Hope everyone is glad to be back after an exciting Olympic break. Today we heard four excellent narratives: first, about standing up for yourself to a manager in a restaurant and turning things around to create a more positive relationship; second, about an experience in a hospital where a volunteer made authentiic connections with patients; third, about growing up and trying to find what's right for yourself and having the courage to keep looking; and last, understanding what a friend is going through as his mother is dying of cancer and grieving together. Many thanks to everyone for sharing. In our lecture we discussed the value of learning through literature and the importance of critical thinking. Lastly, our short story, "Winky", in George Saunder's short story collection, Pastoralia,(image) presented an interesting picture of how the self-help industry collides with reality.
Continue to work on your papers. See you next week.
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ReplyDeleteHow often has the world seen me the way Winky is seen by her brother? My romantic ideal is that I hope we are all crazy. Most of us know how to present ourselves politely in public. I do so much so that I am like wallpaper much of my life.
ReplyDeleteOf course there are different degrees and different types of crazy. Some crazy we admire, some we are disturbed by, others scare us. I have spent much of my working life as a care attendant for people with developmental disability. Maybe the greater world would see the people I’ve spent my life with like they would see Winky? I have seen them more like friends who were way less inhibited than me, and as people that in some ways I wished I was more able to be like.
I think Winky however misguided, was well intentioned and caring.
More importantly, I think the burden Winky’s brother feels can be a reality to families who have someone of special needs among them. Lives are altered dramatically. Dreams must be revisited. Simple things can become so complex and burdensome. There is certainly a need for families to have support from the community. I think, in some cases, there will inevitably be hard feelings. Looking from the outside in, it is easy to say that families should always be more loving, but as a worker, I was always able to go home to my own life. Would I get frustrated and tired if my work was also my home life?
I lived with a schizophrenic friend for a year. It was difficult. I had my bad days. I was frustrated sometimes. He had his bad days. Sometimes he scared me. I wouldn’t trade that year for anything. I wouldn’t go back to that year today either. It took a lot of work. I probably would suffer as a student if I lived with him now.
I also worked with a boy who had turrets. I remember thinking it was his mom who was the crazy one. She was always so stressed out. She was so excited to see me so she could escape. At the time I really didn’t think highly of her. I enjoyed time with her son. We’d play soccer and videogames! Looking back, remembering that she was a single mother and a nurse, I can understand her stress more.
Life is ironic at most times. Although Winky seems to be the main problem in Neil’s life, according to Neil; and although Winky is not like the average typical sister or person in general, she is a much happier person. Perhaps just being naturally happy and naïve is a gift- or it may even be a kind of wisdom. What is wisdom? Wisdom is not only intelligence. Having high IQ does not necessarily mean wisdom. On the other hand, high in IQ and EQ together may potentially be developed into wisdom. Though it all depends on what the definition of wisdom is, which can become quite philosophical.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, wisdom should not only be promoted or developed through the educational system. Wisdom, in my perspective, is naturally and gradually gained from all areas and aspects of life and the surrounding. They could include acceptance, awareness, responsibility, care, and most importantly, process of learning by experience. Learning from experiences by having the ability to reflect back is the main process in gaining wisdom. Wisdom is unity as a whole, so it is very different from cleverness. Cleverness usually only refers to a characteristic towards one aspect, while wisdom is a lifelong process which unites all other characteristics as a whole.
There are many obstacles in life, which require series of never-ending choices to be chosen. I have once been told from a wise man that there are only two things in life that must be done without a choice, while all the rest is done by free will, by choice. The two things that are unavoidable in life are: 1) to die; and 2) to make decisions.
Do you agree?
