Hello All,
First off I wanted to thank you all for sharing what you do
at your agencies and for being honest and open with your mentor. I learned a
lot and I am glad some of us were able to connect the work we do to the other
agencies that our peers are doing their internship at. While we have had a lot
of discussion on structural changes, nonprofits, theory, etc., Professor Reitz suggested I make this blog a bit more specific.
Personally, I loved the mentor coffee because I was able to
see the different resources provided by your agencies and how I can use you as
a connection to help even more people. We saw with Fred that I asked him about
undocumented students and that Lauren used two agencies and their resources to
come up with her idea for her project.
My questions to you all are: what was what you enjoyed the
most about the mentor coffee/breakfast? What did you find shocking, surprising,
unusual? Do you suggest any changes for the upcoming mentor coffees?
Finally, what has been your overall experience at your
internship? Do you feel like you have learned or changed since the
beginning of the semester? Any epiphanies, personally impacting experiences?
You can use these to self-evaluate the work you have done and how you have changed or stayed the same.
13 comments:
Great questions Danyeli! Personally, I was very surprised that my goal was greeted so warmly. Going into the mentor's coffee I was shaking in my Call It Spring shoes (I didn't want to say "boots" as George Orwell would be angry, but I digress). When I pitched my idea, my mentor actually said we would discuss it. This was a great surprise to me because I thought this big idea couldn't possibly be brought to the table. I was happily mistaken. As I said at the mentor's coffee and as I believe now, great ideas can be accomplished by pragmatic means. I would love to be able to accomplish this during next semester and thereafter.
As for my agency, things were definitely rough in the beginning. My interviews were clunky at best and I was always nervous I was going to make a mistake. Now, I am completely confident conducting interviews. One of the defendants and I the other day actually had a discussion about whether I dyed my hair because I was a Jets fan, but I ensured him I was a Cowboys fan, but again I digress.
I think we could improve the mentor's coffee by having a class before the coffee where we brainstorm ideas about what we can do to help our agencies. Other than that, I thought it was fantastic! I can't wait to see how everyone does next semester in their placements.
First of all, I am happy that Danyeli is getting along with other mentors:)))))!!!! In my view, all of us do.
That was a great day!!! I MEAN IT:)))) For me, it was a day when I was able to talk to my mentor in another atmosphere. Probably, office space depresses me a lot, and I am not always able to speak up. However, today I did. I told my mentor: "Listen, I wanna do more"! And, she understood. I am really happy about it. Hopefully, it is going to be a great start of another development in my internship.
Honestly, I felt that I have the most boring internship story:))). You guys are doing very exciting job!!! WOW!!! You are actually able to help people right on spot. For my job, helping people might take a lot of time. Several years can pass before one project may become real. As much as I love research, I want to experience what you guys feel every week.
Additionally, I want to emphasize how dedicated we are towards achieving social justice. Taking me and Brenda into consideration, we are not doing that much in our internships as we want to, and we are a bit frustrated about that. Another person might be thankful for being able to spend internship without pressure. However, we all are trying to get more out of it. Every one of us is trying to understand the process. Many of us have excellent ideas about social justice.
Finally, being a part of Vera Fellowship provide us with great opportunity to narrow down our interests, to find particular area to concentrate on. Usually, John Jay provides us with many different opportunities which may have different directions. Such program help us to understand what we really want, or what we really do not want.
I love the questions! Like Lauren, I was also incredible surprised how receptive my mentor was to my ideas. I was really glad that both Carly and Cerezmy came, because they both have a huge influence over both of my jobs at Jobpath. I agree with Lauren though, I would have liked a class where we could have brained stormed with the rest of the class and the professors. I noticed many of us came early and were trying to do just that before our mentors arrived. I'm still a bit wary of the project I a working on now, but I like that they are open for me adding more variety into my fellowship so that this project is more on the back burner. The mentor coffee was really a fantastic start to a fabulous day. I really enjoyed it.
PS. Marina Jobpath is always hiring if you want a job working face to face with people. ;p
I've never felt more appropriately matched with my mentor until the coffee with y'all. My mentor and I are both just so jaded, her more than me I think-- because she's had more interaction with the law, sometimes the extent to which we feel defeated is frighteningly depressing. But also there are parts of my mentor (and I think myself) which reveal at times a glimmer of hope. small as it may be it is there. It still sucks to recognize the limited power you hold despite your knowledge and passion. I want to give all of my clients visas, and I want to be able to represent them in family court so that the abuser can't stalk them and use their children as tools of manipulation and power, I want to say to them, you did it! you left an abusive and oppressive country and found yourself in America, the land of the free and the brave. but I can't. the truth is that they've landed in amerika (see audre lorde, assata shakur, and the like for meaning of spelling). The law here does suck. It's not fair and not everyone is free. It's facts.
