I’d really like to tell you
September 16, 2023
Tonight, I’d like to tell you that sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice when I left Quincy College.
I’d love to describe what it’s like at my new job, at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Science, how it feels to have an office, with a door, and that sunflowers became my favorite flowers when I found them on my desk that first day.
I want to tell you about this summer- how awesome it was to spend time with Kate, without the shadow of Colin, in the next room or just upstairs, barking into the phone or playing video games with the volume all the way up. He was at home for a year and a half, on house arrest, because someone found a large quantity of pot in his apartment.
Since he’s been gone, I text him a few times a week. I answer his calls, even if I’m in the shower or with a student.
I set out today with my friend Alison for a final dip at Nantasket, even though the forecast called for scattered showers. When the downpour started, we both turned around and headed to Derby Street, for some mediocre mussels and a decent cucumber Margarita.
I’m grateful I had time with Alison, she was one of my best friends at QC. I like the sweater I bought at Kohls. I am coming to terms that we probably won’t go to the beach again until next year, unless it’s to watch the dogs play in the water, while we shiver on the boardwalk and wonder if summer will ever come around again.
I’d like to share what it feels like to throw my body in front of a wave and be lifted for a second or two before landing, sometimes on my feet, sometimes on my ass, when it’s done. It takes a long, long time to get used to water temperatures of 58 to 65 degrees. It can take a half an hour, at least ,with the numb all the way up my body until, slowly, my toes and my knees wake, my muscles unclench. The water feels cold and glorious, but it takes time and patience. A person shouldn’t go to the beach in Massachusetts if they are on tight schedule, unless they usually swim in Maine, where the water is much colder. I liked thinking about swimming in the ocean, tonight, while I wrote this.
It amazes me what me body and soul can get used to, when I take my time. This can be both glorious and dangerous, if you think about it.
The summer, we spent a lot of time at the beach, walking the dogs, or putting off things that need to be done.
Last week, I made a list-
Our dishwasher leaks, the ice maker is on strike, and both our cars have check engine lights blazing, 80 percent of the time.
My laptop won’t connect to the internet. My watch won’t connect to my phone.
The new espresso machine makes lousy espresso.
I just spent a half an hour in the park after dark because the dogs really needed the space and the cool night air.
It’s been hot. Or I’m cold, in a house or an office with the air conditioner dripping rivers outside the window and frost from the vents.
There has not been much time for reflection or even group exercise classes.
But there is enough for yoga in the living room, with Chanel climbing my leg Bernadette sprawling under my plank, and Jack climbing Chanel.
There is enough time for phone calls to the people I love who are far, and a walk or a meal with the people I love who are close.
There is time for sleep, and a few minutes of a an ancient Pat Conroy novel just before.
There will be time, soon enough, to deal with the ice maker, the Buick, and the lack of lattes. My priorities are different than they used to be.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow, and tomorrow is Monday, so I’d say my life is pretty damn good.
This is the summer I gave up on my hair.
July 18, 2023
This summer, I am done with work every at 4 pm every day for the summer, (thank you, Quincy College). It’s been hot as hell lately, most days, so most days, I am climbing down the steps into the pool by 4:45 and slipping under the rope and inside the lap lane by 4:47.
My backstroke meanders. My freestyle is fast, especially when I remember to kick my legs. I don’t practice breaststroke anymore; it feels too much like the the stroke of someone who doesn’t want to get her face wet. Last year, I practiced butterfly. Well done, it is glorious to watch, and if continued for any period of time, it left me breathless.
This year, I keep it simple. I crawl. I float. I backstroke. I dive.
When I get tired, I pull myself out and slather deep conditioner onto my hair. Then I rinse off in the outdoor shower. Sometimes, there is a tiny group of six year old girls watching me shower because a lifeguard asked them to give me a turn. The shower is very popular with first grade girls.
I have a pair of goggles that keeps all the water out, and I cherish them as much as my fancy headphones.
I only have one swimsuit; it is two pieces that do not match. But the top piece is blue, and bottoms are black, and I don’t think anyone has noticed. I do spend most of my time underwater.