The narrative this week about standing up to a boss reminded me of a similar situation that occurred between my boss and I a couple months ago. Although I have been the manager at my work for over a year, and have worked there for four years, I had a boss who had only been at the company for a short time. This situation was awkward for me as I felt that her lack of knowledge about the way the store ran was compensated with an “all knowing” attitude towards me. I found it very difficult to follow her incorrect instructions on how to run the store when I had the knowledge and experience of the right way of doing things. Instead of compromising with me, my boss took advantage of her position of authority and subjected me to a lot of work without any recognition. It took almost an entire year for me to stand up to her and let her know how I felt. By making me feel overworked and not appreciating my standpoint and knowledge of the company, my boss was inhibiting me from receiving the respect and recognition I deserved. I finally contacted my more senior boss and sat down with them both to explain the situation. The similar three-way approach taken by the person reading the narrative last class, to me, seems like the most effective approach to dealing with these issues. With regard to the lecture today, my boss acknowledged that she was not putting herself in my shoes when treating me in the discourteous manner. I think that once we communicated to each other how we felt, and attempted to understand each other’s point of view, we gained a better understanding of how to deal with problems like this in the future. Sometimes it is easier for us to assume that our frustration against someone is unsolvable, than to take the time to talk through the issue and come to some sort of common ground.
ReplyDeleteHowever, with the short story this week, “Winky”, I found it difficult to find common ground with the main character. Although I could understand his frustration with his sister and living arrangement, I felt there were other ways the situation could have been handled. I assume that the limited childhood of the main character made his list of options for dealing with his sister very narrow; but I found it hard to understand why a self-help conference was the right choice for his issue. In his situation, I feel that a more personally orientated therapy session would have been the most effective choice for dealing with the situation. Even though Neil did not have many friends or family to confide in, the public venue of a self-help conference did not appear to be the best decision for his type of problem. Although this piece of literature was hard for me to relate to, I did find it helpful for practising the idea of transfer. I think that more extreme cases in relation to our own lives force us to use this idea more effectively than a story similar to our own experiences. The challenge of trying to find some sort of common ground with Neil forced me to examine Neil’s situation and myself in a deeper way.
The topic about the value of literature brought a lot to my mind. I began to think of how valuable literature is and why I value it. I have been working with kids in a literacy program for the past two years and I love going to work and doing nothing more then just promoting the idea of how cool books are and the value they can bring to your life. For children and families that don’t receive education for any reason, literature can provide that for them; weather it be a textbook, fairy tale, newspaper or novel. To families who are not able to get an education literature becomes the best way to attain it, people can learn about science, art, politics, culture, philosophy, law and human rights. There is an endless amount of topics that literature covers and to be able to just read some can help educate a person.
ReplyDeleteFrom my point of view, literature is very important in our lives; reading is a means of gaining culture and enriching our knowledge in different areas of life. It can help us have a great imagination and it makes things easier when it comes to making certain types of decisions or dealing with our emotions. Because from literature people can often learn how to act in certain situations and deal with emotions, literature can also be a gateway to release emotions. It gives you the possibility to speak about anything from science, politics or art, even anything that is out of your knowledge or profession because you have read something connected to that.
Literature offers us the possibility to enter the world of imagination, and to leave the real one for a couple of hours. It allows us to imagine what the past is like and experience the present in another context and look into the future. It gives us the possibility to be another characters in the story giving use multiple pairs of eyes to look through.
Sometimes, we identify ourselves with the characters in the stories we read and that can help us solve our problems and teach us how to react in certain circumstances. Books are inspired from reality because authors are in fact from the same world we are, they experience they same things and embody the same emotions and carry the same problems.
Literature is the perfect means to enrich our culture, to express correctly and have a rich vocabulary, to be able to engage in conversations in different fields of interest and to really be considered a well-rounded and educated person. I believe that literature is one of the most valuable things in our lives and that if you have time to spare then pick up something that you would never read and learn something new.