I like anthropology because I believe, more so than I believe in anything else, that we must must must know people and cultures and how people behave in culture to change things. Anthropology tells the stories of people, ethnographies are simultaneously living dialogues/monologues/open conversations to the universe. Its as if anthropologists are saying "here are humans being humans in human interactions, go learn from them, engage with them, and make it us instead of them"
these two streams of conciousness are related because working as a legal assistant for my mentor is really hard for me because I don't like it. Not even a little bit. There is absolutely no room in law, I can do nothing to change the fate of my clients. They will struggle to get documentation-regardless of what I do, the court will not consider the fact that the mother was raped by the abuser when decided custody visitation, housing in new york city will continue to get more expensive--- I could go on and on about the things I cannot change in law. Yeah, I can make the process easier for them, try to throw on some rubbing alcohol to keep the wound from getting infected but the wound is still there and it won't heal for a really really long time.
Anthropology is liberating. And the idea that came as a brain child of rietz, waterston and myself is so super exciting. I'm not excited about doing the job I have to do for the next few months but I'll do it because it's an excellent learning experience nonetheless and it provides me with wonderful field work.
Anybody else finding solace for themselves in a placement they don't love? I feel like lots of people are really excited about what they are doing and that is great but I also feel/think that there is just as much if not more value to working somewhere you don't love or doing something that isn't perfect fit?
I know some of y'all feel me.
I apologize for responding so late into the conversation. Great questions Danyeli!!
I feel great gratitude in being able to listen to all of your experiences at your placements and the goals you are in hopes to fulfill. As many of you saw, my mentor's were not present but this offered a new lens that I could look through and reflect on. Listening to you all has motivated me to have an honest "sit down" with my mentor....maybe this time she will get my name, but I want her to know that I am up for the challenge (whatever it may be). I care.
I really do like my placement and all that is offered. It is a crazy time at my placement but who knows more doors may open. Good luck to you all on your goals for the following semester at your placements!
This is such a great discussion! What I enjoyed most about the mentor coffee was the sharing; I thought it was so enlightening to hear about the different perspectives and approaches to social justice that undergird the work all of us do at our placements, all the more because being part of a team that provides technical assistance doesn't always afford me a true ground-level perspective of service delivery.
Hearing Bekah's lamentations about feeling like a helpless cog in an oppressive legal system made me realize how easy it is to feel disheartened with the limitations of our project. Indeed, it reminded me that the Pathways Project exists only because of private funding and doesn't directly address the fundamental barrier to education in prison which is a lack of public money. (Though on an positive note, Fred recently gave me very encouraging news I thought I’d share: word of Michigan Pathways’ success has spread and other prisons in Michigan are going to partner with local colleges to implement post-sec education in prison).
What I really appreciate about my internship that it has given me a realistic view of how social justice initiatives materialize in real life. The mentor session made me realize the road to social justice is a long and winding one and that the frustration we feel should only give us impetus to tap the power of imagination we have (as in the case of Lauren's idea) to overcome the massive barriers in social justice.
Like Sydney and Lauren, I agree that it would be great to have an additional session prior to the coffee to have a more in-depth and structured discussion regarding future directions for our projects, but I feel there would be a significant overlap between this prior session and the coffee.
Just a short comment:
1) I agree it would have been good to have a brainstorming session. We usually do but just ran out of time this semester. We can still talk.....
2) For Bekah: As a fellow anthropologist, I'm thrilled by your description, and your summary statement: "here are humans being humans in human interactions, go learn from them, engage with them, and make it us instead of them." A suggestion: take this, your blog entry, and make it your first entry in a new, ongoing electronic file called "Fieldnotes 2014--" (or whatever title you want). Start writing. Fieldnotes. What you see. What your interactions are. What people say. What you said back. What it looks like. Where you go. Describe. Description.
I loved the mentors coffee. I was amazed at the diversity and spectrum of work that is done by everyone. It was awesome to be able to hear and share stories about our internships. I actually learned something really important and interesting about Liz- she has a forensic psych background! That isn't something that I was aware of and I feel like that's also something that we can use to start to build stronger links to mental health within next steps. I've been curious about the mental health department and also seeing what resources they have. We do so much on the ground work in regards to the students' college, jobs, applications, etc. that the more intrapersonal is not the focus of our work. Personally, I think that unless there's some extent of stability intrapersonally it's gonna tough to have stability interpersonally and professionally. I was really excited that Liz was totally on board with figuring out how to start something to focus on mental health- I can see how her forensic psych background plays into this. The issue is that she's only one person and can't do it all. I'm gonna spend all of Tuesday figuring out how I can pull something together so I can pitch it to Sophia.
