Overworked and underpaid. Or not paid at all.

While taking the 6 train to Union Square last week, I found myself eavesdropping on these four Chinese women sitting across from me. They were speaking very quickly in what sounded like Mandarin, and they had several shopping bags at their feet. Two of the women were holding twenty dollar bills and trying to shove them into the hand of their friend, but she was refusing. They looked like kids playing Hot Potato. It seemed that she had purchased something for the friends to share, but she did not want them to feel obligated to pay her back for it.
After seeing all of this, I was reminded of my mother’s dinner parties. Whenever she would invite a few of our family friends over for a meal, one of her friends would try to pitch in by helping to wash the dishes or clear the table. “Try” being the key word – my mother would literally fight them for the sponge if her friends tried to do anything other than relax and enjoy themselves. She never expected anything in return for inviting people into her home – it was a constant theme in our household for my mother to feel comfortable sacrificing herself to make others happy.
I never understood why my mother felt so strongly about taking so much upon herself all the time. While I still find myself telling her to chill out whenever I’m home, I can see how I’ve inherited some of her selflessness. And I’ve learned that investing yourself into the well-being of others is not necessarily tantamount to sacrifice. Even when it is difficult to realize the impact that we make on others (and in our field, it’s an everyday challenge) I have realized that taking the time to truly listen to people, and to genuinely care about whether or not they have a good day or a crappy one is a mutually beneficial relationship. Being involved in the life of another, and taking the time to focus on something other than ourselves is something so beautiful, and it’s what makes me love this field so much.
While you probably won’t find me doing my clients’ dishes any time soon, working with people has made me see how everyone can benefit when we put aside our selfish tendencies for a little while. After all, no one throws a better dinner party than my mom.

Times are rough my friends. Here are a few tips on how you can hustle your way through NYU and New York when your pockets are feeling a little bare.

1) Participate in Psychology Experiments: I get made fun of for this one, but in all seriousness, participating in an experiment is a great experience for a student, and often very relevant to social work and welfare. I've participated in several experiments with the psych department - some of them have been really easy and short (sometimes you just fil out a survey and they'll give you about 5 to 10 dollars), while others can be more complex. One of the most incredible experiences I had was a cognitive neuroscience experiment where I got to get an MRI and actually see AWESOME photographs of my brain! I won't lie, I was scared at first, but once the experiment started it wasn't bad at all, AND they paid me 50 dollars. Ballin'. Email the researchers using the psych department website, or check out the fliers posted in the Meyer building.
2) Go to the Wasserman Center: Nevermind that it's a great resource for anyone in need of career-related info (you can actually walk right in and there will be counselors who can help you write a cover letter or perfect your resume). This place has FREE coffee and tea. And it's delicious. BYOMug and be earth-friendly.
3) Ticket Central is your friend: Yes, I know, some of their prices are still pretty ridic, but if you sign up on their listserv, they'll hook you up. One time I got free tickets to see The Drowsy Chaperone on Broadway. Score.
4) Don't buy your textbooks: So unnecesary - a ton of our social work books are on reserve in Bobst Library, and (especially for undergrads) it's pretty easy for us to share them since we're a pretty small group. I didn't buy any books for social work classes this semester because they were all so accessible at the library. If there is a book that you need that isn't in the library, try chegg.com. You can rent books instead of buying them, and then send them back at the end of the semester. It saves tons of money.
5) Get your stretch on: Yoga to the People offers yoga classes on a donation basis, and they seriously don't judge you if you can only afford a small contribution, or even nothing at all. The classes are amazing, and an incredible way to recharge from all of our social work stress. If you don't have a mat, you can rent one there for 2 dollars.

Have a wonderful, cheap week :)

They should totally replace the Abnormal Psych textbook with Hey Arnold! episodes. Enjoy :)

"Stoop Kid's Afraid to Leave His Stoop..."

