Fears and Dreams

There were a few things I was nervous about when I decided to go back to school. But before I talk about those things, and before I talk about why those fears have yet to be realized, I'm going to explore for a minute the reasons why I decided to come back to school despite my fears.


And by the way, homework was not a fear. It's true that I was good and burnt out by the time I graduated (and especially after that last mad-crazy 22-hour semester). And it's true that I was well and done with schoolin' at that point. But after five years of distance-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder, and after an introduction into the paperwork of governmental bureaucracy, I got past all of that. No, this is not about that at all.


When I interned at Cedar Grove with the adolescent sex offenders, I learned that people who had done truly, truly, truly, absolutely horrifically terrible things to other people... were still people. I'd known that in an academic sense. I'd already decided that prisons were for the most part useless because they punish instead of rehabilitate, and therefore don't really change anything. But after I had personally worked with goofy teenage boys who had done some of the hands-down worst things I've ever heard of in my life, I had to accept into my personal wisdom the absolute truth of their humanity.


I still have not brought myself to speak aloud some of the things these boys had done. I am still haunted by the idea of some of their offenses. I still remember playing basketball with them, and talking them through pimple crises, and listening to their theories about their favorite music. And when I got married, these boys expressed extraordinary concern that my new husband was going to hit me or cheat on me-- which both showed their worldview of the nature of marriage, and the protectiveness they developed for staff members who treated them like humans.


This is not to say that I feel all cuddly and warm toward sex offenders. It is merely to say that committing monstrous acts does not necessarily make someone a monster. It can. But it can also make someone a person who has committed monstrous acts. And there is a very important line there between the two.


When I went to Chicago to save the world, I was arrogant with this and other knowledge. I say "was arrogant" as though this has past, but I'm arrogant still. I'm arrogant and I'm pretentious. It's part of my charm. At any rate, I thought that this personal wisdom, along with my academic knowledge of societal problems, had prepared me for what I would find when I went to work in the "inner city." But of course, the more you learn, the more you realize there is so much you do not know, and the bigger each issue becomes.


I knew how monstrous acts did not necessarily equal monster. What I knew academically was that monstrous acts were sometimes a result of societal issues rather than individual issues. I knew that when people are desperate, they will do desperate things. When people are raised with violence, they will do violent things. Etc.


I knew that situations shaped people, created their worldviews, affected their choices and actions. I knew this. But I knew this academically. I did not own this in my personal wisdom. So spending four years in an impoverished community in America and learning, really learning, about how people lived and how they were treated and what happened in their lives and how it affected them and why it made sense to do things I would never do... it really changed my perspective.

I don't know how to sum this up in a blog entry. The more I think about it, the more I think my mom is right. I just need to write a book about what I've done and what I've learned. But the long and short of it is that people live in the life they were given, not in the life we think all people should have. Just like someone who has never seen written words will not know how to read, someone who has never experienced a peaceful day will not know peace. Someone who was raised in oppressive injustice will not behave justly. And someone who has been damned and beaten at every turn by our civilization will not seek to be "civilized." The American Dream is bullshit and it seems as though only people on the bottom rungs of our societal ladder know this. The people who have already "achieved" the American Dream are incapable of realizing they were mostly just born into it. They didn't achieve anything.


At any rate, I realized along the way that I was given HUGE benefits and privileges in my life. And being an educated, well-spoken, attractive, middle-class white American allows me to get away with certain things that not everyone can get away with. I can take this knowledge and run with it, or I can accept it for the responsibility that it is. I look at it as though it is my job to get some letters behind my name, because then I can speak and act with even more authority.


The big trick, of course, was to figure out a way to get some letters behind my name while still working toward my ideals. So I sat down and thought for a good while about the connections between poverty and racism and marginalization, and how this works in society at large, and how it affects individuals and communities, and what exactly I can study in this area, and what I want to learn, and then, possibly, what I can show from it. That's the short version of how I wound up in the Community Psychology program here in Hawaii.

Still, rejoining academia scared me. It is chock-full of middle-, upper-middle-, and upper-class people. It's wealthy and prestigious. It's far away from the reality I've lived in these past years. I was really nervous about rejoining the "society" part of society. I didn't really get along with "society" last time I was there.

Furthermore, I was worried about psychology in general. I was worried about the wall researchers must put between themselves and their subjects for the sake of objectivity. And I didn't know how I'd ever manage to have 'subjects' anyway, when it's so very clear to me that they're not subjects, but people. I was gearing myself up to come in and fight for the right to have some sort of relationship with the people I'd be working with, to fight against the necessity of "experimenting" on people in order to get answers. I really thought this was going to be difficult. I really thought I'd have a struggle the whole way through. I really thought that I might not succeed in the long run because of it. But I was gonna give it the 'ol college try.

These were my fears. And you know? It's nothing. There is no social pressure here, leastways not in my field. I'm sure everyone's still middle-, upper-middle-, and upper-class, but there is no "society" for me to get lost in. I can show up wearing nice clothes or scrubby clothes or anything in between and no one bats an eye. It doesn't matter that I don't style my hair, wear make-up, own heels. And if I get all sweaty in my walk to class, oh well. It's Hawaii. Everyone's sweaty here.

And in my field in particular, people are very open to the problems and challenges faced by those on the lower rungs. (At my Monday seminar, there's this one woman from the business department who does not feel that way. She sticks out as the sole voice of immovable judgment among a sea of social scientists. And I wonder if that radicalizes her further.) No one argues that they brought their problems on themselves. No thinks of these subjects as objects.

Furthermore, in Community Psychology, there is no objective distance. You join the community you're studying. You get to know them in and out and you report what you find. You use participant-observation, which means you participate while you observe. You don't try to overcome your biases with ever-more-elaborate double-blind experiments. You lay your biases right there on the table so that everyone can get a good look at them. And there's a huge social justice aspect of Community Psychology. There is social activism and social action. You get involved in trying to fix systems that create problems, not just fix individuals who suffer from the problems.

I am in a like-minded place here. And I'm just so very grateful that I wound up here. When I think about the other options-- the other schools I applied to-- I know I would not have fit in so well anywhere else. Again, if anyone doubted who is the luckiest person on earth, it's me.