Alessandra's Reflections and Insights for CHP 396

Ending remarks: Turns out I have more thoughts than to how I have improved on my writing

2009-12-11T09:33:00.000-08:00

After writing my portfolio piece, I came to realize I few more things than how I have improved as a writer. To Professor Arvan in particular, thanks for steering me right direction in the group projects through your short comments to my reflections. It is a hard subject to talk to someone with – attitude. Yet you helped me see how I could do better without coming off condescending or overbearing. And hence I came to the conclusion on how to be more effective in working with personalities I am not used to, and I am so proud of not only what we did with the mentoring program, but how well we worked together in the end.

Thank you for allowing us to do the multimedia project. Not only did it give us a different creative outlet and teach us new skills with the computer, but for me personally, I got to express my beliefs and values about getting involved in a whole new and better way. Furthermore, I had something malleable to show to others, and me being me, I contacted Liberal Arts and Sciences administration about it. Now we are working together to make it even better to show all of the LAS freshman this coming fall. After writing this I am calling the Division of General Studies… My point is that no matter what class you go onto teach, please continue to implement this into classes and also encourage other professors to do the same. I loved it.

Lastly, although it was difficult to analyze my own work, I am glad you had us write the reflection on reflections. Here is the thing – often times we don’t stop to think about what we are learning along the way, and most importantly how to improve. That is one of the reasons I am involved with the Leadership Certificate Program – it forces you to stop and reflect on what you are learning, and more importantly, how you can work on improving. If I could now pick my best piece, I think it would be my portfolio, as I took a lot of time on it to really analyze where I have changed and the things I have learned to fuel that change.

As the class can tell from our discussion, writing is not my favorite form of communication. Still, I am much better prepared to be more effective in both writing and group work. For me, I humbly say the class project broke assumptions needed to be. I have learned I can still be me, but in a way that builds people up. My writing style was challenged and pushed. It took the kind of thinking I learned through the multimedia project for me to understand where effective writing comes from – for me, thinking from the outside in. Most importantly, I can still be me when I am writing, I just need to use detailed examples to lead the reader to the conclusion themselves, not just telling them what they should believe and not backing it up.

And how can I end a post without saying what I always say? Don’t be afraid to get a little uncomfortable. If I have learned anything in all of college, the butterflies are the hardest and shortest part! I promise.

Portfolio on examining how I have grown as a writer with weaving, drilling down, and my whole overall approach

2009-12-11T09:14:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: The approach I took to this reflection was not to always comments on the merits of four reflections. Instead, to make my time worthwhile as a writer, I scavenged through my pieces to find a few key areas in which I learned and improved on the most. More specifically, I note here how my writing has improved in its depth and overall approach to get my message to the reader effectively. I hope you enjoy reading about my growth as a writer as much as I have enjoyed reflecting on it.

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In my first post I have chosen for my portfolio is entitled “We all can't do everything, but we can do something.” I picked this piece because the lack of “drilling down” as Professor Arvan so fondly calls it, is painfully obvious. I spent one sentence on Muhammad Yunus - one!

Still in the post I called "Intrinsic motivation: The extra push needed to get outside of your comfort zone", I chose to follow my slightly better understanding of drill down with 5 more different subjects running around all over the place. I think I was trying to do too many things I was unfamiliar with at once – weaving (I thought you needed to get in as many different things as possible) and drill down (not effective if you don’t come to a conclusion on the topic you expanded on).

Still, not all hope is lost. I have chosen my third post, "Senge and being humble" because here I am getting the idea that weaving doesn’t necessarily mean six different things. Furthermore, I come to a clearer conclusion by choosing only a few topics to connect: Senge, Kim’s post about the Felicities of the world, and the class project. By incorporating my overall growth throughout the class I think I did a good job in encompassing them all. In short, I chose this post because it is simple yet has depth. I am starting to get the hang of it.

In my last and favorite post entitled "A candid reflection on struggle, self mastery, and of course, getting a little uncomfortable", I told the story of my Leadershape experience was seven paragraphs. Interestingly, when writing, I didn’t think to myself, “Oh, I need to really expand on these thoughts because that what I was told I should do.” Instead I was beginning to think more and more about how an outsider would read my piece and if it would make sense. Seems easy, but again, I have almost no background in writing (thanks AP credit) so I am happy that even though it took me a while, I am beginning to get the hang of it.

Now I think I have a better understanding drill down. I think of it as expanding more on topics so the reader gets more comprehensive understanding of where I am coming from and what I mean. Still I am not perfect, as I am even not 100% sure of this definition. Of course there is definitely room for improvement. The best way I learn is through real examples, not just ways of explaining it without a real paper in front of you. In short, Professor Arvan, if you could help me solidify this concept of drill down through giving me a suggestion on one of my own posts or another piece I would really appreciate that.

What I also noticed when mulling over my own posts is that I had a complete shift in approach and tone to presenting my values. After reading a few of these earlier posts, I am noticing that in my early writings I am doing plenty of things to separate myself from the reader. Throughout the beginning writings of this course, I sound like I am preaching. I hate to admit this, but I sound like I know everything. Interestingly, my dad told me this all the time when I was writing my secondary application essays for medical school. It was only until reading these reflections over again do I see why.

I think the preaching way I presented my ideas was understood, interestingly, when I was putting the finishing touches on the multimedia project. Looking back on writing my last official post, "A candid reflection...", I am convinced that hours in the mindset of thinking “What would change students minds the most?” translated over to make my best piece. Not only did it flow better, but it also made the weaving of ideas seem effortless between Leadershape, Senge, and back again. Professor Arvan, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on how you make weaving feel effortless in your writing – or if it ever is for you. Honestly, the feeling was like none I have ever experienced not just in writing for this class, but in writing in general. I think looking from the outside in had a lot to do with it.

Thinking what kind of approach would be most effective in reaching the reader seems like common sense, but to me it is the most valuable thing I have learned in this class. Now I see the power of using detailed personal stories of how I came to these conclusions on my own. Here, Professor Arvan, I think that I am finally beginning to understand what you were talking about in class about the transfer of the writing skills we used for the multimedia projects into our reflections. It was truly like I finally “got it” so to speak, and I couldn’t be happier with the results.

While my approach and tone has changed through the semester, my values and ideas are consistent. In the very first paragraph of my very first post, I say, “While we all recognize that academics are important, classes alone are not the end all be all to being what all colleges claim to change us into – active, engaged citizens. Only getting out of our comfort zone and our little bubble called the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will do that.” When coming to a conclusion in my last official post, I think about how I felt after coming back from Leadershape, “Back on campus, I made some promises to myself. I promised myself that I would always push through the butterflies and that I would always walk the walk.” Something that I am glad didn’t change and was always there throughout my writing – being to true to whom I am and what I believe in.

Currently being involved in health care reform through working with the Champaign County Healthcare Consumers, I don’t see blogging as the best way to communicate my ideas. I use my verbal skills talk face to face with people about reform. After talking with them about how health insurance regulations could help them, I then go on to explain how they can get involved in their government. In the future, I can see blogging become a bigger part of how I communicate because I have bigger plans.

In order to provide healthcare to the underserved, I will work with a non-profit organization or start my own. I can see myself using blogging combined with the weaving and approach change I have learned in this class as a way for me to reach people around the country. Through writing, I would be able to tell people about my struggles as a doctor with the insurance companies. I would tell the stories of the people I would treat everyday who are just like the people reading – they just had the misfortune of getting sick. My ultimate goal of course, would be to use writing as a tool to get people to take action. While verbal communication will always be my stronger suit, I can honestly say that this class helped me be a better communicator all around so I can be even more effective at making change.

