Overview

I fail at blogging. But I'll try to do a recap of the past few weeks:

Head Start: Went recruiting, visited houses, completed enrollment packets, saw poverty, discovered the meaning of "approach each house as if it's a mansion," ran the center for a day successfully, 2 weeks vacation.

Life: Went to Myrtle, went home, car broke down, waited, came back down with different car, shot guns, rode a horse bareback, canoed/swam, got tan, went to Myrtle, planned group project (more difficult than it seems), worked on nutritious cookbook, helped out with Fresh Start, woke up this morning and got a cup of coffee.


Elaboration: "Approach each House as if it's a Mansion"

My supervisor told me at the beginning of the summer that sometimes we would go out to parents in order to recruit and fill out paperwork and mentioned this phrase. I was sitting there trying to figure out what she meant...Does it mean that I should approach it delicately? With the understanding that they were far beyond what I knew, but I should see it on the opposite end of the spectrum? I didn't get it.
Then I went out in the field, got to know her, got to know the people. The first time I went out to do a parent visit, it clicked. This may not seem like much to me, but to this person it might be all they have. The point of this statement is that I shouldn't feel sorry for them. No one wants pity, everyone wants respect, and if I believe that I am somehow better than this person then it will show in every way I interact with them. Your home is a mansion, this is beautiful, you are beautiful.

I can never come up with interesting titles for these things.

Today was an eventful day. It started off pretty poorly since I have decided to begin to eat healthier and missed my morning cup a' joe. :( Also I'm still sort of sick, although I'm feeling 20 times better than I have been. I've been tentatively diagnosed with asthma and am being treated for sinusitis, and might start treatment for another thing soon if I'm not feeling better in a week or so.
When I got to work it was all the regular stuff, getting forms ready for new and returning students, making sure everything is in place, calling parents, making copies, etc. etc. Then there was this parent that came in, a new parent that wanted to enroll her twins for next year. A black woman with long fingernails and tall hair that went through the process like everyone else. It's amazing how immediately and completely you judge people, how I can judge people without any thought to what your judgment might mean. She was unemployed, only worked a little last year, and had recently moved back in with her mother. Kids had a different last name, both with very "ethnic" sounding names. She was searching for a job, but no one was hiring.
She also had a master's degree in education.
Wooahh, hold on. A master's degree? This shocked me, mainly because I thought this secured a job for you. I guess in this economy that's not necessarily true. Also, in my mind her appearance and her degree did not match up. It will definitely make me think twice about the judgments I pass on people while working there.
A house sits right in front of the center, with porceleine deer and birdbaths, an old single story circa-late 70's home with the square windows and the older people with pickups that live there. Today it almost burned to the ground. During my lunch break I watched in horror while smoke billowed from the windows, as two older women emerged holding each other while the firetrucks and police cars burst onto the scene. Volunteer firefighters were some of the first to arrive, jumping out of trucks and hastily pulling fireproof suits over clothing. The two older women just sat there helplessly, and I felt guilty for watching as what I presumed to be other family members arrived, a younger man holding the two as they appeared to sob. I walked back to the teacher's lounge to finish my salad and self-made trail mix wishing that I didn't see what I saw.
Later in the day a mother came by to enroll her child, a precocious 3-year old who loved running and grabbing things that looked like they were interesting. With her was her older 5-year old cousin, who also enjoyed running but was a little more reserved in what he grabbed. I was babysitter for the 30 minutes it took to enroll the young girl. While the older boy was carefully doodling very rigid geometric shapes that were what he called either "prison" or "president"; I couldn't quite catch what he meant. The young girl hastily scribbled all over 5 or 6 sheets of paper, each time exclaiming LOOK! with a shriek whenever she finished her drawing. I chased them in high heels as they ran all around the center and in the playground outside. They were so interesting, the way the interacted with each other and differences in their personalitites.

