lieben und arbeiten

Ah, I just went to my interview for my field placement internship. Twice a week I will be working at a Head Start program, doing clinical therapy and case management with itty-bitty kiddies. Having little experience with younglings, I definitely will learn a lot. And quickly, I imagine. (How do you swing a kid on to your hips anyway?)

Maybe this a good time to relate my disaffection with the social welfare program. (Sparringly, though. Who's going to read this?) I've been torn and frustrated these past few weeks with a program that appears to throw theory at us first-year students, with little guidance on how to use it. I feel that I have had invaluable--but perhaps even too few--panel discussions and seminars of topics of import, like elderly abuse reporting and talks with mothers in drug rehab. But the information I'm getting in classes is all so vague and seemingly obvious. Should we consider clients' environment as a factor in possible psychosocial epidemiology? Duh! And yet the authors of our reading somehow found ways of repeating that same concept for pages and pages. All the redundant and dry writing that social workers seem to produce is also highly discouraging.

I've been telling myself "It'll get better" as a kind of mantra. And actually, all these negative thoughts are what I was feeling before field work offered new experiences. I really am liking the program. I think the first few weeks were rough, maybe even purposely so, but concrete discussions about interviewing techniques and the ethical responsibilities are so pertinent and necessary that I find myself truly thinking about how to incorporate what I am learning into practice. And I think the secret to the enourmous amout of reading we are assigned is...don't do all of it. Gasp! It's true. I think we are expected to get out of school what we put in. Uh, which I hope in my case will be more than I have put in so far. I'm so behind on reading!

As to "lieben und arbeiten," when Freud was asked what should normal people be able to do well, he replied with these two words, which in German mean "love and work." Now ain't that the truth? And being a social worker in training is making those two things more real for me. So live long, my friends, with much Lieb und Arbeit!

prima facie problem

I'm reading a book, Ethical Dilemmas in Social Service, for one of my classes. Fortunately, I find the book to be interesting, engaging, and challenging. Unfortunately, it is one of the few required texts that inspire these feelings in me. Most of the time I find myself skimming poor writing of redundant, and often obvious, ideas. This book that I am so far enjoying stumped me, though, with strange usage of a word. It reads, "Decisions about the use of secure detention must ultimately rest on beliefs we have about the sanctity of values such as freedom, justice, and desert."

The sanctity of desert? If anyone can explain what definition the author is using I'd love to know.

lovely rita, hep B test! nothing can come between us.

Ah, Rita turned out not so bad..for Houston. I do not speak for Galveston or Beaumont, but my family's house survived with only a few downed branches. Now my mom has the cumbersome task of untaping windows and unwrapping important documents, but a lack of calamities is a good thing. It's so strange to not be in Texas and so far from what was urgent.

In other news about unrealized disasters, there was a mini earthquake (3.2) in Piedmont, which lies just south of Berkeley. It happened sometime around 4 am. I had no idea until I heard about it from a bus driver.

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In other news, I helped at a men's health fair at a Chinese church in San Francisco. I helped label vials of blood that will be later tested for Hepatitus B! Quite enjoyable actually to be out working with people even if my lack of Cantonese skills meant that I couldn't do much more than smile and point when someone tried to ask me for help. The phlebotomist collecting the samples was amazing though. In--out--blood! She did have some tricky veins though. A few poor souls had to be poked up to four times to get just a trickle. Eek.

will we still have a roof?

I just got through some frantic phone calls with my family about the potential destruction on the Texas coastline from Hurricane Rita. As I write my mom is taping up the windows in our house and deciding whether to take my older sister to Austin to stay with my little sis. I hope they go.

Just in case.

I really can't believe that anything will happen in Houston, so far inland. Nothing will happen, right? Ah, I'm going to make myself crazy with worry.

dude, where's my asparagus?

Yesterday I woke up feeling a bit sick, and after an intense panel discussion with a formerly incarcerated woman and a birth mother, I was very much looking forward to the nice meal had packed for myself the night before. I had stacked leftover stir-fried asparagus and mixed vegetables over rice. Potential yum! But after openning the lid of my tupperware container, what should I see? No asparagus! Now, I haven't had too many problems with sharing a communal refrigerator and pantry, but why would someone take food from my lunch container? I can't even begin to comprehend.

I figured the theft of stalky vegetables might be a good lead into a discussion of the coop house I live in. I had my doubts in the beginning, but I love being a part of a rambling family. At any hour of the day, I can wander through our kitchen or dining room and run across someone who is genuinely interested in how my day went or what I plan to do with my weekend. Twenty-one people in one house can be a bit too much at times, but I like living in a warm cooperative environment, especially where "everybody knows your name." Hmm, but this getting sick a second time may be the caveat to communal yogurt and apple juice. Beware the food that has no cover!

slam on socks

Life is so much more unpleasant without the right socks. In my morning rush to get to class I found myself wearing a pair of my sister's no-quite-big-enough-for-me socks, which I had to pull on all day to keep from disappering underneath my foot.

Somewhere in the mix of moving to California I lost a bag full of most of my socks, leaving me to have to buy a quick pack of them here. I never really thought of myself as too much of a materialist, but not being able to wear the particular pair of socks chosen from a collection of socks that I have slowly accumulated makes me feel less of who I am. When I feel like lavender, I have to settle for white Nike. When I feel like argile, I have to settle for white Nike. And having lived two years on an AmeriCorps budget you'd think a threadbare shoestring budget would not bother me so much, but not being able to go out and obtain the kind of socks I want has been demoralizing. But it's just socks! Ah, it's more than socks.

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Besides fixating on foot covering, today I went with some of my coop housemates to a poetry slam at the on-campus bar. One of my housemates brought along some poems that she had worked on and entered with our encouragment. In the end she made it to round two and finished with second place! We are so proud.

I'm glad I went for another reason as well. I finally encountered the intellectual activism that I had hear so much about, but had yet to see. Smart writing and spitfire delivery made me relieved, knowing that Berkeley isn't just a haven for the many frat and sororities that I pass on my way to class. Something about the poetry felt a bit discordant though. Is it possible to be ghetto and hippie at the same time?

This is no joke!

Today, while walking down Sproul Plaza, I listened to an old Asian(?) man cry out in concerted repition the following:

This is no joke.
I never joke in all my life!
Be happy.
Be happy.
Be happy.

I couldn't quite make out the message of the placard strung across his back or of the sign that his tired, thin arms held up to his shoulder--something about God showing him the signs and O New Orleans--but he threatened nothing, dressed in a long sleeve red shirt with a wide straw hat upon his head. And he kept pleading, "Be happy. Be happy. Be happy."

And I thought, "If ever I'm going to start a blog, it will have to start with this."

So, here is my first entry.