A candid reflection on struggle, self mastery, and of course, getting a little uncomfortable.

2009-12-04T06:13:00.000-08:00

As soon as I heard the words “stretch vision”, I truly felt like I was in a cult. It didn’t help that I was also in a mansion in the middle of the woods of central Illinois with nowhere to escape. For reasons I fully regretted at the time, I was at Leadershape, a six day retreat at Allerton Mansion in Monticello, Illinois. The purpose of the week was to bring campus leaders together to learn about different leadership strategies and themselves through each other.

On day three after more games and reflections than I could handle, I was stuck with a cheesy and ridiculous assignment to make a stretch vision statement. We were told to make a one sentence statement that would be amazing to accomplish, incorporates our values, and yet that seems almost impossible to achieve. The idea behind the statement was to believe in the seemingly impossible – we might just be a few that actually get there.

I thought to myself, “Wow, this program really is what people warned me about. Plus, a sentence won’t do anything, actions do something.” Still, I obliged. At least we had some time to ourselves. Through my experiences in healthcare, mine wasn’t actually too difficult to come up with – “A world in which healthcare is a right and not a privilege.”

After creating our vision, we went back into our groups of about ten people. The goal now was to work with each other in creating ways we would go about making our vision a reality. The catch? Our first step had to involve something outside of ourselves. “Huh, OK, now we might get somewhere,” I thought to myself. When it came to my turn, I mentioned I had heard about the organization Champaign County Healthcare Consumers. I knew how much advocacy work they did for the uninsured and underinsured, so I planned on contacting them and seeing how I could help when I got back to campus.

The conversation went smoothly around the table until we came to Kurt*. Kurt was planning on becoming a civil engineer, and his vision was to create a world in which no one was hurt due to engineering disasters such as collapsed bridges. His plan to get closer to his vision was to go home and begin researching engineering associations with this similar goal. The room went silent. It was obvious to us that Kurt’s plan did not fit the one criterion. Our group facilitator suggested to Kurt that that was a good idea, but to try and come up with another plan of action that involved the community.

Kurt just stared blankly ahead. Another group member remembered how he was involved with the Engineering Council. She suggested that he mention his goals to his friends and see if they had any ideas. Still, he was stone cold. After literally ten different suggestions, Kurt refused to change his approach to get closer to his vision – it remained only within himself. My blood began to rush to my face – what was so difficult about this? What is the worst that could possibly happen? After nearly an hour of agitated conversation in our group (we did have a whole week together), Kurt yelled, “Why the hell does it matter if my goal is just for me?!?!”

With my blood shot eyes, I glared at Kurt and said, “KURT! It is because you are staying safe. You refuse to take any risks. You won’t get outside your comfort zone where you will make a little bit of real difference.” The room went dead. A few still moments later, Kurt began to break down – he agreed, and he couldn’t stand himself for it. Our group leader’s eyes got glassy too - this was one of the things that Leadershape had led us to painstakingly discover on our own.

Peter Senge agrees in his book entitled The Fifth Disipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization; it takes courage to stand up for one’s vision. To have the bravery to do so distinguishes people with a high level of self mastery from those who don’t. Senge defines personal mastery is best defined as having a special level of proficiency in every aspect of life – personal and professional. Senge notes that people with a self mastery are constantly learning. Learning in this context doesn’t mean acquiring more information. It means expanding the ability to produce what we want in life.

Sounds great right? Well, of course, but then Senge begins to explain why not everyone achieves or is willing to even attempt to gain self mastery; they have an underlying fearful belief in their own powerlessness or unworthiness. As someone moves closer to their vision, the tension from their subconscious beliefs increases – they are out of their comfort zone. Senge’s solution avoiding being our own worst enemy? Commitment to the truth.

The first step in reaching this truth is recognizing the thought patterns we say to ourselves to hold us back. Senge notes a personal example of his, as he used to be constantly let down by the people he worked with. Through recognizing his own destructive thought patterns, he found that these feelings were from an underlying feeling of powerlessness to change how people always seemed to disappoint him.

After gaining this awareness, he began to look more closely at his own actions that led him to feel this way. He noted that through assigning impossible tasks and undermining his coworkers, he was setting himself up to feel this way. He then moved on to improve it through supporting his colleagues and making more realistic assignments.

I note this example here because of a similar experience I had involving self-limiting beliefs when working on the class project. Being involved in many different areas social justice work, over and over again I saw how the types of gung ho attitudes that were effective and the nonchalant attitudes that didn’t get people anywhere. I was used to people being like me – we need to constantly be doing something to make a difference. Do now, think later was basically the motto. And I hate to admit it, but this in turn led me to what Senge would call a mental model. In other words, I have a thought pattern that only people like me and fellow passionate advocates could make real change.

Hence, I went into the class project like Senge – expecting to be disappointed in others. My frustrations about our class being stagnant were obvious in my reflections. Professor Arvan took note. With only a few suggestions, I began to see how I too was setting myself up for disappointment in others with the attitude I had with my group - I was short, closed minded, and even a little bossy.

I took Professor Arvan’s suggestion to heart and began to talk less and listen more. I was surprised. My group members began to show investment and even come up with some great ideas. I know it sounds like common sense to be open in group projects, but as you can see my past experience with social change gave me a mental model that actually hindered me. I went in thinking things should be a certain why, and hence closed off our group from being even more effective. I wouldn’t have realized this without a little help. While there won’t be an overseer-type figure in many of my future groups, I will keep asking myself – is there any underlying belief that is holding me back from making the most difference and learning as much as possible?

Honestly, I didn’t keep in touch with Kurt after Leadershape. At the time I gave it my all to try and help him break out of his shell, as we all did. Still, there was only so much I could take emotionally. I have never felt the feeling of feeling so incredibly angry and so incredibly sorry for a person at the same time. Despite the agonizing frustration of that night, I am so glad Kurt was stubborn. Kurt helped me learn something that I hold most true to this day. Taking action outside of ourselves is so vital because it is only then our perceptions and beliefs would be changed and our actions have the possibility to lead to results.

Back on campus, I made some promises to myself. I promised myself that I would always push through the butterflies and that I would always walk the walk. Continuing to act on these promises would give me a feeling of integrity. I would also continue have the immense fulfillment I had had through other service experiences. Most importantly though, I made promises outside of myself. I promised that I would strive to make my once cheesy vision of making healthcare a right and not a privilege a reality. Furthermore, thanks to Kurt I had a newer and more powerful vision. Through my work both in college and out, I was going help people like him believe in themselves that they could make a real difference. Nothing could be more powerful than empowering other people.

I have learned some very valuable lessons through Leadershape and through our class project. Their worth will remind me to always try to learn more about the best ways to go about making positive change with others. I hope that my candidness has helped you explore a little bit about any of your limiting beliefs that hold you back and what you could do to change them. Considering how the next reflection is evaluating our own reflections, for this one I wanted to focus on you guys. I want to know – what kinds of things make you feel like you are living your vision? Now that we have read about personal mastery, have you been noticing any beliefs that are holding you back? What are your ideas to combat them? While of course I would love to hear what you think about this reflection, as always, like I have mentioned over and over and over again in my reflections*, most of all I hope I have encouraged you to get a little uncomfortable.

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*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of Leadershape participants

Multimedia Project on Student Engagement

2009-12-02T17:56:00.000-08:00

Hey Guys - here is my slidecast on encouraging students to get involved. Let me know what you think!

-Alessandra

P.S. I just sent it to all of my chemistry students - I am just hoping to inspire a few people to take a step outside their comfort zone. If I can do that this project was well worth it. Feel free to distribute to any students you are currently mentoring.. If you like it ;)

What will you make of it?