There have been quite a few changes in my life these past years; I am now recognizing this trend will continue, even speed up, in the near and distant future.
I find comfort knowing this is not particular to me; it seems everyone I know is experiencing roughly the same thing, just different circumstances-different levels and combinations of grief, joy, and willingness to adapt to, for lack of a better term, the increasing speed of life
I’m not sure I could adapt to life without swimming in Cunningham Pool, most days at 445.
But, I do.
Every year, it closes mid August so the lifeguards can go back to college.
I sign up for boot-camps and glory in the fall colors while walking Bernadette and Chanel, in the woods just behind an empty Cunningham Pool.
This was the first summer, I didn’t bother to blow dry my hair after dinner, even on weeknights.
I decided summer evenings could be better spent walking the dogs after sunset, going out for ice cream with Katy, heading to bed early, with a book, or to the sofa, to watch Ted Lasso, for the second time, with my husband, (it’s his first, and I think I’m hoping some of Ted’s optimism will rub off).
It’s hasn’t, yet anyway. But it’s only July 17th, and there’s time for us all.
Strange Season
June 13, 2023
This has been a strange season.
It’s mid June, we were still burning wood in the pellet stove last week. The mornings were so cold. I’d go to work in dressed in layers. With the chill in the morning, and the air conditioner, most days, I’d end wrapped up in a sweater, like I started, with fuzzy slippers replacing my heels of good intentions.
I’m still working at Quincy College, in the wilds of financial aid. I do math all day long, and navigate systems I didn’t know existed. I’m still trying to figure out how to make the FAFSA less scary; we call it the ISIR in our department, probably not that fun fact. That makes it sound even scarier, I think.
I get a ride to work most mornings, I kiss two dogs goodbye, Nell and Bernadette. They lean out the window and wait. Chanel is an exotic American Bulldog, and Bernadette a Frenchie. I’m not sure how I ended up their mom, but it had something to do with Colin, my 23 year old son, who lives far away. He is gone, though that has not been hard to get used to. I miss him, but mostly when I’m looking at pictures of him from when he was ten.
Sophie never would have kissed me goodbye. She liked sleeping in, and would lounge on the bed until after eleven if her bladder held out. She’d wake first when I woke, a garbled barky syllable would come out of her mouth, and she’d roll over so I could rub her belly before I had to force myself from under the blankets, and away from her, to get ready for work. Then, while I searched for the right shirt, she’d go back to sleep, snoring softly. Those last few months, I was especially quiet, as I moved around in the morning.
Katy is home, and is a different creature these days. She cooks, reads thick, dense, novels, signed up for Instagram, and just loaded the dishwasher. (She’s only been home a few weeks, and I’ve been generous with the car.) Her expired passport and three pairs of socks have been on the stairs since she got home, so my daughter’s still here.
When I look back on the pandemic, it is meditating with Katy that I remember and watching Mrs. Maisel, driving her to her boyfriend’s house, and hiking the Blue Hills with Sophie while I waited until I was summoned to get her. I wasn’t working then, and I loved walking the woods, by myself. I still do.
That was an even stranger season than this one, I guess.
I wonder what I’ll remember about these days, and when the water will be warm enough to go for a swim.
I wonder if anything will feel normal anytime soon, and what normal looked like.
In the meantime, I will look forward to Cape Cod and the fireflies. I will cherish that Katy is upstairs, fifty feet away, and we have tentative plans for dinner tomorrow. When I’m done here, I will do yoga while Chanel climbs up my leg and Bernadette snorts, and laugh between breaths.
This is a strange season, not long after the strangest season.
But strange isn’t bad- it is unfamiliar, a little scary, but it has forced me to pay attention.
Bernadette is under the table. Katy is listening to a playlist based off of a song by Her’s, (Her’s is the name of a band). The sink needs a rinse, the laundry needs to be switched. I have roasting vegetables in the oven that are just about done, I made them for lunch.
It’s so easy to let it all slip by, and find yourself at the kitchen table smelling sweet potato, yesterday’s candle, and the rain.