back from many days of absence

I haven't been writing for a while, but a lot has gone on. Mostly my continuous decline in health. I just came back from getting a chest X-ray to try to determine what's going on with me. I now have a bag full of drugs at my disposal and don't really know what to think while I'm sitting here alone in the house again. This is something I did not anticipate when planning my summer.
Doesn't it always seem like these things happen when you don't want them to? God has to have some grand sense of humor. Well, at this point it could be anything from allergies to cancer. Meh. Being sick for so long is beginning to take a toll on me. I can't do as much as I want to and the things I do want to do I don't have the energy to do.
As far as the internship goes, I've done lots and lots of paperwork. Geez, I never knew how much time this stuff took up. I'm dealing with a lot of confidential info that if screwed up could really get Tammy in trouble, as well as doing minor things like folding pamphlets and making copies. Soon she's going to have us interviewing parents for the enrollment process.
Let me talk about an image that's stuck in my mind.
There was a parent who wanted to get an application but had difficulty in getting to the center. So, like we have to do sometimes we made it out to her. First we stopped by her job, and when we didn't find her there we went to her house. There were a couple lines of trailers next to the highway and we pulled up to her place right behind the school bus that was dropping off kids from the last day of school. There were several kids that went into the house when Tammy went out to talk to the parent, but there was one little boy who just stared at us in the Head Start van. He was a black boy, probably around 2 and walking outside barefoot and wearing only a diaper, just staring at us intently with his fingers in his mouth. He just stared, and i saw him there in the trailer park and I just stared back at him. He looked for probably about 30 seconds before climbing the stairs into his house and being let in by another young kid.
I didn't stare at him with pity really, but intrigue. He made me smile a crooked smile filled with curiosity, one that wished his parents were out here but they probably thought he was inside already and I wish he was wearing shoes but he was just staring with his fingers in his mouth. I didn't really think about his life, I didn't really ponder anything of great substance, I just watched him climb the stairs in his diaper and enter into the trailer by the highway. Now I find myself having an inner one-way dialogue with the image of the diaper boy that goes something like this:
Diaper Boy, you seem like a strong kid. Something in you looks like a fighter. You're gonna need to be a fighter because your decisions unfortunately may have heavier consequences than most people because of your "disadvantages".
Disadvantage is a strong word. The word itself has the potential to snuff out dreams before they can begin. I don't think I like this word very much. No Diaper Boy, you can do whatever you want, but unfortunately a lot of how you perceive this word, this "disadvantage" has to do with your parents, your guardians, the ones you can't choose. I know you can do anything you want to do, anything you DREAM to do, but how will you know if no one tells you? If no one shows you that you are a person, and because of that heart and brain that reside somewhere inside that tiny frame of yours you matter, you deserve respect from everyone but most of all yourself? Because if you don't believe in yourself, how can you know that you don't have to grow up angry without a reason, oppressed without a knowledge of who is oppressing, and broken without a way to be repaired?
Diaper Boy, I can't save you. You don't need "saving." You need someone to show you that you matter. I really hope the people inside that house know that. I hope they show you, Diaper Boy. I really hope they do.

Sickness, continued...

Right now I'm reclining in the amazing automatic blue/pink polka-striped chair that stands you up when you press a button with a box of tissues sitting on the chair next to me and a bright pink blanket covering my lap. I'm all alone in our little home. Over the past few days it has become sort of a home, a place to come back to at the end of the day and sit back with a cup of tea and people who care about how your day went.
I'm sitting here all comfy-fied because my sickness has decided to take over my head as well as my chest and work did not seem like a pleasant option for me. I did go to work this morning, mostly because I couldn't get in contact with my supervisor and we agreed to have a 2-hour notice before sick days, but also because I thought just maybe I was psyching myself out and wasn't as sick as I thought I might be. Then on the way there I felt like my lungs were trying to escape from my body while managing to cover the bottom of the passenger's side with a layer of used tissues (I know, yuck) and decided maybe I should just ask to go back. So after talking to Ms. Robinson I made my way home and have been here ever since. (except for that trip to CVS to get dryer sheets I just made). Brandon came back for his lunch break earlier and we ate lunch together/chillaxed until he had to go back about an hour ago. I decided working on my blog would be a good way to kill some time.

So about my day yesterday:

I left around 7:30 to get there around 8:00. Ms. Robinson wanted to get me to start putting information into this new online database that basically keeps track of all the information for current and incoming students. Internet connectivity is horrible at this place and it took a long time to even get the system online. When it was online, I felt like the typical well-meaning intern. You know, the one who wants to work hard but has no idea how what they are doing? That was me. I was trying to figure out everything that she knew without having to think about it, and I felt like I was hindering her much more than helping her. After that failed attempt I answered a few phone calls and worked on some other things before we rode out to some of the local primary schools. Nichols Head Start operates in District II in Marion and Dillon counties, right along the edge of both. The area around it is very rural, with everthing far and in between. I asked her if many of the parents that she encountered didn't have cars and she said, with emphasis, "absolutely." And I thought: Without a car, without any way to get to a job or to get the kids to school or to get to anywhere, to have limited social interaction and no way to get assistance of any kind unless you have a family member maybe who could get you there but even then how the hell are you supposed to get a job when you have to have a college degree these days to find a job anywhere? online college? But that means you have to have a job to get internet, and you can't get it out this far anyway. Well there are scholarships surely, loans that could work maybe...but how are you supposed to get there? And who will watch the kids?
She said these are the people they sometimes stumble upon by chance when they go out recruiting in the neighborhoods.
Man.
I also asked her what she thought the greatest need was in the program. She said, "the needs of the parents." Many of the parents just don't have the resources to have their various needs met, on every level. Who suffers? The kids. She mentioned that many of the parents are just accustomed to accepting circumstances/other things without ever asking why or questioning why something exists and sometimes don't know how to be self-sufficient in the ways they need to be. This is why programs like Head Start are so important. It not only assists the children, but it offers services to the parents and resources that can help them out.
When we got back I got to see a couple families go through the enrollment process and saw some adorable (but kinda rowdy) little kids. I felt kind of awkward because I was just sitting there doing nothing while Ms. Robinson did her job, but learned a little about the process. I stuffed some envelopes with forms to be sent out to parents of new students and then left. When I got back we had leftovers and I did some doodling. Benton Wise (one of the BN 13'ers) came by with his dad when they dropped of David Womble after a day on the farm.