View more presentations from musetti2.

Good news!!

2009-11-25T15:16:00.000-08:00

Ruth Hoffman, the coordinator of the LAS 100 sections, is willing to distribute our group's information we compiled!

All I did was call her up and tell her about the mentoring program flyers we were making, and asked her if her TA's would be willing to pass them out to freshman. She was more than happy to oblige.

If you guys have any other ideas as to how to get your part of the class project out to the LAS 100 sections next fall, I am sure she would be more than willing to work with you too.

She can be reached at ruthhoff@illinois.edu or at 217.333.1705.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving guys!

Like I have always said, I learn from experience

2009-11-20T19:02:00.000-08:00

There is no simple answer to the question how many chances freshman get to interact with upperclassman on campus. But for the sake of answering this question, in terms of formal chances for freshman to interact with upperclassman students I would say that there are just a few smatterings. In terms of where freshman meet their higher ups, I think that this meeting upperclassmen is definitely easier from the social stand point versus the academic standpoint. For instance, more than half of freshmen choose to go into the Greek system.

Obviously, most of the purpose of the greek system is to provide fun events for their members, along with networking with other houses. I am not sure if other houses did this, but in my house our majors of the new pledge class were matched up with majors of people who were upperclassmen in the house. After chapter we would meet up with our “academic advisors” and they would check in with us about how school was going and give us some advice.

In addition to the girls we would be matched up with in terms of majors, we also had what is called a “pledge mom”. A few weeks after being invited to join the house we are matched up with our pledge mom through a process which I relate to the matching process in residency. the pledge ranks the active members they would like to be their pledge mom and the active members do the same. The relationship between the pledge mom and kid would be just between them. For example, about every week or so, me and my pledge mom Kirsty would eat dinner together at the house or meet up for coffee. Fraternities also have this same system set up.

Outside of the Greek system, students can turn to their resident advisors for advice. The university requires students to live in a residence hall during their first year on campus. Yet I didn’t really see my R.A. as someone I could confide in about the difficulty of making the transition from home to college. At the same time however, I did get close to her in seeking advice for being a successful student at the U of I. She was in engineering, so without a doubt she was very committed to her academics. At the same time, she had a boyfriend, a very active social life, and worked out almost everyday. I looked up to her, and during midterms I looked to her for advice on how she balanced everything.

Both of the examples of the Greek system and the resident advisor that there is potential for freshman to be mentored in more of an apprenticeship role. Of course, when I sought out my R.A. for advice or when I had a pledge mom, we didn’t think of it as being formally mentored. Mentoring almost has a very separate connotation to it, while with what I sought out I felt very on the same playing field despite the age difference.

Going into the class project, my goal was to get the information out to the freshman so they would have the choice to implement the types of relationships I had during my first year at Illinois. My other group members also thought that this was an important first step, and together we came up with the idea of being the middleman between RSO’s and freshman through a Google survey. This survey provides us with the information we need to make flyers with all the information freshman would need to get started.

Aside from putting these flyers up around campus, I have contacted the coordinator of the LAS 100 classes. I am happy to report that she said she would be more than willing to have the upperclassmen distribute our information to the freshman they are teaching. I will be in medical school, but I am happy I could at least make a little bit of a difference for the incoming students; that is all I really wanted and what I have kept in mind since we first started talking about the class project – the students we were going to help.

I didn’t think about what I would get out of it. Looking back on it though, with the results almost all in, all of us ready to print the flyers, I have learned something about my leadership style. As is usually the case when I learn something – I learn what not to do. I will admit that I went into the group project with low expectations of my group members. I think that this had to do with a couple things. First, the class attitude of the project seemed nonchalant. Secondly, I was used to working with people who would be willing to talk to the administration or join a protest at the drop of the hat when I was working with bringing a Women’s Center to campus.

As Senge would say, I had a mental model that actually slowed down our progress at first. After seeing how our group was working and with the help of a few hints from Professor Arvan, I tweaked my attitude to being less judgmental sounding and more open. Through this project, I have come to realize that even though groups might be completely opposite, your attitude you have coming into it will give you all the best chances of success.

Soon in medical school, I will be back at square one again and seeking out that invaluable advice once again. Sure, some medical schools such as Iowa have programs set up such as Learning Communities specifically for this purpose. Some schools such as Loyola offer its students to be paired with a doctor. As you might have guessed, these programs are of little influence to where I choose to go to school. Really, I am looking at the overall attitudes of the students and faculty and thinking to myself, “Where would I feel like I would have the most help, gain the most connections, and make real change – all starting from a casual conversation?” No formal mentoring programs required.

Learn something. Do something. Don't tread water.

2009-11-13T14:48:00.000-08:00

On interviews, I am occasionally asked what my favorite class in college was. I immediately reply Sociology 100. The class helped me see that a person’s circumstance has more to do with what neighborhood they were born in more than their aptitude. I hate to admit this, but I came into college with a fair share of stereotypes. Sociology showed me the underlying class systems that led to these stereotypes.

Only weeks into the class, I looked at things completely differently. Sociology had broken what Peter M. Senge, author of the book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and the Practice of the Learning Organization would call my mental model. Getting rid of my mental model from stereotypes allowed me to analyze the bigger picture when it came to social issues, have an open mind in future classes, and hence increase my learning capabilities overall.

I can’t say I took Sociology 100 out of my own merit. I have a Scottish Dean to thank. Over summer registration, I was encouraged to take advantage of course work that would help me have a well rounded education. During summer registration, my future classmates and I were met by a LAS college dean with a charming Scottish accent. He inspired us about what a college education means – being educated in a variety of complex issues and disciplines and using this education to benefit society.

He is not alone in this belief. The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) lists the “ knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world” as the first of its four criteria in determining if a student will graduate with what they note as “Essential Learning Outcomes”. The article, entitled “Liberal Education and America’s Promise”, describes four learning outcomes to guide administrators in making decisions that will reflect on college students’ education.

Unfortunately, not every student registering for college received the same type of inspiring message I did about the importance of higher education. Without a doubt, what made that Scottish Dean’s presentation possible was the cohesiveness of New Student Programs, staff at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the building managers, etc. Of course, his type of cohesiveness is not seen everywhere.

As noted in the documentary Declining by Degrees, community colleges struggle the most in created a unified experience for its students and staff. This is because of a few reasons. First, community college students are often working full time and have families. Furthermore, the film also noted that most community colleges hire mostly part time staff to save money and to teach according to the demand of the class. At the Community College of Denver, half of the teachers are hired part-time. This results in the staff itself is lacking in cohesiveness, and hence less investments their students about the importance of general education.

The second component listed as part of the AACU’s essential learning outcomes is intellectual and practical skills. This one seemed a little more ambiguous than the first. I read on. The AACU notes that students can go about accomplishing this objective through critical and creative thinking, written and oral communication, quantitative literacy, information literacy, and team work and problem solving. In other words, this point notes the importance of skills which can be applied in both the work force and at home.

Declining by Degrees also mentions that we have no subjective measure to see if a student is even learning these types of skills. One of the commentators in the documentary puts it best by noting that the difference between the student making the most out of their time at college versus the student who has manipulated the system to just coast through it with little effort is like a swimmer and someone treading water. Someone is actually putting in the work, and the other is just giving the appearance of movement.

The third overarching goal of higher education according to AACU is personal and social responsibility. AACU suggests students should go about accomplishing this through both local and global civic engagement, ethical reasoning, being knowledgeable about other cultures, and building a foundation for lifelong learning. This goal really sticks out to me in the sense that it seems like in order to accomplish these students would have to get outside of the classroom the most. Still, colleges offer no incentive for its students to build on this objective for the sake of itself. Instead, students often seek experiences out because their future employers are looking for it. I am not saying this is bad necessarily, but maybe it should be mentioned simply for the sake of the worth in itself.