I spend every Friday afternoon babysitting a seven year old girl, and part of my Friday duties involve taking her across Manhattan from her school to her ice skating lessons via bus. Usually it’s pretty uneventful, but on cold, rainy days, the bus gets incredibly crowded. Personal space is invaded, the clock ticks as we have to wait at every stop for passengers to get on and off the bus, and people get annoyed.
This Friday was one of those days. I was one of those annoyed people – babysitting is fun, but not when you’re trying to race a shivering little girl, and her bulky backpack and skate bag across an island. The bus was filled to capacity and it was clear that everyone was on their last nerves.
As the bus meandered between 5th and 6th Avenue, and I tried to calculate how late we would be for the skating lesson, the loudspeaker crackled and the bus driver begin to speak:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I want everyone on this bus to look at the person next to you and say, ‘I love you.’”
Everyone laughingly turned to their neighbors and did as told – suddenly that air of tension and aggravation started to dissolve. We needed that reminder – who cares if we’re going to be late to whatever meeting, job, or lesson that we were going too? The fact was that if that person standing next to us hadn’t stepped a little further into the bus, we had no chance in hell of getting anywhere.
I am so grateful that I was standing on that crowded bus on that cold Friday afternoon. The bus driver reminded us of something that we are constantly forgetting as isolated, independent New Yorkers – we need each other. In every dimension of life, we are a team. We can’t get from point A to point B without each other, whether that means from FDR Drive to Chelsea Piers, or kindergarten to college, or hell, even the day we are born to the day we die. We constantly forget all the factors, all the people, who have made each day of our lives possible. Most of the time we don’t even realize how many people really are on our team.
So the next time you’re on a crowded bus, I would encourage you to scoot back as far as you can. And do it with a smile.

A question on one of my homework assignments for Abnormal Psychology:

Excerpt form the start of a therapy session of a 23 year old single female who was conflicted about whether or not she should become engaged to or break up with her boyfriend, a married man with whom she was having an affair
PATIENT:…I feel very tired today…I had a wisdom tooth extracted this morning. It still hurts…Ispoke with Jim last night and he wasn’t sure if we would go away for the weekend…(silence for 20 seconds)...By the way, one of the books on your shelf is upside down…Anyway, today I want to…
THERAPIST: Why didn’t you tell me that you had an abortion?
How was the therapist able to make such an inference? That is, what clues are present in what the patient said that could lead to such a guess?

So as you might imagine, about a million social work alarms were going off in my head when I read this question. First of all, why on Earth would a therapist think that this is an appropriate method of counseling? First of all he interrupted his client. Second of all, even if he’s the best psychoanalyst in the world, his inference could have been wrong, in which case he could have really insulted the client and destroyed their therapeutic relationship. And even if he was right, he was still pushing his client to disclose some information that she clearly wasn’t ready to talk about. I had no idea how any therapist could possibly make an inference like this. So instead of trying to answer the question that was asked and considering why my professor may have asked it, I used my response to rant about what a crappy therapist this guy was.
My abnormal psych professor had begun our semester of studying psychopathology by reviewing psychodynamic theory and Freudian concepts of psychoanalysis, something that I hadn’t studied since AP Psych in high school. The professor said he was focusing on it for specifically that reason – it’s an influential part of psychology that tends to get ignored in a lot of college courses. I thought that was fair enough, but after reading that question about psychoanalysis I was glad that Freudian theory had been removed from most courses. It seemed like absolute bull compared to more modern therapies that are currently in practice.
In lecture a few days after we turned in the homework assignment, our professor brought up that question. But before I could raise my hand and unleash hell on the therapist in that scenario, the professor assured us that he didn’t include that question in our homework as an example of effective therapeutic style. Instead, he hoped that the vignette would help us to reflect on Freud’s concept of psychic determinism – specifically, what a client thinks and his of her sequence of thoughts does not occur by chance. Often when a client changes topics during a session, the underlying theme still remains the same. In this case, the woman expressed her thoughts about her abortion by talking about other things involving extraction (the tooth) and fetal positioning (the upside-down book).
I still wasn’t convinced that this was an appropriate method of analysis. Should therapists really be digging so deep trying to find these “underlying themes” in what clients are saying? What therapists are even smart enough to do that?
In one of the essays that I was reading for a social work class, the writer quoted Alice Miller’s assertion that “All behavior has meaning.” Suddenly, it was much clearer to me what the professor was trying to teach us through that homework question. As social workers, we are constantly trying to explain and understand the “biopsychosocial” factors that cause clients to act in certain ways. This Freudian theory of psychic determinism simply encourages therapists to put the same kind of comprehensive analysis into understanding a client’s behavior during therapy. The sequence of a client’s thoughts can say just as much as the actual content of these thoughts. If we are going to analyze the behavior of our clients beyond the scope of a therapy session, we owe it to them to analyze therapy sessions just as deeply and comprehensively. Having a strong awareness of what the client is saying and how he or she is say it (as well as what he or she is not saying) can take the therapeutic relationship to the next level.
All in all, I still think that therapist needs to take Skills in Interpersonal Communication before he tries to have another session. But I do see how Freud still applies to social work practice.