Blog #6
ReplyDeleteI felt really sad after reading George Saunders’ essay about Winky. On the surface it made me see the story for what it was at face value; a pathetic man who doesn’t have the courage to push away from the family that brings him down, to have a successful life of his own. I felt bad for Neil, and almost worse for Winky, as what a sad way to end up later in life. But what this story really made me think about were destructive life cycles. Neil experienced a bad relationship and upbringing from his mother and father and carried that burden on into adulthood. He felt like he wanted to break free and become his own person, but obviously did not have the strength to do that, and spent his life hating his sister because of his inability to set boundaries. This happens a lot in real life situations as well; people are caught in emotionally and physically destructive cycles in their lives and it takes an awfully strong person to break free from that cycle and start a new, healthy one. I have a friend, who was in an abusive relationship with a man, and she told me about how his father had always neglected him and his mother was a witch who had abused him as a child and emotionally and verbally abused him as an adult. By telling me this she almost excused his behaviour, saying that it was almost not his fault because there had been history of abuse in his family back to a few generations before. Preventing these cycles from continuing down another generation is a difficult thing to do, and one of the reasons I always wanted to be a teacher was not only because I wanted to teach children but also because I wanted to be there to help the ones that didn’t have a voice of their own; to spot the trouble before it continues onto the next grade. Even if it is not full blown abuse, there are a lot of neglected children out there and I always wanted to do my part to help as much as I could.
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ReplyDeleteThis week’s short story, “Winky,” was very depressing. At first I felt a bit bat for Neil. He seemed to be a very unsatisfied man with low self-esteem. Yet after attending the seminar he became almost bloodthirsty for Winky. Of course she seemed like a bit of a pain the way he described her, and after reading the part of the story that was written in her perspective I could definitely understand how she might be difficult to live with, but I also think Neil’s assessment of her was very harsh. There was no reason for him to blame all of his problems on her. If you are unsatisfied with your life, it will never change by just sitting around and blaming other people for your misfortune. If Neil had gotten rid of Winky it wouldn’t change the fact that he soldered triangle “thingies” in his basement for a living. I feel like Neil’s concept of success was being like other people and gaining shallow material things. In this way I definitely admire Winky much more than Neil even though she is clearly off her rocker. She feels happy when she finds good in things and when she pleases others, feels appreciated, or sees goodness in other people (like Neil), she doesn’t care much for aesthetic things at all. Perhaps in that way we all ought to be a little more like Winky and appreciate the smaller things in life. It’s very unfortunate that Neil never reaches any conclusion similar to this, he just ends up feeling more depressed and angry than ever and believes that he was dealt a bad hand and thinks that none of the misfortune in his life was his own doing. It makes me sad to think that Neil probably would have snapped and harmed Winky at some later time. It almost seems more terrible to do something bad to her just because of her childlike naivety, trust and worship of her big brother.
ReplyDeleteThis weeks’ narrative about the volunteer that made an authentic connection to patients reminds me of a situation that I experience with hospital staff. When I was growing up, my cousin was admitted into the Children’s Hospital to get her appendix removed. Since she had a room to herself and there was an extra bed in her room, I decided that I would stay and keep her company while she was in the hospital for the weekend. During our stay, my cousin received the best care from the staff. Not only were they physically comforting, but they also accommodated to every other need that either of us asked for. The staff members were extremely nice and went beyond and above their job description.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading “Winky”, I found that that main character was being a bit selfish, as well as the motivational speaker. I think that it would be extremely to consider your feelings but it would be harder to put your minor concerns away to aid those dealing with bigger problems. When the main character has no one else to turn except for his sister, he chooses to push her away and blame her for his predicament. I pitied the sister more than the brother because it seemed like she was actually attempting to help her brother and put away her own concerns.
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ReplyDeleteThe short story “Winky” feels surreal yet can absolutely be a portrayal of somebody's life. The surreal part to me is when the motivation speaker uses his life example of abandoning his disabled brother to achieve his own happiness. Do people really think like that? As I was reading that part I felt disgusted with Tom Rodgers. How can Tom Rodgers be saying that his disabled brother was “crapping” in his oatmeal. I though family was suppose to stick together. It was disheartening to read when Tom Rodgers was teaching Neil to kick his own dear sister out of his house. I felt that the character Neil was pitiful. He has good intentions of helping his sister but her way of living her life seems to be interfering with his, which makes him start to resent her presence. The relationship between Neil and Winky reminded me of the story “The Heifer”. Neil in a way reminded me of Aina and Winky as the husband. Neil has this deep resentment towards his sister and I feel that if the story were to continue, the ending may be similar to “The Heifer”. What is essential is communication. If Neil is unhappy, he should tell his sister. Neil did not need to go to the seminar at all. I also felt that the seminar was not entirely helpful to Neil. I feel that Winky loves her brother with all her heart and would try her best to make him feel better. Neil should not have to kick his sister out of his house. He should just tell her what he wants of her, it could be as simple as “my house, my rules”.