AACU’s last major objective is integrative learning. In other words, AACU believes in the importance of students to connect both general and specialized topics to various ideas. I believe that any major can allow you, even almost forces you, to accomplish this objective. I am sure for most of this, connections within our own knowledge specialty is almost unconscious. For example, in my physiology class when I am analyzing how urine filtration and ion balance works in the kidneys, I am unconsciously using the knowledge I picked up from general chemistry and biology my freshman year. Despite this general accumulation of knowledge in one subset of majors, I don’t think that what I have noted is really what this objective is getting at. I would be curious if you all had a better understanding as to how this idea can apply to our everyday life, as I am a little confused by this one.

Despite the sensibleness of AACU’s suggestions, some questions still remain. I am interested to know how influential studies and articles like these are to college administrators. Declining by Degrees made it seem like pubic research universities are more worried about getting funding than how to accomplish these higher education objectives by the AACU. Although I recognize that the film presents a one-sided view, I also don’t blame the administrations focus. Funding can be seen as on the bottom of the pyramid on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - if there were one for public universities. I wonder what else would be on there. Now that would be a fun class.

Back to our devil’s advocate commentator in Declining by Degrees – how can we tell the difference the swimmer and the water-treader? They both still graduate with the same degree. Does this make having a college degree means less? How is it that higher education in the form of college is seen as the key to securing a middle-upper class lifestyle, but we have no idea if we really are getting to be better and more knowledgeable citizens? How can we for ourselves tell whether we are learning anything? Should we just accept that there is never a definite answer?

Then again, like anything, higher education is what you make of it. I am sure there are some kids at Amherst who remain anonymous. I am sure most of us in this class have sought out mentors and experiences within our cash-strapped public research opportunity amongst our 40,000 plus peers to achieve AACU’s objectives.

Hopefully by the time that our children are in school some of the structures in place in higher education that keep the student to faculty ratio so high, professors focused on research, etc. will be lessened. Who knows, maybe by the time our children are in college there will be a way to measure their progress in their education and their experiences. All I really know for sure though is that I am making my kids take Sociology 100.

Liiberal Education and America’s Promise Article

2009-11-13T14:13:00.000-08:00

Hey Guys,

I discovered a second article left by our interviewer.

High-Impact Educational Practices Article

2009-11-11T15:37:00.000-08:00

Hey Guys,

Just wanted to let you guys know where to find the article Mary-Ann Winkelmes brought to class today. Very interesting!

See you soon!

-Alessandra

Drucker, effectiveness, class goals

2009-11-08T21:49:00.000-08:00

Drucker defines effectiveness as, in short, choosing the right things to do, not just working. I am sure we all struggle with this in our academic world – we have all faced the choice as to whether to tackle the more difficult and more important task first and or the less important “fluff” as I like to call it. As with most situations, the right choice is often the more difficult one.

In terms of the class project, although we have certain subprojects in mind, we are left floundering as to if these are really the most effective routes to take to make the biggest positive impact in a short amount of time. During discussion last week I think we all agreed that having some objectives would help us clarify if we were heading in the right direction.

Yet, during our class last week, our chances to even choose the right things to do were lost – we all really didn’t know the direction we were headed with the class. Even after a few mutterings about how the goals would be important to choosing the right things to do, we continued on with our discussion about the readings, and it was forgotten. As an attempt to help all of us, I posted a rough draft of what I think the goals of the class are. Most importantly, underneath I noted some strategies underneath them that I think would help our class be successful in the different subgroups of our class project:

Even though getting a start to the class goals is good, the effectiveness would be limited; through coming up with the ideas on my own I was again not viewing myself as a part of the whole. As my last post noted with Senge’s ideas, I am going to work on this in our class. Still, I thought a start was better than no start. Please let me know what you think, and I will see you Wednesday!

Senge and being humble

2009-11-08T21:45:00.000-08:00

I guess reflections are called that for a good reason. Amidst brain storming what I could write for this reflection, I noticed a pattern from myself throughout the class and other situations. I hate to admit it, but a common theme in my posts has been to view myself, my outlook, and my ideas as alone in this class. Yet, I have painfully come to realize that this is how I often go into other positions, whether it was in my part time job at the Office of Volunteer Programs and when leading an alternative spring break group. Honestly, this often leads me to feel alone thinking it is just the other people not caring. But really, it was my attitude going into the position that left me this way, just like it has in this class.

After reading about Peter Senge’s ideas on The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, I realized that if I am truly going to be as successful as possible for others, I need to take a hint from Senge and be mor to gain personal mastery in terms of relizing that there is always something more to learn:

“People with a high level of personal mastery live in a continual learning mode. They never ‘arrive’. Sometimes, language, such as the term ‘personal mastery’ creates a misleading sense of definiteness, of black and white. But personal mastery is not something you possess. It is a process. It is a lifelong discipline. People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas. And they are deeply self-confident. Paradoxical? Only for those who do not see the ‘journey is the reward’. (Senge 1990: 142)”

I note this quote here is because through this class project, I am beginning to really realize the benefits of an open mind and flexibility. This is not to say I will stop being a Fecility. Often times the groups I am in need a Felicitiy to give them the push they need to get things started. Still, being a less rushed and more patient one will be worth it in order to get the type of ideal team work that Senge mentions –

“When you ask people about what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative. It become quite clear that, for many, their experiences as part of truly great teams stand out as singular periods of life lived to the fullest. Some spend the rest of their lives looking for ways to recapture that spirit. (Senge 1990: 13).”

Improving my leadership skills to be more aligned with Senge’s ideas is important to me because in the future, I plan on opening a free health clinic. From my previous success in social justice work, I was confident that it could be done. Yet as I get older and move away from a college campus, the challenges will be even greater in finding people with similar goals. As usual, I can’t wait to see what happens.

Mentoring Project Publicity Update :Week 1

2009-11-08T19:34:00.000-08:00

Our very google document inept group got the hang it – we created a survey in which we will email out to our assigned RSO’s come this Monday. We are pretty proud of ourselves for that alone.

Our plan was to wait until Monday because we asked professor Arvan to email the survey link to the group last week. This was because
1) we would be able to work of our peer’s ideas
2) be able to see if there were any glitches
3) take their suggestions for improvement in class on Monday

Yet we don’t believe the link was sent out. Still, we think a better idea would be to take five minutes in class on Wednesday to ask them to just suggest ideas. It is unrealistic to think that they would know all the information needed for them to fill out the google survey anyway.

Our peers could even give us just the name of the group that offers mentoring, and we would take it from there.

Considering the difficultly of class involvement online, we feel that this would be the most efficient way to go about getting our goal accomplished. From there, we will send out the link along with the letter form we created to different RSOs and organizations on campus.

Goals and strategies of our class: Rough draft

2009-11-08T18:47:00.000-08:00

Hey guys,

I thought I would scrap together some of my ideas of the goals of our course and how we would best go about achieving them. As always, your comments would be really appreciated.