FYI: The book that the therapy session is from is called Listening with the Third Ear by Theodor Reik.

Between school and work, this week has been absolutely crazy. I promise to post a decent entry in the next couple of days, but until then, I thought I'd share with you something that may add a little bit of social work spirit into your week. At the end of my yoga class, the teacher always reads a quote, poem or story that he or she finds meaningful or inspiring. This one is my favorite, and I hope you like it too :)

I am the decisive element - By Goethe

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized.
If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

Despite the fact that we all seemed to have hit the ground running with the fall semester, I am still very much obsessed with my semester abroad last spring and will jump at the chance to do anything and everything West Africa related. (Speaking of NYU in Ghana, there are still several spots available for the program this spring! Find out more about it here or please feel free to ask me anything you want to know about the program.) Anyway, when I found out that NYU's Africa House had invited Jerry John Rawlings, one of Ghana's former presidents, to speak at the Kimmel Center this past Tuesday, I literally ran there from work to meet my NYU in Ghana friends for the event. (Did I cause a scene running down Fifth Avenue? Yes. Do I regret it? No.)
A little background about good old J.J. and his presidency (clearly he and I are on a nickname basis) - He is considered by many to be one of Africa's most revolutionary leaders and a true advocate for the "common man" - some of his achievements include restructuring secondary education across the country, developing the northern, more rural areas of Ghana with regard to healthcare, technology, and education, and generally defining his leadership by an era of political and economic stability that was rooted in democracy. Despite his developments, Rawlings is viewed as a rather controversial leader among Ghanaians, primarily because of his questionable "house-cleaning" practices which attempted to rid Ghana of corrupt political leaders.
Despite the various opinions surrounding Rawlings (some of our professors in Ghana despised him) my friends and I decided to put aside all the things we had heard to see what Rawlings had to say about "Mobilizing African People for Economic Development", and I am so glad that we did. Although I definitely disagree with some of the brutality that he may have involved in his leadership, he was able to share with us so many insightful ideas about what needs to be done in Africa. He was also an incredibly passionate speaker and seemed to have a genuine desire to educate westerners about life in a region that is unfortunately a mystery to most of us. Rawlings didn't want to leave the stage when the event was over and tried so hard to answer as many questions as possible. It was amazing to see a leader who wanted so badly for everyone to understand his people. To me, that genuine concern for the people around us is what is absent in so many institutions in the United States, such as healthcare and within the job market. Rawlings was a wonderful speaker and has a gift for making complex political issues accessible for all to understand.
One of the most powerful ideas that Rawlings shared was the negative effects of linguistic diversity in politics. He believes that the English language has been used as a "weapon" against some of the wisest leaders in the developing world. Because these traditional chiefs and rulers do not have a good grasp of the English language, they are essentially ignored by global politics and the generations of political knowledge that they have to share are silenced, simply because they can't tell us their ideas in English. Rawlings is enraged by this unnecessary ignorance and asserts that "the sense of what you say can be translated." He proposes that language barriers should never be the reason why global politics fail to advance.
In both my Human Behavior in the Social Environment and Ethnocultural Issues classes this semester, we have been discussing oppression and the various human qualities that seem to bring about oppression. It seems to me that language abilities can clearly create an in-group and out-group, especially with regard to the intellectual world. While I think multilingualism is incredibly admirable and certainly a mark of intelligence, a person's knowledge shouldn't be disregarded if they can only express that intellect in one language. Last year through America Reads I had the amazing privelege of teaching ESL to two international students in ninth grade. Their teachers told me that they were having a lot of trouble in math, but when I tried to help them, they already knew how to do everything. They were amazing at math. They couldn't do their math homework because they didn't understand the directions in the math book. The vocabulary was obviously very different from what was used with math in their home countries. Just because they didn't know English, the teachers assumed that they were unskilled in math. And this doesn't make them bad teachers - when working with non-English speakers it is so easy to assume that, simply because they can't express themselves clearly in English, they have nothing to offer intellectually.
When working with our clients, it's important for social workers to realize that these people are going to vary in their abilities to express themselves, even if they are not immigrants. It could be because they had little education or went to underdeveloped schools or maybe because they're just shy or embarrassed. Social workers need to remember that all people have something to offer and it is our job to help them bring it out.

