amsterdam to intern at a trading company and I enjoy my summer before beginning my senior year of high school. My friends and I anxiously discuss college..."its going to be like a whole new world." When Cambria returns home from her world travels, she's different... excited, passionate... about some stupid student group. What the hell is this @ and what has it done to my sister?

Last summer...
Woo hoo! U of I here I come! I wanted to spend my last "real" summer doing something exciting, and not just working as a receptionist again. I applied and was accepted to join a group of students heading to Costa Rica. I'd always wanted to travel, but not in the way I now define travel. I imagined a vacation, not an experience. When I imagined myself traveling, I had not imagined traveling with a purpose. I just wanted to "visit" new places. My father was born in England and I still have family there, I thought that was worldly enough. Wrong. The more I found out about this group going to Costa Rica, the more terrified I became... this seemed to be more of the world than I could handle. The group is called Mobility International USA, and they definitely travel with a purpose. Our goal as members of this group was to be Goodwill Ambassadors on a cross-cultural exchange on disability rights. WTF does that even mean? Well, as students with disabilities from across the country we were going to Costa Rica to learn about what it meant to be disabled in Costa Rica and in the process come to a better understanding of what it meant to be disabled in the United States. I didn't find out this was the purpose of the group until the week before I was supposed to be leaving and I freaked out! I just wanted to visit, I didn't want to exchange, I didn't want to learn, and I most certainly did not want an EXPERIENCE! I was completely content being un-worldly and remaining ignorant of my disability culture. Unfortunately, I am too proud. I didn't want to back out and have to tell everyone I was too chicken to go to Costa Rica. On the way to the airport, I panicked! I haven't thrown a tantrum that bad since I was two. I begged my mother not to make me go, and basically told her she was the worst mother in the entire world. She told me to call her when I arrived safely. I sobbed the entire way to Austin, Texas, where I was meeting the rest of my group, positive I would look back on this moment as when my life went terribly wrong. It was the opposite, it is the moment that will define me for years to come. I experienced 3 weeks in Costa Rica. I experienced what it felt like to be a proud member of the disability community. I experienced what it meant to be worldly. At the end of the program I received a certificate with MIUSA's motto on it... Challenge yourself and change the world. It may not be world peace, but it certainly changed my world and the perspective I have on our world.

So when you ask "Why do you @?" ....
I @ so I can feel the same inspiration and passion I experienced in Costa Rica. I @ because of the feeling that any obstacle is surmountable when you are willing to accept the challenge. I @ because of a sense of belonging to a world community.