________________________________________________________________________

GOALS OF THE CLASS

To accomplish various “subprojects” with the overall goal being to increase involvement in mentoring programs around campus and to create new mentors. These subprojects include:

- increasing awareness of mentoring programs on campus through flyers and communication with university departments

- improving the LAS 100 classes

- implementing a new mentoring program in the course Anthropology 143: Biology of Human Behavior

- creating a web portal in which students would be able to get advice from students more experienced then them in their particular area of interest

to improve our skills as writers – we will learn of our own improvement not only by the feedback from Professor Arvan, but of our peers and our own self analysis and comparison

- most importantly, to take the communication skills we have refined in this class into our future leadership positions

STRATGIES TO ACCOMPLISH THESE GOALS

In terms of making the various subprojects successful:

- helping out other subgroups as much as possible

- incorporating discussion about our progress into every class discussion

- groups taking the initiative in class to ask for help from others when they need it

- similarly, individuals being willing to share ideas of improvement with others

In terms of improving our writing:

- taking an active part in commenting on others blogs: this includes not only talking about the ideas brought up, but the way in which they went about presenting their ideas.

- using weaving into weekly reflections: this is definitely more difficult than just writing about your own experiences for a couple pages, but it provides the reader with something new they learned to take with them. As Gladwell would say – this would be the part of the reflection that really “sticks” with the reader

I don’t have a middle name, but it should be Felicity.

2009-10-31T13:37:00.000-07:00

It was through experience, not the classroom where I was able to see how socioeconomic status could affect someone’s health from literally the day someone was born. Part of my job as a volunteer at the maternity department of Provena Hospital was to assemble baskets of basic baby supplies. These baskets were given to low-income women who came into the hospital with nothing to care for their new baby. As I delivered the baskets to them in their room, the look of shame in their eyes was unbearable. I could only imagine what they were thinking – this would the first of many times in their lives where they would feel that they felt like they wouldn’t be able to care for their child. This and countless other experiences have led me to my career choice as a physician, as I feel that physical well being provides the base of all other social services to build off of. More importantly, these experiences have also made me realize how valuable outside experiences are to my development as a socially aware citizen.

These reflections by themselves are difficult for me to write not because I find it weird to post my thoughts and feelings online, but because I am a doer, not a thinker. Even while writing I am organizing in my head what groups have contacted me with their blurbs and which I still need to contact later to get the mentoring flyers out on time. Yes, I can excel in my classes, as I am sure all of us do, but I need to have a role defined outside of the world of school. I feel that outside the classroom I learn more that I do inside of it. Through interacting with people of diverse backgrounds under a common goal, I have found I learn the most about how effective change really happens. In short, I am the epitome of what Kim would call Felicity.

In her post from this week entitled “rebecca +felicity”, Kim notes how she has seen two different types of people emerge from the time we have started our class project. First, Kim notes Rebecca’s personality traits. Rebecca prefers to think very methodically before doing anything. This results in her not being able to participate much in the class discussion. Not having structure and strict leadership in a classroom throws her off, and she ends up coming off like she doesn’t really care about the project – whether she does or not it is hard to tell.

Felicity, on the other hand, thrived from all of the unknown possibilities and the big ideas; she didn’t need to know every detail. There would be bumps along the way, but she would figure them out then – no point in wasting time talking about all the things that could go wrong. Felicity was done just talking about books that didn’t seem to have any relation to the class project. She was done coming to class and feeling like all anyone did was complain about what was wrong with higher education. She was thrilled they had to chance to actually work together and use their talents for something good. She seemed to morph into a different person when the class project was actually happening – she was energized and totally engaged. Finally.

Kim’ ideas might have some scientific basis. I know that how I am outside the classroom definitely comes back into play when I am in the classroom too – I had no idea that different learning styles in their relation to extroversion and introversion had actually been studied! According to the magazine Psychology Today, extroverted learners enjoy generating ideas and energy from other people. Other characteristics of extroverted learners are that they learn best through direct experience, enjoy working with others in groups, and gather ideas from outside sources. They are also willing to lead, participate and offer opinions, and jump right in without guidance from others. I am sure as you all would guess, I would fall into this category.

Introverted learners, on the other hand, prefer to think about things before attempting something new. They also prefer to work alone, enjoys quiet, solitary work, often generates ideas from internal sources, prefers to listen, watch and reflect, and likes to observe others before attempting a new skill.

Now, I am mature enough to realize that there are some in betweens to these two personality types. I know that there is more to our class than two different lumps of people. Still, now that we are switching to actually doing something outside of the class and outside of purely academic pursuits, this difference in personalities becomes more and more obvious.

I have worked in plenty of groups with extremely different personalities, and our goals were accomplished despite the occasional tensions and pouting. What is difficult about this class is that unlike a student group who are all joined together under one common goal, we are joined together because of the Campus Honors Program. We also didn’t get to choose what our class project was. This could lead to motivation problems. Even just a few days into the project, I can only see excitement in a few people – mainly fellow Felicities who are probably just excited they get to do something now.

Case in point - I am very thankful my piece of the class project came along when it did. Increasing awareness about different mentoring programs is something I am able to work on by myself and with other students in the class. Most importantly, I am also able to work with different groups around campus. Talking with group leaders about my ideas on how getting the word out is half the battle is something I feel at very comfortable with.

Still, it is difficult for me to be involved in something were I feel that passion is lacking. I am used to being surrounded by people who will take hours out of their week to talk to people they don’t even know for a cause. I am used to always being on the edge of a new event we aren’t sure is going to be effective, but we tried it anyway. I am used to feeling like a have a lot of support, and in the class I feel mainly alone in my beliefs and outlook.

Being a Felicity is not only more demanding and draining, but it makes me feel like I have to motivate people to get outside their school bubble in every post. This is my last shot, mainly because I am sick of writing about it. I understand that we are all busy. I understand that the groups that we are assigned to aren’t the perfect thing we wanted to do; they all carry their unique issues and roadblocks. I understand that we didn’t even pick the project itself, and in turn might not be the most motivated to help considering we all have different things that we are passionate about.

Still, I also know that we are all capable of accomplishing something worthwhile in the next few weeks. Sure, it is going to be a lot less comfortable and a lot more chaotic to get something out there. In the meantime, I’ll be working on getting the word out about different mentoring programs. If you want to help, I made a post where you can comment and put down all the information you know about mentoring programs.