“OH! Who are you?”
“Tina! Who are YOU?”

It was this first silly exchange with Uncle Tagoe, a security guard at NYU in Ghana’s academic center, that led to one of the most unexpected yet meaningful friendships that would be created during my time in Accra. For the next four months, I grew closer to Uncle Tagoe every day. We were the unlikeliest of friends – he was more than old enough to be my father, worked long hours every day guarding the academic center, and had spent his life living by Labadi Beach in Accra, while all I had to do in Ghana was enjoy the freedom of being nineteen in a country that I knew nothing about.
There was something about Uncle Tagoe that just made people, including myself, gravitate towards him. He would tell me about politics in Ghana while I would babble about our weekend trips or the students at the school where I volunteered. We would discuss my boyfriend, who Tagoe soon began referring to as his “in-law.” We laughed about his irrational fear of airplanes and tall buildings and my hatred of snakes. He helped me plan my spring break backpacking trip around Ghana, pointing out all the places where he knew my friends and I could see “big animals.”
But some of the best times that I shared with Tagoe were the hours between my classes where I would sit with him outside the academic center and we would barely say anything at all. We would just be there. It is one of the things that I miss most about being with Tagoe and being in Ghana. It seems like here, even with our friends, we are constantly trying to fill those gaps in conversation, hoping to avoid any awkward silences, or rushing to say everything on our minds, since the time we can spend with friends always seems to have a limit.
We are constantly trying to get something out of our relationships with people. Love, advice, fun, connections, money, laughs, a social life. We focus so much on trying to justify the time that we spend with people by figuring out what they can do for us that we forget the power behind the simplest forms of human interaction.
Just being with a friend like Uncle Tagoe and having no expectations about the time that I spent with him made me understand more than ever how easily our lives are impacted by the people we are around. It’s a lesson that many of us have learned well in social work – the ability to just be there and listen to someone can help him or her more than any other therapy. I wish so much that I could sit in the sun right now with Uncle Tagoe, not worried about better things that I could be doing or what he and I could talk about. One of the things that I miss most about Ghana was that it was so easy to not feel lonely there. For some reason, it felt like someone always wanted you around and people always had time for each other, while in New York we seem to get so caught up in our own lives that we forget about the people in our lives that truly keep us going each day. Seeing Uncle Tagoe’s smile all of my days in Ghana was something so simple, but something that I know will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Here’s a few challenges for your week:
1) No matter how busy you and your friends might be this week, get everyone together for dinner, breakfast, a midnight snack, whatever. Try to keep up a tradition of seeing each other weekly for the entire semester. Believe it or not, your buddies may be able to get you through your classes a lot better than those books.
2) Stop for a few minutes and say hi to the security guard in your building, or workplace, or somewhere else on campus. It’ll be a little reminder that you can find social support all around you, in some of the most unlikely places.
3) Have a wonderful week :)

