Friday afternoons, after my last class leaves, I have adopted the ritual of cleaning my whiteboard. It’s relaxing, somehow. Like doing laundry or washing the dishes. Maybe the feeling is somehow akin to an exhalation, something mindless that also serve as a release. The day is done, the dinner party is over. Now I tidy up and prepare for some rest. Unfortunately, a first year teacher’s weekends are not nearly as relaxing as one might hope they’d be. Or, at least mine aren’t. I take Friday nights off. Mostly because I’m too pooped to do anything remotely productive. Sometimes I’ll stay at work late to tie up loose ends and wait for Friday afternoon traffic to die down. Sometimes I go to happy hour with my (wonderful) coworkers—many members of my group of friends are also first year teachers, so we often vow not to talk about work, but then end up talking about teaching for a couple of ours anyway. Teaching is seriously pretty much all I think about. What am I doing well? What am I sucking at? How can I be better? I credit my time at Scripps for instilling within me this ability to be self critical and reflective. I, of course, also learned to see my own strengths and to push myself to reach beyond them.

Scripps also gave me something else. Something I’ve come to refer to as oxygen tanks.

During Teach for America’s summer training institute, I was sitting in a seminar on wellness and life balance when a fellow 2009 corps member started talking about this “oxygen tank” concept. The analogy she presented went something like this: Sometimes life feels like a whirlpool. One minute you’re swimming along with a pod of friendly dolphins and then out of nowhere you find yourself swimming through dense water, unsure of which direction to turn and under what feels like 10,000 leagues worth of water pressure. This is when you turn to your oxygen tanks for reassurance and sometimes a little bit of help, to get you through the murky patches of unpredictable rip tides and soggy strips of sea weed. These so-called oxygen tanks are also known as your go-to friends. Those people with whom you have eye-opening conversations, those people who help you talk out your ideas, or who are just really amazing at facilitating ranting sessions.

In my case, these oxygen tanks come in the form of some of the friends I made at Scripps. These are the women who always help me to put things into perspective and who talk me through confusing life-transition related predicaments and complications. These are the women I got to know at Scripps who I can call in the middle of the night to talk me through a crisis despite any difference in time zones. These are the professors who I can email with questions and from whom I receive an encouraging response within a day. These are the alums who I meet at Scripps events and who serve as an inspiring reminder that Scripps women are a force to be reckoned with.

I’m not a huge fan of change or transitional periods—especially when they involve leaving Scripps for 12-hour workdays* and a long commute. But these connections are making this transition much more bearable, and a conversation with an “oxygen tank” leaves me far more relaxed than cleaning a whiteboard ever could.

*And, for the record, despite it’s difficulties, I absolutely LOVE my job. Just wanted to clarify.