It's incredible how much I've taken for granted- not having to think about starting at a community college, knowing that an email is written XYZ way and other "simple & obvious" things like that but that's what's so amazing about CASES. Students have us a resource for all these "professional" or possibly elitists things.
Bekah- I ABSOLUTELY feel you. I've had to tell students to change "CASES" to center for education on their resumes because if CASES is googled, that comes with a price. Sad isn't? Double edge sword because at the end of the day I still feel like its one person against the world...
Great discussion. In the spirit of Danyeli's direct prompt, I have direct comments:
I have learned far more from jobs I hate than from jobs I like, and more from classes that "fail" than classes that succeed. Not that I want you to be miserable, but there is no such thing as failure, only succeeding or learning. Except for the Bengals.
I am so glad that many of you are looking at both small and large scale changes to your internship experience.
Small: go for two days. Amazing how much simply being present can open up opportunities and get your mentor's attention. Site visits: see what Gina got for just asking?
Larger: cross-agency innovations (Lauren), understanding the broader agency (Sydney), initiating a survey to assess needs and/or SILENCES about needs from clients (Bekah).
I also loved hearing Jessica praise Arturo's motivation. Truly, among all your other wonderful attributes, this is the stand-out quality of John Jay students. You folks are really passionate. Sometimes I do wish you were more passionate about grammar, but I know that your motivation is how you add value to your placements and it is appreciated!
I think the mentor coffee was the moment that we all showed how the job that we do at our placements contribute to the idea of social justice. I wish we could’ve talked more about the lessons that we learned in class, such as the culture of poverty and Paul Farmer‘s theory on how social work agencies should operate. I am sure that most of us have had conversation about this with our mentors, but I also think that it would’ve been a great idea if we had a chance to hear from them as a class what they think and what they would say if they were told that the culture of poverty did exist.
Besides that, it was a great experience for us to network and strengthens the bonds between our agencies. Thanks to Lauren for coming up with a great idea on how her agency can supply Common Justice with referrals. I hope that my supervisor found that idea interesting and will look more into it.
As for my experience at Common Justice, I feel welcomed and appreciated. My opinion matters during staff meetings and this makes me feel more like an employer rather than an intern. The staffs are very friendly and always willing to explain anything that I don’t understand and I think this is what makes my internship more productive. For, they understand that I am an apprentice so they provide me with the right guidance for me to meet their expectations.
Overall, it is a life changing experience being part of this organization. Especially, as someone who moved to the U.S recently, I am exposed to different aspect of the American society that I was not aware of prior coming to America. I also see my internship contributing factor to my intellectual growth, given that, my supervisor and I spend a lot of time criticizing and trying to find solutions on different areas where the criminal justice system is failing to work appropriately.
Thank you everyone for sharing on the mentor coffee. I enjoyed hearing your stories and the mentors'. Each of them got to where they are, professionally, in different ways. I have felt insecure about my career goals and my future. However, after hearing from mentors and our three professors, I realized that sometimes it takes time to get where one wants to be.
We are in a unique position where we can look at our placement from a different perspective and bring fresh ideas to our placements. It is true that it may be difficult to have some change done, but as we saw last time we met, it is not impossible. I am glad to see all we have achieved so far in our placements. I am sure we will end strong and we will have a great semester next year. On my end, I will reduce my extra-curricular responsibilities so that I can enjoy what it is to be in this program.
As professor Waterston wrote, “We can talk…” I believe we should talk more often about our placement, the services and resources we provide to our client. Indeed, we may have the answer of a question that a classmate has.
Great comments everyone. I love the discussion.. I was impressed and inspired by your recommendations. Please continue to use our classroom as a laboratory for trying out new ideas. We are all here as resources if you want to role play potential interactions and explore possible recommendations. I am so glad that the coffee let you clearly see the important contributions you are making and that the mentors want to be resources for you. Yay! I am so thrilled by your inspiration.
Every part of the process is valuable. Just like Bekkah said. Even if some us did not seem excited about what they are doing, it is a part of a process. We can not all go there to protect women from being beaten by their husbands. Some of us have to sit there and do the numbers:)
Today is my first day at my internship after the Mentor's Coffee. I am telling whatever you do not like in life, vocalize it:) You will be just fine. In every process there is a lot of things that we do not know. We just have to discover that:)
In terms of additional session before the Mentor's Coffee, I think that there is a need for many more extra sessions in order to dig deeply into what each of us is doing in Vera and its spin-offs.
In terms of linkages between the agencies, I did not see mentors getting excited about that. Especially those coming from Vera. As I mentioned in the last blog, there are different goals. Vera gives a birth to the child with perfect ideas and let it go free. Additionally, collaboration requires a lot of time. Many of our agencies do not that many people and time to do that. Here, we are to help them:)!
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