Social Work is no longer my major

It's surprisingly liberating to see that written down. This year particularly I had become completely turned off by Social Work, and I've decided to pursue Spanish, Sociology, Latin American studies etc. And it feels wonderful, because I felt so guilty that I needed to stick to Social Work. For me, this means transferring to the college of my choice with all needed credits and continuing the next two years to my bachellors degree; my passport to bigger and better things. I have the general education credits knocked out. By the time I transfer to the next school in the spring, I will have also completed the honors program at school which could give me a scholarship.

More about me

I am a perfectionist. I am also sensitive to criticism, especially about my grades- a B feels like an F. Sometimes, I think I might come off a little strongly to professors. I don't mean to, but being obsessed with my grades has somehow made me this way. One of these days I'll stop being so anal.

Islam in my life

Well, I realized today that I haven't really processed my experience with my family converting to Islam. I was in class today and teaching the students about the relationship between the Quran and the Arabic language, and it made the other students uncomfortable because I was talking about how God gave prophet Muhammad this series of revelations. Well I'm not sure I even made all of the points I was supposed to about the recitations being like a song or poetry, and that people who speak Arabic speak very poetically. Language and the way it is used expresses the spirit of the speaker and the culture of the speaker, and the Quran is the firm foundation of classical arabic. Keeping the Quran in it's original text preserves Arabic and is a huge contributing factor to it being the 4th most popular language in the world.

Well, going back to what I was saying, I think it's a very scary thing when someone in your family converts their religion and gets completely sucked into it in a radical way, because that's what happened to me. I visited my cousins because I wanted to understand why they did what they did from an insider point of view, and I found myself praying with them and wearing the hijab (head scarf). Watch this episode of 30 days on hulu, and you'll get a sense for what my week was like:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/5276/30-days-muslims-and-america

I am not a muslim and I have no plans of converting, but I can't help but feel a special connection with muslim people. At the same time, I have trouble talking about Islam with non muslims without sounding crazy. It fascinates me and I've done a ridiculous amount of research on the philosophy of Islam. The people in my class are very understanding because we all come from unique backgrounds, and this class is teaching us to appreciate diversity, but I realized today that I need an outlet for this experience.

Fund raising and concerns

Well, we had a lot of success with our fundraiser today! We sat at the cafeteria from around 8:30 until 4:00 selling carnations and baked goods. I have some thoughts I want to jot down about how Hope wants to use the money for lowernine.org

We could give the money straight to the organization, or we could use it to pay the volunteer fee for the students headed down there on Spring break. The volunteer fee had already been covered by a grant, but Hope is interested in using the money that was raised to cover the volunteer fee and to reimburse some grant money. I am concerned because we asked people for donations, and they gave them in good faith for rebuilding efforts, but if we spend the money this way, it looks a little bit deceiving, like we raised money for charity but ended up using it to make our school trip cheaper. It's important to keep the confidence others have in the integrity of our organization, because if we raise money again in the future, it's good for others to know that we are true to our word.

People may not like me after I express this, but I am committed to integrity as a core value.

boys and girls 1

Well, this is my first blog post as the Social Work club president. I sort of inherited this role, and it's not necessarily something I would have jumped for, but it was there and I took it.

Our group is taking on a semester long project working at the Boys and Girls club, and the specific branch is pretty destitute. The neighborhood is entirely low income housing and there are some projects not too far from the building. I got out of my car, and I could feel myself uncomfortable in this new setting. that's just it though, it's a new setting, and new doesn't mean dangerous. At least I thought that until I got to the front door. The windows all had been kicked and were cracked, and there were bullet holes in the front door. Now is the time to begin feeling uneasy, but I went ahead inside and greeted the staff members and introduced myself as a volunteer. One of the staff members, Scott, showed me around the place and he put me in the homework room. two students were finishing an assignment on the 13 colonies, they were both in fifth grade. Neither of them could sit still. they both seemed to have attention problems, and also behavioral issues like throwing pencils, rocking back and forth in the seats, and screaming. There was another student mentor there, her name was Melody and she was part of the staff. She is a junior in high school and has a desire to go to college. I thought it was wonderful that she was spending time at this place getting this valuable experience with these children. I wish I would have been doing something like that at her age. Snack time came at 6:15, and most of the kids had been there since 3:30, and all they gave them was a cookie. They wouldn't be home until 8:30 at night to eat something else.

Essentially, there is no structure to the boys and girls club. Part of that is the lack of funds. What really irks me, is that these are children and they are innocent, but our educational system is just so that wealthy neighborhood children have access to all resources, while children from poor areas have very limited access to much else outside of the home and poorly funded school. This is a structural cause of poverty, because if you are born in a poor area, and go to a poorly funded public school, how is it possible to compete with children from other more well endowed areas when the playing field is so uneven from the start?

Making real change in a community could be very exciting.

I remember my state of mind when I went through second guessing Social Work, it was a really terrible time with a difficult class, but I am sticking to Social Work. Social Justice is one of my passions, and I know it after getting through all the ailes of society that it's not easy for everyone to think of all the problems we have which yet don't have solutions like hunger, poverty, illegal immigration, the environmental crisis.. the best we as citizens can do is to become and remain aware of these problems and try to make life a bit easier for someone who is disabled, or hungry, or poor.

Here I go into the last chapter at my lovely school, NCC. I will enjoy it to the fullest extent.