A couple weeks into my internship, and I officially feel like I have a feel for this place. I know how to use the key fob to turn off the office alarm; I know how to work the coffee machine and how to grind the coffee beans; I know what temperature my boss likes to keep the office AC running at. More importantly, my knowledge of Iraq has already increased substantially, which I am quite happy about. I can name several Iraqi provinces off the top of my head–Nineveh, Kirkuk, Anbar, Salahuddin. I know that from the start of January 2014 to May 7, 2015, 2,966,844 Iraqis were internally displaced. I know what an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) actually is: someone who has fled his/her home but, unlike refugees, not crossed the international border. Also, I now know how to use Twitter and TweetDeck, which is apparently something that social media savvy people use A LOT to network and get their brand out.

My counterpart, Neel, and I have gotten to know each other pretty well. I know that he is from the autonomous community of Kashmir, attended various schools in India, and received a scholarship to complete his final two years of high school in the U.S., followed by another scholarship to attend college here. I know that he prefers business vests to jackets, and that he is known to be quite the spiffy dresser on his college campus.

Aside from Mark, who is frequently too busy running in and out of meetings and making important decisions to be in the office for very long periods of time, Neel and my’s immediate supervisor and Mark’s second-in-command is a man named *Tom. Tom is a refugee from Baghdad. In 2008, he came to the U.S. with a program that helps youth complete their undergraduate studies in the country. After graduating college in 2012, he was hired here.

Neel and Tom are two of the most impressive people I have ever met. It is astounding to me the circumstances that they have had to overcome–both being from a war torn region– and the necessary resilience they have had to embody from those experiences. Sometimes at work, because these two individuals actually know first hand what it’s like to be a refugee or to come from a war-torn area–the type of circumstances our organization addresses–I cannot help but feel…like an unhelpful burden. A nuisance. Like if only I had been exposed to these same circumstances, I would be a more knowledgeable asset to the team. I feel like an annoying little white girl, an outsider, inserting myself into the situation to try to fix things. In some sick, twisted way, I wish that I had a story to tell of the war torn area that I had just came from, but alas, Rhode Island will most likely never be that land. I just wish I didn’t feel like such a privileged upper-middle class outsider. I wish I wasn’t so goddamn…white. This is my White Girl’s Burden.

This isn’t to say that I don’t have things to say or add to the organization’s work.
I’m intelligent, I like to think I work pretty hard, and I have an eye for detail. But I do still have a part of me that is ashamed of my privilege, and ashamed of where I come from — because it has put me at such an advantage above the majority of the world. I hate to think that I had it “easier” than anyone; I have worked hard to get to where I am today. Yet it would be irresponsible to ignore the edge that my privilege has given me.

I try to remind myself that everyone has difficulties in their life that they have had to overcome, and that I have experienced my fair share of hardships too— parental divorce and a personal health crises to name a few. But every day that I walk into the organization’s office, my White

Girl’s Burden feels more pressing than all of that. Bigger. The guilt is overwhelming, and I find myself wanting to apologize for everything — my being there, my coworkers’ pasts, the inequality of the world.

But that is not what I am here to do. I am here to learn what I can and to help this agency grow so that there will be a little less world inequality in the future. And honestly, that is all I can do at this point. My guilt will get me nowhere. But proactive action will. I cannot do anything about where I come from, and it is useless to apologize for it. But I CAN try to make a difference for the future. So for now, all I have to say to this pressing White Girl anxiety is:

*Name has been changed.