cough cough cough

These past few days we’ve been settling into Marion and I haven’t much felt like blogging. So I’ll just sum it up in a few words:

Get up, throw luggage in back of monster suv, drive (RAIN)/sickness/BIRTHDAY!! :D, arrival, Pizza Hut, the Pig, birthday cake!,….retreeeeeeat/figuring out how to budget money with a large group ….Zapatas, byebye Minda, sitting around in computer circles, Library cards, epic “communal” walmart trip (3 carts full of crap) at around 250 dollars, Dr. Demarco thinks I might have swine flu, I don’t have swine flu, but I get prescription drugs, CVS insurance issues, family dinner, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, sleep (well, kinda)…

Ok, and now we get to today, the first day of my internship.
I woke up at a very early 7 am, rolled out of bed and went straight to the coffee maker. I think I might be the only hardcore coffee lover here, being a 2 cup-a-morning gal. After coughing profusely and scaring people with my blank morning zombie stare, I got ready to go and shot out the door. My commute was around 30 minutes this morning, but I got sort of lost in Nichols and think I can cut it down. While I was driving I was just looking around at the houses and things and the countrified houses with the fields and run-down gray buildings stuck in the middle reminded me of home.
I saw the sign for Nichols Head Start and turned into a road that led to a pretty run-down place, definitely not what I was expecting. I didn’t really know what to expect, but in my head I imagined better facilities. Of course, they were functional and perfectly workable, just not what I had in mind. Tammy Robinson is one of the sweetest bubbly personalities I’ve met, especially considering her job. She’s my supervisor, along with two other administrators who seem really excited about their occupations. I’m also working with another intern, Shameetra (spelling?)Lee who is finishing a degree in Social Work at Coker (again, spelling?). She has two kids ages 8 and 10 and decided to finish her degree fairly recently after taking some time off. I signed some confidentiality agreements, forms stating that I’d speak up if I saw corporal punishment being used, and started filling out some forms and filing some papers. I filled out some forms using information from of some perspective students that were getting paperwork together. The kids names were certainly interesting (using lots of hyphens and ‘s) and it was kind of depressing to come across some of the students and read about financial situations. I just start thinking about the lives of these children and my heart aches at how they must be living. Programs like Head Start are great, but man….it’s hard to think that there’s only so much you can do. We’ll be going out to some of the homes for recruitment purposes, and it was explained to me that I would see standards of living that might shock me, but I had to keep that in mind. You can only do so much. I think this is going to be hard. Still, I feel like this way I’ll actually be making a contribution and will learn a lot more than I could otherwise.
I was coughing the whole time I was at work and I felt kind of bad for potentially infecting other people with my diseases. Ms. Robinson is a member of the Marion Council on Aging and had a board meeting today and asked as I wanted to come with her. I thought it might be a good opportunity to meet some more big community leaders so I agreed to come along. Unfortunately, my coughing got the best of me and I decided to leave so I wouldn’t disrupt the meeting too much. This is getting kind of old.
I was so tired when I got home, and definitely have new respect for Mom and Dad working and cooking and budget managing and raising kids. It was so nice to come back to the house and have people slowly arrive, coming together and talking about our days. Now John Deans and David Womble are grilling hamburgers and hotdogs on a grill Dr. DeMarco let us use. Smells great :)

Marion--Day 0?

I am officially 19 years of age as of 2 minutes ago. How sublimely symbolic--a new year, a new slate, a new start, my first year beginning in a new town, a new experience, a new chance to grow into who I'm supposed to be.
Today, I had one of those moments. You know, the moments when a lightbulb comes on up there, a revelation hits you hard and your eyes pop so wide open you think they might fall out of your head. Maybe this realization could be more accurately described as a fluorescent lightbulb. Slow to come on but when it is on, you can tell the difference in the way you view the room.
I felt so old coming up to this day, but then, today, and in smaller moments I realize that with everything I know, with everything I've learned about life, I really have a long long way to go before I figure everything out.
I know that this summer will help me in developing into the adult that I'm becoming, and I can't wait to begin :)