As the Legislative Session comes to an end, along with my time as an intern at the State Board, I wanted to leave the next intern with some advice that I’ve gathered along the way.

I’ve been meditating on this poem lately. I came across it somewhere in the middle of session, when the days were long and the work felt both urgent and impossibly slow. It’s called “Instructions on Not Giving Up” by former United States Poet Laureate, Ada Limón. I want to share it with you in full, because I think it says something about this experience that I couldn’t quite find words for on my own:

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

(“Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón (2017))

The first time I read this, I thought it was just about spring and the changing of seasons. And it is, but it’s also about something I’ve been wrestling with this entire internship: the difference between the things that look like progress and the things that actually are progress. Limón isn’t moved by the flashy blossoms, the ones everyone stops to photograph. What gets her are the leaves coming back after a hard winter, patient, quiet, and plodding. That hit me harder than I expected, because that is exactly what this session has felt like. Not a lot of dramatic moments. A lot of slow, careful, unglamorous hard work that builds into something real. I also keep coming back to that last image of the leaf unfurling like a fist opening into a palm. When I first got this internship, I was braced. If you’ve read my first blog post, you know I came in fighting imposter syndrome from day one. I was closed, guarded, protective. And what I’ve learned over these past months is that you cannot do this work with a closed fist. You have to open up: to the learning, to the discomfort, to the people around you, to the moments that don’t go the way you planned.

What I Want You to Know Going In

The imposter syndrome doesn’t go away, but it stops running the show.

I wrote about this in my introduction post, and I’m writing about it again, because I want you to know it’s not just a first-week feeling. There were moments deep into the session where I still felt like the awkward kid with the hard-to-pronounce name who stumbled into the wrong room. But I also learned that acknowledging the doubt and moving anyway is its own kind of strength. You don’t have to feel like you belong to show up like you do.

Testimony is terrifying and worth it.

I taped my testimony to my shower wall to practice it. I’m not embarrassed about that. Whatever it takes to get your voice steady and your message clear, do that thing. When you’re standing at the mic and the room goes quiet, you will feel scared and you will also feel the weight of every student who couldn’t be there. That weight is not a burden. It’s the reason you’re there. Let it hold you up.

Know when to step up and when to step back.

At Lobby Day and at the ACCT National Legislative Summit in DC, I learned that being on a team is about recognizing where you can contribute most and making space for others to do the same. Sometimes leadership looks like organizing the talking points. Sometimes it looks like listening from the back of the room and letting someone else carry the moment. Both matter. Learn to tell the difference.

The work is slow, and it’s still worth doing.

Bills get amended. Funding gets cut. Things you care deeply about will not always move the way you want them to in a single session. That does not mean the work was wasted. The greening happens slowly. Your job is to be part of it and trust that it’s happening even when you can’t see the whole picture yet.

Show up for the students who can’t show up for themselves.

This is the one I will carry the longest. On the days when this work felt abstract or procedural, I thought about the running start students I grew up around. I thought about working adults trying to retrain, about first-generation students navigating transfer pathways that were not built with them in mind. That is who this is for. Keep them and their stories close, and let it compel you in your work. They will be the reason you push through the prolonged days, the slow processes, and the moments when you feel like you don’t belong.

I came into this internship uncertain of myself and deeply certain of the cause. I’m leaving it with more of both. More uncertainty about what comes next, and more certainty that this work of open-access higher education, student advocacy, and the slow and careful shaping of policy is something I want to spend my life doing.

To whoever does this next: the session will be hard. The room will sometimes feel like it wasn’t built for you. Do it anyway. Open your hand. Take it all.

Signing off,

Ruffaro J. Guzha