As some of you may have noticed in my previous post, my main non-academic or career-related goal for the semester was to become a better swimmer. For those of you who haven’t tried to swim laps since you were forced to take YMCA lessons as child, swimming is HARD. It works muscles that most people don’t know they have and it’s just generally an exhausting sport. I decided that I wanted to improve my swimming skills after enviously watching the lifeguards at the camp that I worked at over the summer swim lap after lap, while I played round after round of Sharks and Minnows with eight year olds. After some encouragement from my swimmer boyfriend and discovering that a close friend shared my swimming dreams, I was on my way to the Palladium pool, all decked out in my one-piece.
The swimming itself actually went well. My boyfriend gave us a simple workout to do, and we were able to complete it without dying, which constitutes success in my opinion. But there was one thing that put a damper on our aquatic adventure – the lifeguard. Now don’t get me wrong – I feel for this guy. His job is probably as boring as it gets – he has to just sit in his chair for hours without a books, friends, or even Facebook. But when my friend casually mentioned to him that we were both pretty new to swimming, he proceeded to give us a “what the hell are you doing here” look for the rest of our workout. He even asked my friend if he could swim two lengths of the pool “without dying.”
Before I heard about my friend’s exchange with the lifeguard, I was so proud of our accomplishments that day – after all, we had successfully completed a workout in a sport that we were both pretty unfamiliar with. But simply knowing that this lifeguard was judging our mediocrity and had no respect for the fact that we were putting ourselves out there by trying out a new sport made me never was to swim again.
Later that day, after I vowed to stick to yoga as my workout of choice, I began to think about our relationship with the lifeguard in terms of social work. I realized that this lifeguard had made mistakes social workers can easily make with their clients. His first social work mistake was his difficulty accepting us at the level where we were. Because the lifeguard was so used to spending his day observing members of the swim team and other individuals with a great deal of experience, he seemed to be confused about what his role was when working with swimmers of a completely different level. In retrospect, I definitely don’t think this guy was trying to be rude at all – he was simply trying to make sure that we would be safe. He just went about it in a way that was patronizing, which was frustrating – after all, even though we are new to swimming, my friend and I are still rational adults who are mature enough to not put ourselves in dangerous situations. Like our lifeguard friend, it’s likely that social workers go through similar internal dilemmas when working with adults who are trying something new for the first time, like applying for a job or looking for an apartment. While you want to be as supportive as possible, you don’t want to make your client feel as though they can’t control their own lives – a feeling like that certainly doesn’t encourage the long term autonomy that social workers hope for their clients to achieve. But at the same time, a social worker, like a lifeguard, doesn’t want to see his or her client get hurt. Sometimes it may seem easier to encourage the client to avoid situations that may result in failure. However, the true role of the social worker isn’t to make decisions for the client, but to support them in their process of making their own mature decisions.
Although I haven’t been back to the pool since my initial plunge (give me a break, it’s the first week of classes) I’m going to try to go back soon, this time with a greater respect for first timers everywhere as well as a realization that all lifeguards aren’t social work students.

The title is no joke. This blog will certainly pose a challenge for someone who is attempting to make a living listening to other people rant while conveniently keeping her own issues under wraps. But despite all of this, I am so happy to be one of your bloggers this year. I hope my weekly musings will give you something to think about, an insight into the life of an NYU social work student, and most importantly, a break from what I'm sure will be a busy school year.
Now here comes the hard part - talking about me. I suppose I'll start with the basics. I'm twenty years old and about to begin my junior year in the undergraduate social work program at NYU. I'm also studying psychology as a second major. I'm still not sure what my specific interests are with regard to a future career, but I'm hoping to work somewhere in the mental health field. Stay tuned for undergrad internship placement! Coming this fall.
Some other interesting details:
1) I was born and raised on the streets of Philadelphia. And by streets I, of course, mean suburbs.
2) A lot of my community experience involves work with children, such as with programs like America Reads and Mentoring USA , but I hope to work primarily with adults in the future. I think that social work in the US seems to focus heavily on the needs of children while adults are neglected, and I hope that the next generation of social workers will be able to change that.
3) I spent the past two summers working as a camp counselor for eight year old girls. Do I enjoy High School Musical? Yes. Am I ashamed? No.
4) I studied abroad in Ghana during this past spring and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life.
5) My semester goal is to learn is to become a better swimmer. I've mastered doggy paddle and I'm ready for bigger and better things.

Anyway, thank you so much for your interest in my ramblings and I hope you'll keep reading throughout the year :)

-Tina