ReplyDeleteI have always wondered if self help seminars really work, or is it all a scam? After reading this story it feels that self help seminars are a little of both, the seminar provides information and it really is up to the people to interpret the information and apply it to their lives. I have come to see that self help seminars are similar to a form of reflective practice. Everyone can get something out of it, and what they get out of it depends on their prior knowledge and past experiences.
This week's class we discussed the story entitled, “Winky”. This was a parody on the self-help industry and the seminars they hold in order to “help” people with their problems. I find it to be quite an oxymoron that Neil attends a seminar where one man, Tom Roberts explains step by step the procedure Neil should follow in order to get his sister out of his house, when what he wants to do is to learn how stand up to his sister and be independent. This is definitely not going to cause him to be independent because he is still relying on another person to tell him what and how to do things.
ReplyDeleteDuring this week’s class we completed a self – evaluation form. One of the questions seemed very useful, yet I do not employ this technique of putting myself in the main character or several characters’ positions in order to understand and connect with the story in more depth. I decided I would try to put myself in Neil’s place. It was very difficult for me because I really did not agree with the choices he made throughout the story, how he behaved towards his sister. I addition I thought he came across as a fearful, childish and selfish man. However, I dug down deep to try to relate to him and I think I did to some extent. The only way I could truly relate to Neil is if I thought of living with a best friend (because I do not have any siblings) who has some quirky and annoying habits. Of course these habits would irritate me and I would want to discuss how my friend and I can fix these problems, but I would not want to hurt her feelings, similar to how I think Neil doesn’t want to hurt his sister. But Neil has more of an obligation to his sister because she is family, and I cannot connect with that aspect of Neil’s story. I have never moved out yet, but I went camping with a friend for two weeks and both of our habits got on each other’s nerves. We talked through the problems because that is how we work things out and did not want to ruin our friendship. However, in the story I feel that Neil, as well as his sister, both have a social anxiety and inability to socialize normally and express their feelings directly. I think their childhood and that their parents were somewhat absent affected their social skills.
Furthermore, I feel that Neil should employ the technique we discussed in class about putting yourself in another person’s place in order to understand them and why they are acting the way they are. I know this technique is used for literary purposes, but I feel that it will be useful in real life circumstances. Neil should stop thinking of only him and put himself in Winky’s situation. This will be beneficial when comprehending Winky’s actions and also helping Neil learn to gently and clearly tell Winky how he feels.
Today in class we discussed many interesting thoughts and opinions. I find the notes to help us practice critical thinking very useful especially on the concept of considering things in the "bigger picture". Sometimes when things happen we get so narrowed down to the drama and forget to step back and consider it in the bigger picture for the long run. The narrative about standing up for yourself to a manager in a resturant for example, shows how the author can step back at the moment and think about for a few days until she is ready to discuss the problem professionally. Through practice and life experience, I believe everyone can achieve a higher level of emotional intellegence and knowledge of the methods of logical inquiring and reasoning.
ReplyDeleteI find the reading this week on Winky very interesting. Our group did not have any idea of what the author is intended to tell us at the beginning. I feel that the author did an excellent job on portraying reality to us and how other people's opionions and judgements may not always be correct when applying to your own life. Life throws all sorts of different challenges at us and we may feel like giving up sometimes when it gets too much, but I believe the people who are happiest are the ones who get up when they fall down and carry on. Sometimes you just need to step back and change your attitude towards life and learn your mistake. I believe it is important to keep trying to find what is right for yourself instead of choosing the easy road. I hope everyone can be a seeker in life and make thier dreams come true!