So, is getting the awareness about mentoring programs something I am just as passionate about as healthcare reform or equal right for women or ending poverty? No, but the underlying theme is the same and so is my personality. I still believe in helping people reach their fullest potential and I still believe that talk is cheap. So, might being a Felicity occasionally come off as overbearing? Sure. Domineering? Yep. But at least we are trying and doing something. In short, I am proud to be a Felicity – maybe it should be my new middle name.

~~~ENTER MENTORING PROGRAM SUGGESTIONS HERE PLEASE! ~~~~

2009-10-30T15:42:00.000-07:00

Hey guys,

I thought this would be beneficial so our group didn't have to wait until Monday to get your suggestions. If you could just comment on this post and put:

1. TITLE/NAME of the mentoring program you know
This doesn’t have to be an “official” university program just for mentoring/tutoring, etc.. For example, I contacted the president of the American Medical Student Association and they explained how their club mentoring program works.

2. A few SENTENCES about the program, just so we don’t look as silly when we make the initial contact asking them for their description for the flyers

3. CONTACT INFORMATION if possible of the person in charge of the program

Thanks guys, we appreciate it!

-Alessandra

Creative Imitation: The potential to us unstuck, if we want to get unstuck that is.

2009-10-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

The first couple readings this week by Drucker on management made me question what this had to do with our class goals. By the time I was reading chapter 12 on entrepreneurial strategies, I was scavenging for ways to make these readings relate to class. I wasn’t disappointed – the second strategy entitled “Creative Imitation” stuck out to me because I believe that if our class were to take this approach, we still might be able to make an impact in the short amount of time we have left together.

Let me first explain with the “Creative Imitation” strategy is. Long story short, it emphasizes taking already existing products and services and tweaking them so they better serve the customers. As Drucker puts it - “The creative imitator does not invent a product or service, he perfects and positions it. In the form of which it has been introduced, it lacks something.”

In terms of our class project, it would be interesting to think about this approach to help better already existing mentoring and tutoring programs. For example, we could work with different programs from all around campus and, taking a hint from Gawande, ask them what they need to make their programs better. If we could help them through getting more mentors through simple word of mouth and the help of the Campus Honors Program staff and the Honors Student Council to help recruit, that would be realistic and possible in and of itself.

Taking on the strategy of significantly improving a program that already exists might be a way we can make a positive impact, considering the short amount of time that is left in the semester. I know from experience that if we start from scratch, we will definitely not accomplish anything in the last few weeks of the semester. While not as glamorous as starting anew, we would at least be accomplishing something.

Now the question is – now that there is an idea out there that is actually fathomable and comprehensible for us to do, will we choose to be diligent enough to actually do it? Or will the ideas of this post, like so many other classes, be stuck forever in the safe and comfortable world of academia?

It is up to us to decide.

Shame - the key to lowering nosocomial infection rates?

2009-10-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

When trying to read up on the newest developments of the healthcare debate through the healthcare blog, I stumbled on an article commenting on a study that found shame was more effective than simple reminders in getting people to wash their hands. Electronic voice reminders were set up in gas station bathrooms around England, and aside from normal reminders, the machine also noted - " Did the person next to you use soap?" When this comment played, it was shown that people were more likely to wash their hands.

While I don't necessarily see hospitals having meetings solely for the purpose of degrading their staff for neglecting to wash their hands, this article does make a good point. Sometimes, the simplest strategies, even things that were used on us when we were little, could be effective. No new technology or fancy equipment needed.

_____________________________________________________________________________

P.S. I am sorry the link isn't listed, for some reason my blog isn't cooperating and won't let me link things. Grrr....

So much potential, so little comments

2009-10-23T19:21:00.000-07:00

Do I think that posting on the internet and having the possibility of strangers looking at our posts encourages better writing for our class? Not necessarily. More importantly, blogging is beneficial to our class because it gives us an easy way to learn from each other – both to improve our writing through examining other students’ style and reading each other’s comments while also seeing different perspectives. Surprisingly, this blog has been one of the most helpful and unique things I have experienced through my college curriculum so far.

The comments I have received on my writing have solidified what I need to improve on most that I didn’t want to admit to myself – transitions and just plain taking the time out to pay attention to detail. I am happy to report that I received a few helpful comments from Greg and Christine on my book review, which I really appreciate considering how lengthy it was. As Christine commented, “One thing I would say is just to make sure you give some form of transition between your experience and Gawande's ideas”. Christine simply told me that my transitions could use work, which is something I have been struggling to admit to myself I have a hard time writing. Still, her input was invaluable in helping me realize that having smoother transitions could really improve my writing. Greg reminded me of my slight apathy to detail, as you all are by now familiar with. He politely noted- “Another minor observation: Did you mean to repeat verbatim your opening sentences later in the essay?” Whoops. Their suggestions have really stuck with me the next time I am writing for this class because they are short and to the point.

Furthermore, to me comments from students are easier to understand. I will be honest here – sometimes I had to read Professor Arvan’s quotes a few times to see what he was getting at. Case in point – “When something new outside your realm of experience is presented, there are no obvious ways to determine whether it is true or false. You need to let events play out to see the validity of the proposition.” While Professor Arvan’s comments on my blogs have been helpful in terms of getting me to think about the types of concepts I have chosen to cover in a particular reflection, my peers comments had more influence in helping me get down to the basics of good writing; maybe even (gasp!) give my posts another glance over before posting – I wouldn’t want my peers to turn away from my piece because it was annoying to deal with missing or misspelled words. If the piece was annoying for other reasons, so be it, they would comment and I would learn something from it.

As you can see, I really value the input my classmates give me on my writing. At the same time, I recognize that reading papers and reflections is not only time consuming, but posting of them don’t happen that frequently. In order to maximize the sharing of ideas and to make the most of this class, I want to encourage you guys to make your blog more than a place for reflection after reflection, and then a paper, and another relfection, etc. We all have so much to contribute in class, and we really only see each other a couple hours a week. With interviews, this leaves us even less time to talk. Our blogs have the potential to be utilized as another way to share ideas. Right now, with only reflections and papers being posted, this leaves us with little wiggle room to share our thoughts on what we talked about that day or how our class topics relate to current events.

Now, I will admit… A few times, I have stumbled across an article that I discovered that I thought perfectly relates to the class, and that one of my classmates could have benefited from hence they stumble upon my reflection for the week. In fact, I think I still have the article bookmarked…. Yes, still there - a beautifully written article by the New York Times on how microfinance is saving the world’s women that my mom sent me on a whim.

Would it have given my classmates a broader perspective on microfinance, especially as to how it applies today? Of course. Would it have opened our eyes just a little bit wider to again realize that we are very lucky to be able to even have sort of class project on mentoring – all immediate needs taken care of? Again, yes it would have. But still, I hesitated.

But alas, we were already about five weeks into the semester, and the only comments I received were from Professor Arvan. Now, I knew when I began blogging I wouldn’t have many visitors to my site. Still, I didn’t expect for my only visitor to be the professor. The memories of all of those lonely comments held me back. No one else seemed to have too much of an interest in our blogging outside of simply posting and checking back for a comment from Professor Arvan. I felt like even if I were to post it up it would only be seen by a couple of eyes, sometimes including my own.

The point of this nostalgic story? In order for us to get the most out of these blogs we need to get more involved. Not only would it improve our writing through more peer input, but through doing more than responding to set prompts, we would be able to see issues and their possible solutions from different angles. I hope we can go beyond simply what we are told to do and put up anything we think would be helpful, useful, interesting, or fun for our peers to read – it would make everyone’s involvement easier and more beneficial to everyone.

Final Draft of Book Review

2009-10-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

----------Part I: Recognizing a problem, being willing to fail----------

It was by chance I heard about an idea that would change my outlook on the power of diligence forever. On a whim I attended a program put on by the Office of Women’s Programs on how women’s portrayal in the media affects their own perceptions of themselves. After the presentation, the staff mentioned that they were looking for undergraduates to help organize student support to establish a Women’s Center on campus.