I’m Pretty Sure This Will Happen to Most of Us.
April 25, 2023
It happened tonight at the gym. It happens all the time when I’m working with high school students, having drinks at bar, walking my dog, watching television.
I feel a tiny wince somewhere in my chest, I wish I was that young. I’d like a do over or a do it all again.
This doesn’t last long. I don’t have the option of wallowing when I’m raising a twelve pound weight over my head, explaining the difference between subsidized and unsubsidized loans to a seventeen year old, or hanging out with my friends.
We’re all so busy lately. I’m busy, my friends are busy, everyone at work is losing their minds. Some of my colleagues are eating lunch at their desks, staying long after doors lock and sending emails at 2 am Sunday morning. (Not me. I have lunch with my friends, but that’s a different story, because my friends at work are the best.)
Essentially, I have too much going on to dwell on my age, or whatever the hell age I’d like to be.
Tonight, I dwelled.
When I was in high school, I drank Miller Lite behind the bathroom at the Tourne, a park in my hometown. A lot of people did this, I was known for being Rob’s shadow and spent the first six months of our relationship agreeing with everything Rob said, until we’d been together for a few months.
Around this time, I discovered the excruciating joy of passionate arguments in the middle of the street, in the middle of the night, in the snow, barefoot, because whatever the hell we were fighting was so important it couldn’t wait four hour until he picked me up for school. When I wasn’t whipped up and hysterical about Rob, I used my free time to squabble with my mom about why I had to empty the dishwasher when we had a housecleaner, and walk around a lake called Mountain Lake. I didn’t do any homework or play any sports, but it’s obvious, I was quite busy.
During my twenties, I was sad. My father died when I was twenty-two, and although he’d been sick for a while, his loss hit hard. I wasn’t hospitalized; I went to school, held some jobs, went through the motions, but looking back, I see a sad girl who should have been in therapy.
During my thirties, the first thing my brain tells me to write is I had a damn good time. I was on guest lists, went to concerts in limos, stayed up until dawn playing backgammon, and weirdly enough, talking about high school. I shopped. I hung out at the pool on the roofdeck on the Sheridan. I went to Walden Pond whenever my friend was kind enough to take me, and if she wasn’t up for it, I took a cab out to Concord and made the driver wait until I was finished. (I had a collection of cabdrivers that drove me places and brought me food and alcohol when I didn’t want to leave the house or the liquor stores were closing.)
Most nights, when we were out, I’d leave first, and head back to my apartment to wait for my friends to come over after the bars closed. I don’t like waiting in line for the bathroom and crowds make me uncomfortable. The limos were nice, and the concerts were amazing, but mostly, what I remember is trying to locate the limos after the concerts. That was not fun, and often took a very long time. Backgammon is fun, especially when you’re winning, but Walden and winning backgammon games aren’t enough to redeem a decade that, from this angle, looks pretty shallow.
I had children in my forties. I remember trying to hold slippery Kate up in the sink so I could wash her hair, and almost dropping her, because I turned around to look at the clock. I needed to know how many more minutes until I could put her to bed.
I skipped through parts of Lemony Snicket when I was reading to Colin because I wanted to get back downstairs to some tv show.
I loved taking them to the pool but we didn’t go often because of how long it would take to get them in and out of their swimsuits. And sometimes, while they were swimming, they’d need to pee. It was so inconvenient, those three to six minutes of helping my kids get ready to play in the water.
As they grew older, they started to move in another direction. I’d take them to the park, leave my book and phone behind, and they’d meet their friends. We’d go for a hike, and they’d want to turn around after thirty minutes so we could go for pizza.
By the time they were teenagers, I caught glimpses. I memorized conversations and wrote about them on Facebook, not to brag, but so I’d have records. I drove Katy anywhere she wanted to go, just to have time in the car. I tried to connect with Colin, but he started drifting away around age fourteen. The only time we spoke was when he lost something in the laundry, the only real conversations we had were in the car when we were on the way home from the police station.