The lecture this week about critical thinking and literature really got me thinking. I have always loved to read and I have always taken for granted the huge stack of classic novels and plays from all over the world on my bookshelf. In retrospect, the fact that I’ve always found it easy to relate to people from many different backgrounds and ideologies is probably due, at least in part, to my life-long habit of reading. Literature has such an awesome power in terms of teaching us empathy and giving us the ability to see the world from many points of view. I am taking a philosophy course on education right now where we are debating which subjects are the most important to have in the classroom and my teacher insisted that science and mathematics and philosophy (unsurprisingly) all outranked English. I think he’s wrong. Our ability to communicate our thoughts and emotions and opinions is a trait that people in every culture have in common and it is so important to share and study this ability, both in the classroom and at home.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the story “Winky” was a good example of the way literature can make people think and help them understand people and situations beyond their normal experience. These two people become so real and understandable as the story progresses. I ended up feeling so angry at the callous ignorance of the self-help industry as they apply the same band-aid solutions to every problem without getting to know the people. I also felt bad for Winky as she so obviously tries so hard and loves Neil so sincerely while he continues to grow increasingly bitter. Maybe living together was not the ideal solution for either of them, but the idea of throwing Winky out in the street because she annoyed her brother was simply cruel. I think I would have felt better about this story if Neil had acknowledged the truth of his situation and either accepted it or done something constructive about it. Instead, I feel like Neil will just keep getting more bitter and disillusioned and the cycle will never end.
The discussion on literature really got the wheels turning for me. I am torn. I understand that we can gain experiences through literature, experience things that we cannot physically do. But to what degree can we really experience them without doing them. I once worked with a man named James. He was an arrogant son of a…. His claim was that anything in the world he wanted, he could learn to do from a book. This infuriated me! He figured that by reading about doing something once he could just go out and do it perfectly. I used the example of construction, something that I know a fair bit about. I asked him if he could read about how to build a house, then just go out and do it and have a perfectly sound structure that would face the most stringent of inspectors. He claimed he could, I just about hit him. I spent 4 months, 3 hours a day in Construction 12. We spent that time building a house, transporting it in chunks to an island and reassembling it as a couple’s summer home. We worked like crazy. We did learn a little theory from books, but essentially we learned by doing. I learned by feel how to measure, cut and nail the appropriate boards to make the structure sound. I don’t think that I could have done it on my own with only the guidance of a book. This idea I think relates to many trades.
ReplyDeleteBeyond trades, I don’t think experiences in general can be found in literature. No one can truly describe a sight, sound or taste that they experience in a book in a way that you will perfectly understand it. I fully appreciate that literature can give you a limited experience of something that you cannot do for yourself, but I think that the limit is vast and insurmountable. I am very imaginative, I have an easy time putting myself into a book and into a character, but I would never dream to have experienced the same things as these individuals unless it was truly an experience that I have shared.
I found it quite difficult to put myself into the character of Neil in “Winky.” At first I essentially despised and was annoyed with both characters. I tried to pull myself out of that mind frame though. I tried to see it from Neil’s perspective and I understood a bit about how he was thinking. I feel like he realizes that his life has surmounted to very little and he is looking for someone other than himself to blame it on. His very odd sister makes for a good scapegoat. I can relate to him in this way. I have been known to shift blame in the past. I had a habit of letting other people control me to a great degree. If others were in charge, and others made the decisions for me, when something went wrong I was not to blame, I could shift it to the other person. Neil strikes me as a bit of a kindred spirit. He goes to the self help meeting to be told what to do. He wants someone else to make the decision for him. He doesn’t want his sister controlling his life but he will allow a stranger to make the decision for him instead. He doesn’t free himself he just chooses some other force to control him. So if he had in fact asked his sister to leave and things had continued to go poorly in his life, he would have something external to blame.
I thought "Winky", was a very interesting story, especially regarding the area of the self help industry vs reality. I really enjoyed the discussion we regarding this topic in class. I think that the self help industry does not really know what problem an individual has. We all deal with diffrent situations in life, ans there are numerous possibilities to solve them.
ReplyDeleteIn some cases, I think it is alright to listen to an motivational speech or be inspired by othes. However, the important factor is if the individual takes that motivation and makes it into a reality and making a change in there life. In Neil's case, he lives the same life after the self help conference. If Neil was smart and wanted to make a change in his life , he would start blaming himself first, not Winky, nor others. I think this is true in real life, because we need to change ourselves first in order to turn our life around.