The staff noted that a Women’s Center would serve as a central location for existing and future additional women’s support services. They went on to mention that the University of Illinois was one of the few Big Ten Schools not to have this type of center which would make it easier for women to reach out for help when they need it. The issues that would be addressed included dating abuse, sexual assault, returning to college, body image, harassment, campus safety and more. The center would also offer support through counseling, advocacy, and scholarships.

Back at home from the meeting that night, I realized that the University of Illinois was not doing its best to help women reach their full potential; I decided to email the Office of Women’s Programs to let them know I was interested in helping bring a Women’s Center to our campus.

That first step in making the Women’s Center a reality occurred before anything externally measurable happened; it was my decision to recognize that the current University of Illinois campus, while not in shambles, could still improve its services to women significantly. I could have just as easily pretended as if I never heard about the idea of a Women’s Center. I could have hoped someone else with more power than a college sophomore would pick up the issue. But still, I hit that send button and was soon meeting up with the Office of Women’s Program to plan our next step. In his book better, Atul Gawande calls this type of behavior diligence – or the ability to take a hard look at what has gone wrong in a system and work hard to get it right.

Obviously, it is a lot easier for people to know is right and still not attempt to change anything. Oftentimes, this can lead programs not meeting the ever-changing needs of the people it serves. According to Gawande, a stagnant program stems from what Gawande calls lack of compliance – or the failure of an individual to apply know-how effectively. Gawande sees diligence as so important to combating non-compliance that he has dedicated the whole first part of his book to it. Here he explains how diligence has been a vital part of lowering the rates of infection of diseases obtained in hospitals (also known as nosocomial infections), nearly eradicating polio, and increasing the wounded soldier survival rate in the U.S. Army.

According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, over two million Americans acquire an infection while they are in the hospital. Shockingly, out of that two million, 90,000 people a year die from nosocomial infections. Despite the immense advancement in technology today, the number one factor that halts the spread of these various, dangerous, and microscopic ailments is doctors washing their hands. In hospitals around the country, it as been shown that doctors and nurses wash their hands from one-third to about one-half of the times that they are supposed to.

In the first chapter of his book, Gawande focuses on how nosocomial infections are correlated with the lack of hand washing. Furthermore, the number one factor that fights hand washing compliance in hospitals is the clock. The process of correctly washing your hands is time consuming – one must remove watches or jewelry and with warm water lather all surfaces thoroughly, including the lower one-third of the arm for about half a minute. Next, you must rinse off for another half minute, and then dry with a sterile and disposable towel. Use the towel to shut off the tap water, and repeat with any new contact with a patient.

One who knows anything about the typical life of a health professional immediately gets the sense that it is unrealistic to expect this type of behavior between all patients. Residents usually check in on about 20 patients an hour, and the nurses working in intensive care usually have about the same caseload. If hand washing only took a minute, to wash in between each one would take one third of the hour.

Gawande goes on to tell the story of how a hospital in Pittsburg was diligent enough to take on the difficult issue of lowering the rate of nosocomial infections in order to help keep their patients healthier. Paul O’Neil was willing to tackle the problem of non-compliance in a veterans’ hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. O’Neal was the former secretary of the aluminum giant of Alcoa, and he was appointed to take over as the head of the regional health care initiative. Like myself and the Office of Women’s Programs, he also realized he couldn’t take on the task of lowering nosocomial infection rates on his own. He recruited Peter Perreiah, a young industrial engineer, to work on a 40-bed surgical unit. Together, they planned to take on this monstrous issue, even though so many people had failed before them. They needed find a why to keep patients healthy during their stay in the hospital while taking into account the realities of the health profession. But how?

Here lies the first of many commonalities between the efforts behind bringing a Women’s Center to the University of Illinois and the attempts to lower nosocomial infection rates in hospitals - both groups were more willing to fail than to do nothing about making a system even better. The Office of Women’s Programs staff and I were willing to take a risk in trying to estbablish a Women’s Center at the University of Illinois. We were only a few people working under a huge institution with a very low budget. Similarly, the Pittsburg Veteran’s hospital staff was working against billions of microbes - no easy task. Considering what we were both up against, we still both chose to take the more difficult path and take risks for our goals.

Furthermore, both groups also recognized that we couldn’t do it alone. The Office of Women’s Programs reached out for student leaders in their events, and I reached out for students to help me through my presentations. Paul O’Neil was quick to appoint Peter Perreiah to help him fight non-compliance in hand washing.

----------Part II: Change does not come easily----------

After a few short meetings with the Office of Women’s Programs to get more familiar with what kinds of benefits a Women’s center would provide, I was on my own to gather students that would help me get petitions signed for support. Through giving short speeches at the beginning of classes and on the quad about what benefits a Women’s Center would bring, I met a small but dedicated group of students who wanted to help me make an impact. Together, we formed the student organization Allies for a Women’s Center.

Our initial efforts were met with little resistance - we easily obtained over 3,000 signatures supporting a Women’s Center that would serve to conjoin women’s services on campus. Yet as our efforts shifted from petitions to events such as setting up makeshift Women’s Centers out of camping tents on the quad, were began to receive degrading comments towards our group from our peers. I was shocked at the derogatory remarks my classmates would say to me in broad daylight. Editorials in the Daily Illini claimed the University had higher priorities than irrelevant gender issues. The responses that we were getting from administration were vague and unencouraging, as they constantly reminded us of the tight budget and all of the other programs addressing inequality that needed funding. My initial excitement of creating a Women’s Center changed to frustration and disappointment.

The members of Allies for a Women’s Center and I knew that administrators recognized that issues such as sexual assault and unequal pay existed. Although we had cultural centers on campus such as La Casa and the Native American house to address cultural and racial issues, we had nothing to address the unique needs of half of the student population.

Still, Allies had come to far to give up – we obtained thousands of petitions, and the Office of the Women’s Program’s kept reminding us that this was the normal rate of progression for this large of an undertaking. At the same time, my members and I knew we couldn’t just keep on doing the same thing we had been doing unless we wanted all of our progress to go to waste. We agreed we needed to do something to push the administration’s ambiguity and lack of compliance into definitive outcomes. We just didn’t know how.

Unlike the never-before-done efforts of Allies for a Women’s Center, Peter Perreiah was well aware of the many failed attempts at lowering infections rates in hospitals that preceded him. He used this knowledge to take a different approach to solve this problem. He didn’t ask doctors and nurses “Why don’t you wash your hands?” Instead he asked, “Why can’t you?” Not surprisingly, their most common response was time.

Here Perreiah’s engineer mind came in handy – he made changes such as keeping all the supplies doctors and nurses needed right by a patients bedside to reduce the time spent running in and out of rooms for supplies. He also gave each patient room their own stethoscope to lower the spread of germs. Most creatively, however, he made each patient undergo a nasal culture before they were admitted – whether they had an infection or not. This way, the staff knew which patients carried the bacteria so they could be more cautious around them.

Perreiah was unique in the sense that he focused the staffs’ efforts in a more efficient way to keep all of the patients healthy. Just like our event strategy and support changed for Allies for a Women’s Center, the hospital couldn’t do it all perfectly. What they could do however, is know where to focus their efforts on those they knew were infected.

With this new “search and destroy” strategy, the infection rates for MRSA fell about 90% - important as MRSA causes more deaths from nosocomial infections than any other. Despite its success, however, the reach of Parreiah’s project was limited. The ideas only spread to one other unit in the whole hospital, and once Perreiah left for another project the performance of the surgical unit was began to slip. O’Neill soon quit in frustration, and in the end, nothing significantly changed.

Of course, one can not expect the process of change to be smooth. Allies for a Women’s Center had its fair share of challenges – ceaseless comments in public and in the newspapers. When we received any feedback from the Vice Chancellor’s of Student Affairs Office, they were ambivalent ones. The case of the veteran’s hospital is unique because even though they were successful at lowering the rates of nosocomial infections for a while, when Perreiah left for a new job their infection rates crept right back up.

----------Part III: New strategies, newfound success----------

The silence in room 137 of the English building was becoming unbearable. We were all gathered for our Allies for a Women’s Center meeting, and despite knowing our objectives were just, having plenty of support, petitions being signed and a constant flow of events with the media, the effect of our ideas on campus had brought us to a stand still. Our efforts weren’t targeting who would ultimately make the final decision - the administration.

