In order to live at PSI, the patients must have a dual diagnosis of full-blown AIDS (not just HIV), as well as substance addiction. Other psychiatric diseases, such as major depression, are also very frequently co-morbid conditions with AIDS and addiction. As I mentioned in a previous post, the majority of the patients here have also spent time in prison. You would think that the patients here, having all of these odds stacked against them, would be jaded, hardened, and unhappy. But you'd be wrong.
 |
| An example of a journal response written by one of the patients in my Health Literacy group. |
Many of the patients here have incredibly positive attitudes, despite the myriad hardships they have experienced. For example, the patients love to write about their recovery in their journal responses (see the example on the right). They welcome me every day with an enthusiastic Good morning, Marianne! when I enter the building. They offer to help me carry my materials from class back to my office. They tell me about their goals to become HIV peer educators, mechanics, or bus drivers in the future. They even share their good news about their health with me.
One patient in particular is perhaps the most optimistic person I've ever met. This is remarkable, considering she was born with intellectual disabilities, she started hanging out with the wrong crowd as a teenager and got hooked on drugs, and then she was infected with HIV when she was raped during her twenties. She is enrolled in my Health Literacy class, but frequently becomes frustrated and pulls me aside during class, asking if she can come in later for extra help. Our tutoring sessions together tend to take a while since she is a fairly slow learner, but she always leaves with a smile on her face. Last week, she stopped by my office, and I assumed it was for extra help on the material we learned that day. Instead, she simply came in my office and handed me a piece of paper, grinning ear-to-ear. I looked at the paper, and on it was her latest T cell count, which was very high. It's because I've been focusing on my recovery, she told me. She may well be right - a quick Google search shows that there has been a multitude of studies linking optimism and better health outcomes. Maybe we should all take a cue from this patient and others like her at PSI, and adapt a more positive outlook on life.
Your student has neat hand-writing, and your account is very charming.
ReplyDeleteWhat % of your students would you describe as "eager?"
Minor rant: I think of what spoiled brats many college students are. I can't stand the people who have everything in the world (enough money to buy clothes, alcohol, ipods) but can't be bothered to study. People who are given the chance to learn and make something of themselves and yet are always apathetic about learning, don't want to do work, and whine about how hard classes are. This is contrast to real heroes: girls like the one you described.
I don't actually criticize the current system, because I can propose nothing better. There is no point in complaining unless one can propose something superior...that said, it sickens me when people like the girl you described want this education, and has everything going against her, and some spoiled brat who wants to play video games all day can't be bothered to study while his dad works night and day to pay him through college.
Tell your student to come here and get a degree in science with me!!!!!!!
Dancing_Scientist, I would say there is usually 1 student (out of the 15 or so who come to class) who isn't eager to learn. That student changes on a day-to-day basis, based on who is having a rough day. For example, sometimes residents come to class even when they are feeling very ill, and in that case will have their head down or will refuse to write notes.
ReplyDeleteWhat about you, how many of your college students would you say are "spoiled brats"? It's funny to me that you called my student a "girl," since she's actually middle-aged. I can almost guarantee that when she was in high school (she dropped out), she gave her teachers the same attitude and apathy your students give you. It took a lot of struggling before she realized what she needed to do to turn her life around. Hopefully your spoiled brat students will have that realization soon too. :)
Wait. 14/15 are eager? Holy cow!
ReplyDeleteCandidly, that I say "girl," is a reflection of the mental paternalism I associate in what you do. Even though they're not the same at all, I associate, mentally, that we do the same thing. We both are "teachers," which, in and of itself, is a paternalistic concept. It's based on the idea that we have some superiority in some very narrow area that we are offering to those want it (medical knowledge and chemistry knowledge). I kind of associate that all "students" are "boys and girls." This is at the same time that I view myself as a "boy" relative to my research advisor, who is very old and very sage. I am a "boy," in some sense, relative to someone who has lived much longer and has experience with many more things. This is, without a doubt, an abuse of the language that I should not do. Just an odd association that developed in my mind.
I have no ability to say how many people are "spoiled brats." I can only point to a few extreme outliers who show the quality, but I cannot say how many overall there are.
However, I would guess that a significant number of my students are spoiled brats relative to your student. People who have that drive to make something of themselves are the ones who deserve the most, in my mind. As an instructor, I don't care remotely where you are, I care how fast you're going (I care more about the derivative than the function :) ).