Furthermore, as I student, I believe it is my responsibility to be effective in time management, staying on task, and being prepared for an exam. In most cases, I have heard my friends make excuses for an exam blaming the prof, or saying the exam was too hard. These are the same individuals who were partying the weekend before a large exam , and prepared studying at the last minute. Therefore I always think it is important for all of us to take our own responsibility, because if we can grasp this, only then we can find solutions to problems in our life.
I really enjoyed the narrative essays read by students this past week. I want to touch on the first essay regarding stressful situations and analyzing how we respond to them. I should have said this to the girl who shared her experience of a hostile manager on a busy night at the restaurant, however I was very impressed by how she dealt with the situation, opting to meet the manager days after the incident so that their discussion would be removed from the emotion that ran so high that night. She shows how important it is to debrief after an incident of high stress. Her conflict resolution skills employed after the incident are commendable!
ReplyDeleteMy experience as a Sheriff involved extremely dangerous situations and I experienced high levels of stress daily. As a recruit, I we engaged in endless hours of stress inoculation training that involved completing complex tasks amidst physical and mental exhaustion. This resulted in acquiring my ability to be at the peak of performance during times of high stress. In 2005, a gang member wielding a .357 handgun shot at my partner and me. My ability to find cover and calmly inform dispatch of the occurrence ensured that police support arrived quickly and the threat was neutralized. After the incident, a debriefing held a day later allowed me to release the emotion that I was able to bottle up during the incident. Being able to remain calm when another person was highly agitated often allowed me to de-escalate the individual whose emotions had taken control. I hope that this skill will help me as a teacher, for children often succumb to emotion. I wonder if it will be possible to display conflict resolution skills so that children will desire to learn those skills. While we cannot control the actions of another person, we can control our own.
In regards to “Winky” I wanted to express that my upbringing in the church allowed me to see very clearly the difference between Tom Rodgers’ self-help seminar and Christian teaching with respect to how the help people in need of direction. Biblical doctrine teaches believers to turn their other cheek when wronged by another person. It stresses the importance of taking responsibility for our own shortcomings and to thank God for the many blessings we do have in our lives. This is exemplified by Winky and Neil-Neil who display very different reactions to the issues they face. Winky, who has certain mental and physical obstacles, says the “Lord Jesus will take on your cares and worries"; she is able to release her frustration and continue caring for her brother selflessly. On the other hand, Neil-Neil has only Tom Rodgers’ rules to abide by…stop others from “carping in your nice warm oatmeal”. Forcing his sister to leave his home, Neil-Neil is ultimately defeated. He has no one to blame other than himself and in showing his incapacity to follow through with his plan, he reveals that a person must change before he can blame others for his problems.
In the story “Winky”, I didn’t agree with the way Neil handled the situation at all. I was very dissapointed and shocked with his mannerisms. I felt like he didn’t treat his sister as a human being nor did he respect her when he decided to go to a help show. I think there could have been a better and more subtle way to deal with this issue, and seeing a councillor seems the most legit. When I was reading the story, I felt angry at both Neil and the show’s host, Tom Roberts. Tom seems to be a very egocentric character in that he quickly jumped to the conclusion the Neil should kick his sister out of the apartment. When I look through Neil’s perspective, I feel that he is being a bit harsh on his sister. I can relate this to myself as I have two brother and sisters. Yes at times I feel that they are a pain and I get really frustrated at them, however every person is different and Winky is someone who might be considered ‘crazy’. We need to realize that all individuals are different and that they have their own personality and try to respect this. Because Winky is different, this should not make her inferior to others and I feel that she is treated as an inferior throughout the story. When reading the narrative, I realized that it focused more on Neil’s perspective and left out the problems that Winky herself may be going through. Perhaps it would be more effective for Neil if he focused on the deeper problem rather than looking at the issue from the surface and making his quick judgment.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading literature, I believe that you are exposed to more knowledge and undergo a type of ‘experience’. Yes, it is not the same as living the reality of the situation, however by reading literature we are exposed to different sinarios that we might not otherwise come across. Through our readings, we can make general interpretations about life and link them with other aspects. I think that literature itself can help us build a stronger foundation for our morals and beliefs, in that we can test different things and ‘experience’ them. For example, the story I just read showed me that we should not judge too harshly a situation and really consider the other person’s view about the issue. Perhaps they are completely blind to the problem and do not even realize there is something wrong, similar to Winky’s case. The first step should be to make the other person aware of the problem and let them put in their own effort to try and eliminate it.
