Social Work School So Far

Social Work School So Far: So far, SO AMAZING.

I LOVE social work school so far. My classes are fascinating, my professors engaged, the other students as dedicated and passionate as I feel, and the very fact of being in school again fills me with sheer joy. I'm exhausted and overwhelmed after a long week, but riding on a high of LOVING it.

I'm in the honeymoon phase of loving graduate school, I'm aware - probably the sheen will wear off when I get annoyed I can't socialize as much as I want, bored with some class, or frustrated with my workload. But right now, it feels balmy and glorious. I found my field! All my passions are being realized! Discussion after video after talk after workshop on topics I'm obsessed with: public transit, systemic racism, trauma-informed care, school social work, substance abuse, healthcare, and so much more.

What do I love about it so far? I love that my the social work profession doesn't shy away from the scary, big, and important topics of our times - they are part of social work practice. Race, class, money, politics, etc. I love that it's ACKNOWLEDGED that systemic racism is a massive issue and addressed in every class, seminar, and orientation workshop I've attended so far (including an all-day one on Wednesday about anti-oppressive and anti-racism in social work). I love that we've been challenged to get to know each other, think deeply, and be vulnerable already.

I love that my professors freely say - without fear of being called a communist or socialist - that capitalism causes many of the social issues we work to address, and working within the limited system of capitalism will only get us so far. I don't mean one or two. I mean that  ALL FOUR of my professors brought this up in some way; I mean that in my day-long anti-oppression workshop it was discussed numerous times; I mean that it was mentioned on the very first day of orientation last week when we had just showed up for the very first time.

LOVE. IT.

What amazes me is how much overlap there is between my classes, without any of the professors trying. In my very first Social Work Practice with Individuals class, we had a long discussion about human rights versus human needs; we also discussed how the US never signed the UN Declaration on Human Rights for various reasons. In my Social Work Macro Practice class (systems change, communities, policies, etc), the reading for this coming week includes the UN Declaration on Human Rights. WHOA. This is just one of a handful of examples from only a week in classes.

School is more than just about feeding my brain with knowledge. Getting to know fellow students, make friends, go to Zumba class and swim, get random tacos for free at a student event on the lawn, make another friend... these too are all parts of the school experience that excite me.

And seeing future nurses, doctors, lawyers, social workers, physical therapists, and business people of all races, backgrounds, religions, abilities, and belief systems wandering around the library, campus center, and the buildings, doing their thing and educating themselves to make the world a better place - wow. Seeing them wander around and realizing that's ME, a future social worker, here with them - incredible. My heart swells with joy. It's a thrilling, glorious privilege.

Truthful Observations About Returning Stateside

Since returning home on Wednesday night after almost 24 hours of traveling, I've noticed a few things about my home country that I failed to remember when I left. My eyes feel fresher to this country's nuances:

The roads seem bigger and there is more ambient space for grass and trees amid the more-sprawling-than-England's suburbs. People are friendlier. Eye contact and lots of hellos. Cars, lots of them, along the road, startle me more, even though I noticed that overall Americans drive more cautiously than many British people. Big box stores, very few independent shops in the suburbs.

But then again...

I moved from a small city (York) back to a fairly large urban-suburban area (Towson/Baltimore). That's different from moving from a suburb to a suburb, or the countryside to rural America. These observations about my one home in comparison with my other home feel accurate, but they're just my sense.

All that makes me think: how much of what we think we experience as "truth" is actually our personal lens on the world?

This morning, for example, I went back to my home church for the first time in over a year. Ascension Lutheran is the church where my entire family has attended for well over two decades. Krissy works there part-time (in addition to teaching) and they were really supportive during my YAGM year abroad.

It was like sinking into a warm bath. After a year of struggling to like the church where I worked, St. Columba's, on an institutional level, it felt so good to return to the familiar. In its familiarity was beauty. The same people I sadly said goodbye to a year ago all gave me hugs and excited greetings. My jaw hurt from talking so much, people kept coming up after the service to my pew to say hello, and my sister and I only finally left the sanctuary when the lights got turned off.

In front of us by a couple of rows was a woman sitting by herself. She did not smile much or go out of her way to speak. A few people said hello to her. But mostly she was alone.

Last year, I never would have noticed her. I have my church crew - the families who know me, the friends who come to say hi, and of course my sister (we always sit in the back so we can talk). But now I did; I went up during the sharing of the peace to shake her hand. That's because for a full year I felt lonely and alone at St. Columba's, largely unnoticed, and I also watched how the church at large struggled to make anyone new feel welcome or appreciated (or even, for that matter, some members who had been there for ages who did not fit in).

Who and what else am I not noticing because I have not seen enough? It took a year away to realize just how much slips through my grasp. When I first arrived in England, I felt like a silent sponge. I didn't talk much but I noticed everything. Double yellow lines on the side of the road, new words, prices in pounds, different systems at grocery store check-outs, fascinating medieval and tudor-style buildings, street signs nailed to the sides of buildings instead of on posts, a nine-hundred year old church around the corner from my house, a community garden on a plot of land that used to be an ancient cemetary. All new, all noticed.

But that was my England experience. Those were the quirks that stuck out to me. Maybe someone else would say that's not the England they know and love. Maybe they noticed entirely different things about their England. Their truth of the place would be different.

Our truths come through our own personal lens. It's humbling and vitally important that we remember how narrow that lens really is, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. An acknowledged filter is a good start to grow and it's also inevitable, really. But the fact that we all see things our way, from the seat of our own experiences and our own backgrounds - that's indisputable. That is the truth.

The Medium Chill

Welcome!

If you're here, thanks for reading! This blog is the co-creation of four people: Krissy, Tommy, Shantonu, and Katie. More about us later.

We're four (related) people in our mid-twenties to mid-thirties, all of whom like to create, invent, and write. Naturally this led us to the idea of a blog.

We were kicking around themes for this nascent creation, something to build a whole project around, and the same ideas kept cropping up:

• saying YES to living rather than just spending money/existing/being boring
• gratitude and appreciation for what we have
• being interested in our lives rather than comparison with people around us

Then we found this fabulous article: The Medium Chill by David Roberts. And his revisit a few years later, The Medium Chill Revisited. Fabulous! A good start. We liked the name Medium Chill.

What even is Medium Chill?

Well, it's actually a few things. Psychologists use the term to describe building a firm protective wall from toxic people in your life.

But in our context, it's different. That's a good idea but not what we're talking about here. As in the article, David Roberts says it's a lifestyle characterized by stepping out of the rat race and being happy with what you have. Yes, we agreed. That's sorta kinda what we're going for!

The best part about this blog is we're trying to put into practice what we're preaching. A medium chill lifestyle espouses prioritizing the relationships around you. Thus, notice the "we" that "we" write of; that's because this blog will be co-authored by four people. We're related. I'm one of the sisters. The other is Krissy. Then there's her husband, Furman, also known as Tommy. And there's my fiance (newly!), Shantonu. Here's a great way of medium chilling - writing together, creating together. Being inventors, pioneers, artists together.

Naturally, we're four people so we think different things. How I live my life is different than my co-authors here. That's good. More options. So that phrase you always see - all views and opinions expressed are entirely my own - is really true here. Things might like different from writer to writer.

But the goal of this blog is the same: to document how we say YES to opportunities for living. Getting and staying excited about life. Being invested in relationships and communities. Being grateful. Medium chilling - working hard for the things that matter, and letting go and just living the rest.

Thanks for joining us!

Katie, Shantonu, Krissy, Tommy