I bet she was exactly as you said, in terms of attitude in high school. But none of that is relevant to me. What matters is that, now, she wants it, and is willing to work for it.
I somewhat view college as a social rite of passage in our society nowadays. It seems the case that people are thrust into it, socially, due to expectation. I dislike that. It is probably better in many cases for people to not go straight to college.
It's similar to a thought of mine about public education. I'm not 100% sold on this idea, just something that appeals to me as logical, but it is not decided. I am unsure if mandatory public school attendance is good. So much resources are spent on people who don't want to be there, at the expense of those who do. I sometimes wonder if we should drop making school mandatory, but, rather, say you can go through it at any age, when you feel like it. Some people are never going to want to be there. Some people want to be there right away. It is very hard to know when a person will want to take something seriously.
Because education is so expensive, it seems so wrong to me for anyone to go through it and not take it seriously ( a spoiled brat). I would vastly prefer a system that, when an individual makes a serious choice that they "want" some type of education, no matter the age, they get it. Everyone matures at different rates and in different areas. I really want to accommodate people like your student.
To me, one of the best messages of Les Miserables is that the past is the past. Be the best man you can be going forward. Acknowledge the past, own up to it, but, a man should be judged also by how he moves forward. Your student may have been a kid who beat me up when I was in grammar school and spat on teachers. OK. Today, she wants something more, and I wish she could be given that.
End excessively long rant.
Dancing_Scientist, I love the thought you put into your comments on my blog. Thank you. Have you thought about starting one yourself? I think you have such an interesting perspective on things, it would be a great read!
ReplyDeleteI definitely thought of the students I taught in Houston as "boys and girls," but I really don't think of the patients here in that way. This is probably due to their age, since most of them are in their fifties. As far as the whole paternalism thing (would it be *maternalism* for a female teacher?) - although I do have more factual knowledge, they are also experts on their disease. The patients are constantly teaching me new things about how they each experience AIDS and addiction.
In regards to public education, I do think that it should remain mandatory. To do anything otherwise, in my opinion, would be to further limit the life opportunities available to people of low socioeconomic status. To make a vast generalization, parents in poor communities do not have as high of an education level as parents of wealthy communities. Therefore, they might be less likely to know that they should send their own children to school, if given that option. What would result is an income gap even wider than the one that exists today between the rich and the poor.
I definitely agree with your point about not everyone being ready for college right after high school. I worry about how some of my former high school students who went on to college are coping with the level of rigor of college work.
I am sure if I were in your shoes the fact that I had 50-year old patients would impress upon me that they are *not* "boys and girls." :)
ReplyDeletePardon my English; when I say paternalism, I refer to the idea in the political sense of the word (controlling the lives of the powerless by the powerful for the good of the powerless). Like how "mankind" at this point doesn't at all actually refer to men in its usage, just an old relic. Like saying acetylene instead of ethyne :)
I go back and forth of the mandatory public education. The idea behind it is that it wouldn't hurt low-income people, since it's still an option if they want to take it. The other idea is that it would improve the existing infrastructure by not wasting resources on those for whom nothing will help them...they just need time to mature. It's the resources allocated to those who don't want to be there that makes the argument somewhat seductive to me. It's hard to estimate, but it *seems* like it would result in substantial resources to commit elsewhere. It is thus argued that it would help the people who are trying to help themselves much more, and thus provide better education, and thus better economic opportunities. Hence, part of what I like about it is that it would give more to people like your student (you should tell her that she is the subject of an entire blog posting :) ).
The flaw in the argument is that, like any free-market based argument, people are rational. That is to say, that people will work toward their rational self-interest. Rational self-interest / free market arguments work beautifully, near *perfectly* for so many things in life to predict how people will behave...and completely fail in others. Whether or not a model of rational self-interest is a sufficiently accurate model is the question. I am not convinced that it applies or does not apply in this situation.
Dancing_Scientist, I was well aware of how you were using the word paternalism, I was just pointing out the fact that the word itself has a male bias. :)
ReplyDeleteI do understand your argument, and if all people knew that getting an education was in their self-interest, it would probably work. However, many people hold the viewpoint that their time is better spent outside of school.