Fixing & Building

I kind of wish I'd posted a bit more during prac. I feel like there was a lot more I could have said about it.. I guess though there's always that trouble of what to say & what to leave out for confidentiality's sake.
Oh well, it's over now anyhow! It was super interesting having a prac in Mental Health. I don't reckon I'd want to work in it though.. or maybe not just that.
But it is what you make of it, as well. I was really inspired by a lady at my prac who spoke about how she used creativity in her rural health job - both creatively tackling problems, but also creative methods with people.. It was encouraging to hear how even though a health job - which can seem so structured and regulated and staid - can be made rich and varied and flexible.

I was also thinking lately about how I want work that isn't so much about trying to 'fix' people, but about helping build beautiful things - lives, families, and communities - and how the change in emphasis and perspective makes such a difference.

Anyway, now I'm back at uni, a prac-less semester this time around, so I'm beginning to think (or freak out!!) a lot more about assignments and lectures and readings and groupwork.. and put the dreaming about the future on hold. *sigh*. 

Life as an appendage

So I've been on prac just over 8 weeks now and there's a lot of stories I haven't told.
I should probably begin by explaining the title.


It was about the second week there and I was sitting in a team meeting that had been agonising its way through several hours and they're having this discussion about whether or not students should be able to sit in on peer supervision sessions or not and who should make the call. They end up deciding that it's up to the individual supervisor, because, as one lady so tactfully put it:
"Students are pretty much just appendages of their supervisor anyway" !!!
The whole room cracked up, and I nearly died of awkward, nervous laughter. My supervisor wasn't there.

An appendage - kind of like the extra foot on this frog?

So anyway, here's some of what I've learnt from my life as an appendage:

1. Appendages sit and smile when appropriate. They try to imitate a sofa when it's not. They don't blush when people are talking about their sex life. They don't cry when they get too involved in someone's story. They don't laugh too loudly. When in doubt or when things get awkward, they look at the worker or at the floor. Because they can't interact, they absorb stuff kind of like a sponge, and reflect on it later. Appendages get really good at reflection.

2. Appendages get quite lonely when they are abandoned two days a week because their supervisor only works part time. In this time if they are lucky they might be taken out to go on a visit. If not they will sit in the office trying to keep busy. They will do odd jobs if they are ever given any, improve their understanding through extensive reading, trawl through databases looking for research for their supervisor's project, stare into space, and drink tea. Appendages like tea.

3. Appendages like getting to sit in with the group. They can actually forget a little bit, for a little while, that they are only appendages, and can chat with the mums, encourage them, smile at the bubs. The mums seem to notice there's a person beneath the appendage facade.

4. Appendages, however, do get to meet interesting people and hear interesting stories and find out about interesting things.

5. Appendages also get to eat cake. And chocolate biscuits. Chocolate biscuits make up for a lot.


To be honest, (not that I wasn't earlier), it has actually been a pretty cool placement and I have learnt a lot overall. It's always a privilege to get a little window into people's lives - whether it's other workers, clients, whatever. The service is a mental health one that helps mums with their bubs, and you hear a lot of hard stories and see some tough stuff, but you know what really stands out? That people are people no matter where they've been or what they're going through or the label that's plastered all over their file. And here the staff are really good at seeing that.

Also, less than two weeks till holidays! I will miss the people, and especially I'll wonder how all the clients end up going, but am pretty excited for freedom.

yay :)

Playdoh and Prostitutes

So today in class we had 6 hours of group presentations. Yes, you read it correctly - 6 HOURS. And a total of one break, not included in the 6 HOURS. bleerrrrrrrrrrgggghhh.
To be honest, it could have been worse! People did make an effort to make things interesting - we got to play with playdoh (create-your-own public art!), we were bribed with chocolate (always a winner), we heard about the Newcastle Lockout (only 3 times), the legalised prostitution debate (interesting..), disability policy, Cessnock & Tidy Towns, Place-making in Newcastle, and more..
I managed (just) to stay awake for all of it, and got a letter written into the bargain.