Now, Colin is twenty-two and Katy is nineteen. Neither one of them live at home, but we talk. Colin tells me about his new apartment and sends pictures of his food all the time; this is a trend I don’t understand. Katy shares stories about frat parties I’m pretty sure not every parent hears, sends pictures of her new haircut, her new chair, her form in deadlift, and lately, has let me listen while she tries to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up. Right now, archivist, physical therapist assistant, and media consultant are all on the table. She is also considering archaelogy but I guess the prospects for employment are dismal.
My kids are entirely different, but they pick up the phone when I call. Sometimes I have to call twice and then text, but they pick up.
The only do over I’d like is those fleeting moments when they were really small. I’d sit on the floor with Katy and color, instead of leaving her at the coffee table while I sat at kitchen table on my desktop computer. Colin loved playing with tiny plastic animals, I have no idea what he did with tiny plastic animals, but I wish I knew. I wish I didn’t always rush him off the swings, he loved the swings.
I think most parents go back to wishing they’d had just a little more time giving baths and cutting up vegetables. Maybe that’s why so many want grandchildren; I haven’t gotten there yet.
I’m good with where I am now. I live with a pup who thinks going to bed at nine is almost as much fun as eating cookies.
I work, and eat lunch, with people I like, for students who need my help. I don’t spend a fortune on records, (Spotify!). I like to cook.
I wake up without a hangover; I take my time getting ready because I’ve laid my clothes out the night before.
My kids talk to me, and quite often, when I say something, they listen.
Cancel the do-over.
I need to stop time.
Day 33- All I can tell you for sure is it’s Wednesday.
April 15, 2020
Waves of grief pass thru me at the strangest times- driving the car, walking the dog, cooking a meal- during mundane day to day activities that are as familiar as the freckly on my thigh, or the sound of my mom’s voice.
What I am grieving?
I’m not a traveller, so I can’t say I miss getting on a plane. I’d like to get on a plane, but that can’t be it.
I don’t go to many parties, just enough so that when I’m invited, I usually say yes, and try to bring something nice so I’ll be invited again. But it’s April, not exactly party season, and there’s Zoom. I can drink what I like to drink, in my living room, with my friends, in their living rooms. It’s not ideal, but…
I love my job and I’m working from home.
I’ve probably seen more live music online than I have in the past five years.
There is my deep and abiding appreciation for food other people make, and ordering takeout is considered community service, so I’m doing my part.
I miss anticipation.
I miss going thru Monday knowing I had plans to meet Maggie for CardioBoxing and cocktails on Wednesday night, preparing for high school students to tour the campus at QC, and trying on clothes the night before, in an effort to be relatable, professional, and weather appropriate.
I miss checking the menu on High School lunch on Tuesday, and deciding to skip out of the office on Thursday for an hour to eat chicken or meatballs.
I miss helping Katy get ready for a recital, and looking forward to seeing friends I only see at recitals, school plays, football games, or the Fruit Center.
All I look forward to now is this being over.
There is no date.
No one knows what over will look like.
I haven’t been able to tap into eager anticipation for some vague time in the distant future.
Tonight, before I go to bed, and after I walk the dog, I’m going to plan something for tomorrow.
I haven’t figured out what, but it will have to be more significant than making bread or trying a new workout online.
I’d love suggestions.
I need to look forward to more than coffee in the morning, and getting thru another day.
I’ll let you know how it works out.
Love,
Julie
Day 11- Why am I still counting?
March 27, 2020
We are okay. We are healthy, Katy is upstairs coloring her hair, Sheldon is working, the dog reluctantly joins me for walks, Quincy College is going to let staff work from home next week, we have plenty of peanut butter and I am lucky to be alive but damn.
It’s really hard some days.
We meditated. Walked in the woods. Spoke to family and friends. Read. Talked to friends from work and reached out to some students I know from town.
It’s a beautiful day.
I’m sad and there is a glorious sunset outside.
I never thought I’d be nostalgic for a month ago but tonight, I miss picking out my clothes, packing my lunch, and negotiating with Katy over how she would get to school.