In lecture today we discussed the importance of critical thinking. In reading people’s blogs and listening to their narratives I have become painfully aware that critical thinking is often based on life experience. In critically thinking about other people’s narratives and blogs I really feel that I very little life experience. In reflecting on why this is I have come to the conclusion that because I have been in school since the age of five, I have followed one path. I haven’t worked extensively, I have only travelled to resorts and haven’t developed a world view. I haven’t faced major life crisis at this point. When I reflect back on my childhood I realize that I have never experienced a lot of the hardships faced by some of my peers in this class. This gives me the motivation to “expand my horizons”. I really need to get out and experience the world!
ReplyDeleteIn listening to the second narrative discussed today, I can really relate to her experience of volunteering and making authentic connections with people. I have volunteered in a grade one classroom for the last three years and when I first began I thought the children were all cute and all I had to do was be warm and fuzzy and the children would respond. This was not the case however. I realized that I had to deal with them individually and that some kids needed me to adjust. I had to be firmer with some of them so that they didn’t walk all over me and with others I had to really expose my inner self to make genuine connections. I realized very quickly that children are intuitive and know when you are not being genuine. In the class I volunteer in, there was a little boy who was quite rude to me and was struggling academically. I couldn’t seem to make any progress with him and I took it personally thinking it was because he didn’t like me. This week when I went in to volunteer he wasn’t there. Apparently he had been removed from his home and may not be back to our school. It seems almost selfish to be worried about whether or not he like me when he has so much other stuff going on in his life. This really makes it clear that you need to have authentic connections with students because the job is so much more than teaching them math, socials etc. Teachers need to be connected to their students.
I've been thinking about the narrative about the young lady working in a hospital in Hong for three months. I know that working in a hospital, as any job is not meant for some people, like myself. Hospitals bring back painful and unpleasant memories of love ones being sick and passing away in hospital. I tip my hat off to hospital workers and volunteers because I for one could not handle the aspects of that job. For example, the sight of a needle piercing through ones skin and drawing blood makes me cringe. From the narrative read, I can see how rewarding it would feel to see a patient smile or have their spirit lifted by you. Seeing some go from dying one second to being given a few more hours of life. This sounds like it must have been like witnessing a miracle. I know that experience would be heart stopping for me. I wish I could have the courage to volunteer in a hospital for three full months and be able to bring smiles to those patients.
ReplyDeleteThe story about the man who had his arm sliced off and still went on joking about it the following week. I too found this man inspiring. For someone who is in such a tragic situation to be so positive even when it seems the world is against him. Which leads us to our story, “Winky”, and her brother who is completely opposite of this patient.
Describing Neil’s sister, Winky:
From reading this weeks story I can see why Neil thinks his sister is crazy. In my perspective, I think Winky may have an undiagnosed brain abnormality. Perhaps ADD, I am not a doctor so don’t quote me on that. From what I have read, Winky has good intentions, such as cleaning her brother’s house and volunteering. It seems that all Winky likes to make things better. For example, Neil recalls how when his parents were fighting and he was hiding under the stairs she brought him some snacks to comfort him. I can see Winky ignores any of her personal problems and puts Neil-Neil ahead of herself. She doesn’t seem to pick up social hints about over volunteering, and being over-bearing. Maybe it’s because of her past but no one seems to be confronting her about it. For example, the priest, and her roommates all contacting Neil and expecting him to take Winky out of their hair. I think that gently confronting Winky about her over-bearing personality might aid Neil’s situation. This brings me back to one of our lectures in February about communication. The base of any human relationship is communication. Neil does not seem to communicate with his sister. This makes Neil look like such a cowardly being. Instead of letting his sister know how he feels he walks by and swears under his breath.