Here's one of the playdoh artworks:

We did the Pasha Bulka for ours - Alyssa's amazing ship and my tiny starfish-like people were pretty incredible! But as there's no photographic evidence, you'll just have to take my word for it..

Jottings on Postcolonialism

Here is one of the compulsory weekly journal entries I wrote for my Postcolonial lit class. I don't know if you'll be able to make head or tail of it, but hopefully it might give a hint of what the course has involved (and why I've loved it!).

Wk 3 – Danticat – We are Ugly But We are Here, Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries, Bhaba.

I danced in the rain on Monday night.

On Tuesday I ate pancakes at 8am in the morning. I took my sister breakfast in bed and she was very happy.*

On Wednesday we bought a new packet of Earl Grey tea (Nature's Cuppa, the one and only). It smelt good and the whole household was content.

On Thursday I drank some beer. I didn't get a free lunch.

But on Friday I got free sushi and sand between my toes.

On Saturday I played an epic game of 500. 22 rounds, 3 hours.

On Sunday I played soccer in the park and sang in a silly voice to Mika.

That was my week (or one impression of it at least). I also reflected on stuff I read [finally!]:

I enjoyed the Motorcycle Diaries but it wasn't as substantial as I'd imagined it might be. It seemed to be little more than just two guys rambling around South America surviving on nothing but the hospitality of locals and enjoying it where they could. I would have liked to hear more about their experience of the leper colonies and a little more of the development of their thinking regarding communism, power to the oppressed and stuff. I did like the bit where they'd managed to get first class fares on a ship, but then concluded that they connected better with – and enjoyed more – the sailors anyway.

I really liked Danticat's piece. Wished it was longer! Her pithy observation regarding Haiti “economics and politics are intrinsically related; who is in power determines to a great extent whether or not people will eat” spoke volumes about her experience, and that of the people of Haiti. I liked the strong feminist overtones, introduced and then threaded through with the story of Anacona amongst the reflections on the other women in her life. It is confronting, even devastating, but there is still a beauty in the strength and hope expressed in their catch cry “we are ugly, but we are here.” There is a real solidarity and honesty about it. Life is hard, but it is still worth celebrating the fact that they have survived another day together. The ending expresses more of the concept of the circularity of life; as her grandmother believed: “if a life is lost, then another one springs up replanted somewhere else, the next life even stronger than the last.” They exist through memory in an endless circle of power and endurance.

Bhaba [Postcolonial theorist] was pretty dense. It took me forever to get through the shorter article (Of Mimicry and Man) and I barely touched the other. I did really like that idea of the colonisers keeping the colonised in a bondage of mimicry: they would give them a dose of the Christian faith, or of 'civilisation', what it meant to be a gentleman, etc, but just a limited amount that would prevent them from being able to be fully 'civilised' (in their terms) or a free Christian. I could see some of this in King's stuff from the week before – how there was this writing and rewriting of what it meant to be Indian which ended up being a lose-lose situation for them.

When we went over it in class, I grasped more of what Bhaba was meaning by hybridity and ambivalence. The coloniser is in an alien world with an imagined picture of their old world, writing the image of the colonised. The colonised meets them in the middle of these images – it is not all on the one side but an exchange that grows into something new. Some ideas of postcolonialism rely on traditional manichaean dichotomies, but these don't honestly represent the situation. There is a blending. Also, if it is defined with regards to possessions and lacks; with this understanding it becomes evident that everyone possesses and lacks different things, and so there are no longer dichotomies.

*I made that one up. Or Skye did. Don't remember. She wishes it happened...

I might try and tell you about my favourite books from the course soon.. & bug you to read them!

Course Verdicts

Child Law: excellent, interesting, useful
Lecturer: Mrs passionate & organised

Phil: not bad, often mind-stretching
Lecturer: alert, twitchy dwarf :)

Aboriginal Studies: tolerable - I did actually learn some stuff! a little bit
Lecturer: hardened cynic.. but not without reason

SWRK: blerg (more than less)


Goodbye 2nd yr of uni!!