I miss needing coffee in the morning, parking where I probably shouldn’t, picking up the phone on my desk and knowing an answer.
I miss knowing an answer the most.
With love from a blue corner of the world this evening,
Julie
Summer 2018- It Ain’t Over Until It’s Over
August 21, 2018
Mid to late August, it happens.
The back to school flyers weigh more than the news/travel/ and sports section combined.
My 14 year old daughter sighs and shakes her head-“I don’t know where the time went.”
Cunningham pool posts it’s last day. Sunblock goes on sale.
I look up from everything
To wonder how the hell that happened.
The pool might close,
assignments might be due,
but the sales are going to run until it’s time for Halloween.
Summertime is time out. Time off.
A day at the beach. An hour by the barbecue. An afternoon with a good book.
Some time at the park with your kids, grandkids,
or a bunch of dogs you’re babysitting,
spying on them on the swing in the playground,
wondering where the hell time went.
I don’t know where you’re at in the journey,
but I can pass this on.
The beach doesn’t close.
The barbecue doesn’t care if it’s Monday, November, or 4 am.
Cunningham pool shuts down,
but there’s ponds, kiddie pools,
the ocean, the bay,
and the bathtub,
all offering different water temperatures and dining options.
We can move thru life
At summertime slow,
Or fall frantic.
It’s still August, my friends.
No one is going to run out of pencils.
You don’t need to start wearing fall until January,
orange is not on the runway this year.
Revel in flip flops, sundresses, and shorts of all shapes,
until knees are blue.
Stay barefoot whenever you can, have something on hand
in case you want to enter a store, a restaurant,
or have an appointment with a court officer, or a prospective employer.
There are beaches, and the water is warm.
If the sharks bother you-
There are lakes, kayaks, italian ice, baseball, drive-ins, eating outside, eating takeout from the boxes in bed while watching Netflix, bike paths, hiking trails…
These are my summer time things.
I want to say- to myself- as much as you-
It doesn’t have to end because
the bus pass came in,
or a leaf turned,
or your son graduated high school, and all his friends are going to college,
and you want him to get ready for fall.
Summer is here.
It will not leave
until we mark
it in pen
Or email a colleague
Likely to note
it’s expected departure
On the calendar.
There is time
To call your family.
Text your friends.
Light a sparkler. Go dancing.
Sing along to the radio.
Roll down the top.
Roll down the window.
Laugh out loud.
Wish on a candle.
Look at the clouds.
Buy a beach towel that
means something.
Everything else goes by so fast, everything else-
This year,
Let summer last.
We don’t need to infringe
on the Fall season-
those that love the fall,
or make their living selling leafblowers, pumpkins, and autumn colored towels-
I respect their needs too,
I am just asking for a little room
to prepare for what needs to be done
in September.
There is work to be done in September.
This year,
I need a little extra time at the beach,
Before what comes
After Summer
2018.
What I Do Some Days, if I’m lucky.
April 13, 2018
Yesterday was the “progressive dinner” of high school college fairs in this area of Massachusetts. If you’re not familiar with the term, a progressive dinner is one where the participants move from one houses to enjoy different courses- the Jennings for cocktails, the Gorbenski’s for apps, Jenny and Rob always serve the roast beef, you get the idea.
I had to be a Milton High School at 8 am, followed by Braintree at 9:30, Blue Hills Regional Technical School at 1, and Randolph at 220 pm. I had a lot of company, about fifty to sixty other colleges attended, some from as far away as Florida. We all wore comfortable shoes, lugged portable suitcases stuffed with tiny phone chargers, stress balls, little notebooks, flyers, viewbooks, pens, inquiry cards, invitations, business cards, pop up signs and polyester table runners in school colors.
We walked from the parking lot thru Milton High School’s front door like we’d been there before. (I have actually spent a lot of time walking in and out of Milton High School’s front door. My son was asked to leave three months before he was to graduate.) Yesterday morning, I was there to speak to his classmates about coming to school at Quincy College while Colin played NBA All Star Draft in his room.
Admissions representatives don’t speak to each other much, at least that I’ve noticed. Walking in and out of the high schools, we’re rushing, to get to our tables, hoping for coffee, trying to get our display set up and inviting before the first class descends into the cafeteria or the gym, trying to find our car to get to the next college fair, or home, or to a hotel. We are rushing from one place to another, phones in one hand, suitcases dragging behind us. We save our smiles and conversation for the prospective students, that want to us to tell them that Criminal Justice is a terrific major, there are careers for people that study Art, or that they’ll get into Nursing School. I try to be as honest as I can when I speak to the teenagers.
It’s easy for me. Quincy College, where I work, is affordable, so it’s a good fit for most seventeen year olds without a clue. And most seventeen year olds are without a clue. Even if they think they have a clue, they really don’t. Not about the future, anyway. But they do have a hell of a lot of time to figure things out. Not as much time as my son, but they’ve got time, especially if they spend a year at Quincy College, where tuition is affordable, and they can save on housing costs by living at home.
As an Admissions representative, I don’t say much to my colleagues because I’m saving all of my energy for the conversations with the seventeen year olds. I have tired conversations about how Monday’s suck with friends, how irritating work politics can be with people the next desk over, how much I hate the morning with my daughter every morning. The teenagers at the other side get to see Julie, the empathetic, interesting, and interested version. And I get to listen to them, and remember what it was like to be seventeen with the whole world, and a whole life, spread in front of me.
I imagine a few years ago, Admissions representatives might have spoken to each other on the way back to their cars, after the first fair, on their way to the second about the best way to get from point a to point b. But now, we all have phones, with apps like Waze, Google Maps, good ol’ Suri, to guide us to the next stop of the route. So we walk to our cars, separately, calculating if we have enough business cards, summer schedules, and pens for the next stop. In between, Suri does the talking.
During the events, we listen, ask the right questions, and thrust inquiry cards at the students, saying- just fill out your name, email address, high school, interest and date of graduation. The cards they give back are hard to read, and a lot of the time, the workstudy who enters the address gets it wrong. Soon, we’ll have tablets. Soon the inquiry cards will be as automated as our directions.
I’m grateful for Suri. I can’t find my way to the corner store some days. My work study will say a prayer of thanks when we start having prospective students type in their information on a tablet.
Hopefully, there isn’t a technology waiting in the wings to take over the conversations with juniors. They look me in the eye, they listen to my answers. They tell me their plans, they tell me their other plans, sometimes, they tell me they’ve got no plans. I could spend all day going from high school to high school, five days a week.
In Sophie’s Opinion
April 5, 2018
It’s my last semester of school, and one of the assignments is to write two to three times a week in a Communication Technology journal. The idea is for us to recognize the day to day impact technology has on our lives, and the way we relate to each other.
For the record, I’m pretty aware of technology, and the impact it’s had on human interactions. I own two teenagers, and work at a college, where I am surrounded by many, many teenagers, all looking for chargers, lost headphones, or the wifi password. I work at a place where colleagues and I will email each other information when sitting less than three feet from each other. I work at a place that has about twenty times more screens than books, and understand, that is the way things are now, so I don’t need to be reminded that technology is the almost the norm in most day to day conversations.
I sound grumpy about this, and I’m not. Technology has allowed me to share my essays and poems with an audience that doesn’t consist of Mom and my friend that just lost his job and will to listen to anything. It’s an easy way to remind someone to clean their room, without having to listen to the response or the lack of one. I enjoy crafting a well written email, I appreciate always having a camera, (I never had a camera, or if I did, I could never find it. Now, if I can’t find my camera, I can call it.)
My own issue with technology is once I’ve started, it’s hard to stop. Right now, I’m wrapping up this assignment so I can go downstairs and spend some time with my dog, Sophie, the Most Significant Child, because she will remain one. But I just noticed a text from a student on my phone, my laptop is already open. If I answer the text, I’m going to end up on the website. If I look on the website, I’ll spot an incorrect date, or remember I was supposed to email the woman from Madison Park about a tour. Once I email her, I’ll remember I haven’t called my mother yet today, because the woman from Madison Park is named Cindy, and Mom is Sheila, and I really do like talking to my mom. She’ll ask me how Sophie is, because she’s afraid to ask about the kids this late at night, she’s a worrier, and I’ll feel guilty because Sophie will be downstairs, waiting, and has been since I started this entry.
So, I’ll prove myself wrong, and just stop. It is hard to walk away from technology, but at the end of the day, I’d rather spend some time with Sophie, the Silent. She’s aware I’m spending too little time at the park, and too much time chattering, one way or another, on screens. Sophie is not a fan.
Two weeks ago, in a communications class, I led the discussion about Society and Politics. I spent twenty hours to prepare for one hour in front of the class- reading, looking for the most up to date and accurate, information, struggling with google slides, putting YouTube clips inside google slides, putting anything other than youtube clips inside google slides- get the picture?
I was intimidated by the material. In light of recent events, everything in the textbook seemed outdated or irrelevant. At the end of the class, the professor asked how anyone could feel hope in light of current events. The world has become a dark place. The bad guys are winning, our population is under a constant state of attack we aren’t even aware of, and, realistically, it appears =it might be virtually impossible to overturn or overcome current events.
I answered his question by saying that although I agreed with everything he just said, I am able to find optimism in the course of my job and day to day life. I work with students, non profit organizations, and older people trying to find a way to become relevant in today’s world. I need to find hope, because the people I work with need me to believe there is a point to what they are doing or plan to do.
Quite a few of the people I work with are international, many are undocumented. The majority of these people are coming to Quincy College, a two year college, after they have completed their doctorate, or master’s degree in their own country. Dentists hoping to become dental assistants, doctors registering for the Certified Nurse Assistant program. Last week, I worked with an economist from Nigeria to find the resources to study for the TEAS so she can enter our LPN program.
I stand by what I said about needing to feel hope so I can offer my optimism, like a pen or an apple, to these people when they step into my office.
Last week, I had to lead the class in a conversation about the Global Media. Half way through the chapter, I realized I need to do so much more.
I had always thought ]when I welcomed a woman from Haiti, leaning over the table to listen to her words through her accent, and answering her questions, clearly, with the program sheet between us, as a visual guide- that was doing the right thing. Calling upstairs to see when the next TEAS preparatory class began, also the right thing. Personally showing her the campus, introducing her to the Dean of Nursing, directing her to the most sympathetic staff member in our Financial Aid office, I felt like a rock star.
Welcoming people from other countries and helping them adjust to the area, navigate their way through job searches, higher education, even helping them help their own children make the transition, is important. But wouldn’t I be so much more effective if I knew something, anything, about the world these people are coming from?
Since Wednesday, I’ve made a priority to spend about twenty minutes looking outside of Western sources for the news. Columbia, France, Brazil, Canada,, Africa, Egypt, Qatar- the world is huge. I thought catching up on ‘Game of Thrones’ was going to be a process.I
I don’t know anything about ransomware, triple talaq, the recent rescue in Italy or spread of cholera in Yeman.
I consider myself an ambassador for higher education in the United States and I know little or nothing about where these people’s stories began.
Since then, I search out the international news mid-day. Over coffee, it’s too much. Before bed, I would never,sleep. Middle of my work day, I take a few minutes over lunch to seek out global news, not just from my half of the equator. After reading a story like ‘There is no justice for the poor in Brazil’ or ‘Pentagon wants to boost US troop numbers in Afghanistan’, my ongoing issues with the copier machine seem a little less dire.
It’s sad, often, the state of the world, but it’s also enlightening, to feel like I’m becoming, bit by bit, more aware of what is actually happening in the whole world- the whole world. I’m aware and beginning to understand different points of view. I’ve had the opportunity to glimpse at a different landscape, politically, emotionally, socially, and outside my own window. (Honestly, it’s been a week. I know enough to know I’m going to be without a clue for a while.)
I’m never going to have time to catch up on Game of Thrones.
julierichmond 