After what seemed like an eternity of silence, Katelyn mentioned that maybe if we reached out to other experienced organizations interested in women’s rights, they would be able to help us buffer the negative comments. We would still be motivated to persist through them, they could also give us advice from the experiences they have had from their various events. Considering how our values were similar, we had high hopes that other organizations would give us the support we needed. Adam said he would invite other women’s rights organizations to help us improve our strategy at our next meeting.

Within a week, we were joined by representatives from the groups Men Against Sexual Violence, Feminist Majority, and Women of Color. After talking with them about the progress we had made so far, they agreed that we needed to make our next event even better if we were going to be successful. They advised us to make our second makeshift Women’s Center not out of a tent, but of real furniture. Complete with a lounge, library, and meeting room, we set it up right in front of the administration building.

We also had about fifty students come from all of the different groups to use the “center” all day. We wanted to show our campus how a Women’s Center would be used. Our many new supporters encouraged us to ignore negative comments and focus on our progress. Most importantly, within a couple of weeks our conjoined efforts led to us achieving our goal. Within weeks, the administration informed us that they allocated the funding to have a Women’s Center on campus by February 2009.

Similarly, not all hope was lost in trying to make lasting change in hospitals. Dr. Jon Lloyd, a surgeon who worked with Parreiah on his project, still believed that the potential for real and lasting change was not lost. Dr. Lloyd recruited help of Jerry Sternin and his wife Monique. He sought out their help because they had implemented a new strategy in Vietnam to help malnourished children. Instead of repeating the failed strategies that have been used with foreign aid, the Sternins asked the villagers to identify the mothers with well nourished children. They then went to their homes and asked them what they did differently.

The Sternins found out that the mothers with well nourished children feed their kids even when they have diarrhea, fed them several small meals a day rather than two big meals a day, and add sweet potato greens to the children’s rice diet even if it is considered a low-class food. The Sternins went on to post the new information in the village, and within two years the malnutrition rate dropped 65 to 85 percent in every village the Sternins had visited.

This strategy is called the positive deviance idea – or the idea that those wanting to help should build on the capabilities people already have instead of trying to tell them how to change. Dr. Lloyd thought that this idea just might work in his hospital to lower nosocomial infection rates, and convinced Sternin to join him his efforts. Together, they held 30 minute meetings with doctors, nurses, food service workers, janitors, and even patients to ask them to give them a chance to share their ideas on how to combat the problem of lack of compliance in hand washing. The pair was given ideas on how to keep gowns and gloves stocked, where the gel dispensers were missing, and that they should talk to the nurses who always seemed to be able to wash their hands for better strategies.

Staff attitudes also began to shift after these meetings. When the new gel dispensers arrived, the staff took it upon themselves to put them in the most efficient places. Nurses felt comfortable reminding doctors to wash their hands. Therapists were reassured by their colleagues that it was OK to wear gloves when they were with a patient – they did it. They also continued to screen patients for infections through nasal cultures.

Aside from implementing the positive deviance idea, what made Lloyd and Sternin more successful than O’Neil and Perreiah was that they publicized their ideas on the hospital’s website and in newsletters. Furthermore, they monitored their own progress through also taking nasal cultures of patients upon both admission and discharge. Within a year of Lloyd and Sternin starting the project, the MRSA wound infection rates dropped to zero.

----------Part IV: The common key to success -----------

The most important commonality between the success of both the Pittsburg Veteran’s Hospital and Allies for a Women’s Center is the diligence. When the effects of efforts to change became stagnant, both groups did not give up but instead changed their approach to what Gawande calls the “positive deviant” strategy. Both parties sought different ideas from those more experienced than them - whether they were in the medical field or established student organization. Lloyd and Sternin held meetings with hospital staff and patients to attempt to implement strategies that would stick. Allies was willing to be open to new ideas and to utilize our resources – or in this case, the previous experience of other long-standing women’s organizations.

Furthermore, diligence is what initially fueled us to take that first conscious step to admit that the system could be made better. For the most part, people left hospitals healthier than when they came in. For the most part, the women at the University of Illinois were OK with the services they were offered. But we both knew they could be made better and could admit these systems were not at their highest potential. Conclusively, we were both brave enough to take action through collaboration to make powerful change.

Gawande claims that there are three different traits that form the base of these successful efforts: diligence, benevolence, and ingenuity. He expands on these traits through three different parts of his book; each part includes two or three stories about how people have exemplified these traits to make a real change. While each part of Gawande’s book is fascinating in its own right, for this review I focused on diligence because without it, benevolence and ingenuity are useless. You have seen through my experiences in social justice work that diligence is often the number one determining factor for change. After examining how vital diligence is through Gawande’s stories and my own personal experience I have realized the potential and change diligence can bring by itself – no innate talents or equipment necessary.

----------Part V: Hard work, fueled----------

Yes, it would have made my sophomore year would have been a lot less draining if I were to simply have hoped that someone else would be willing to do something about the Women’s Center. Even though at times it was exhausting and demanding, being president of Allies for a Women’s Center was fulfilling and exciting because I care about women’s rights. Everyone I know has something that they are passionate about. Whether it’s ending world hunger or simply finding out what they care about through trying new things, when we work at things we care about, we have the strength to have the diligence we need to make ourselves and our world better. When we care, diligence comes easier.

Here is where the parallel lies between students and the doctors Gawande mentions who take the risk to who make a difference. As Gawande notes himself in an interview with Stephen Dubner of the New York Times, “We are now only beginning to realize that reliable performance just doesn’t happen in medicine. It is extremely difficult. And success requires work and innovation (Dubner, 2007).” Diligent people are aware that it is going to be more difficult, but their morals and passions push them onwards. The real challenge lies in being brave enough to take that risk to discover exactly what it is we care about.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dubner, S.J. (2007, June 25). Medical Failures, and Successes Too: A Q&A With Atul Gawande. Retrieved from http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/medical-failures-and-successes-too-a-qa-with-atul-gawande/

Gawande, A. (2007). better: A surgeon's notes on performance. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.

Your comments would be lovely: Alessandra's first attempt at a New York Times Style Book Review

2009-10-08T17:38:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! I was wondering if you would be willing to give me some tips on this book review and let me know what you think. I know that it is a lengthy post, but I would really appreciate your input and advice. Thanks so much, and I will see you Monday!

-Alessandra

__________________________________________________________

I was shocked at the derogatory remarks my classmates could say to me in broad daylight. “Go back to the seventies!”, and “Need help burning your bra?” were just some of the hurtful comments I received as president of Allies for a Women’s Center. Despite their obviously ignorant remarks, I cursed at myself right along with them. “How the hell could I have been so naïve to take on this project?!” and “Why couldn’t I have just left everything alone?!” were just a few of the things that burned through my mind even louder than my classmates’ heedless remarks that seemed to follow me wherever I went. Aside from their comments, editorials in the Daily Illini claimed the University had higher priorities than irrelevant gender issues. My peers would go silent and raise their eyebrows when one of my friends would ask about how Allies’ progress was going. My excitement of creating a Women’s Center was quickly changing to frustration and disappointment.

I heard about the idea of bringing a Women’s Center to campus by chance. On a whim, I attended a program put on by the Office of Women’s Programs on how women’s portrayal in the media and pornography effects their own perceptions along with societies’ on what they should look like. After about an hour of silly and profound comments from both the men and women in the audience, the Office of Women’s Programs mentioned that they were looking for undergraduates to help organize student support to establish a Women’s Center on campus. The staff noted that there was no place on campus that specializes in helping with women’s issues. A center would serve as a central location for existing and future additional women’s support services we would be able to have with this new space.

The staff went on to mention that the University of Illinois was one of the few Big Ten Schools not to have this type of center which would make it easier for women to reach out for help when they need it. The issues that would be addressed included dating abuse, sexual assault, returning to college, body image, harassment, campus safety and other related issues. Any student, regardless of race, color, religion, sexual/affectional preference, age, ability, economic class, or even gender could take advantage of the services the center offers. The center would also offer support through counseling, advocacy, education, financial awards and social action.

As freshman I was seemingly constantly exposed to the dangers of being a woman at the University of Illinois, yet I was only given advice as to how to avoid danger and contact information for who to contact when I did get in trouble. The first night of arriving at my residence hall was nothing like I expected. As the sun was setting, instead of getting time to bond with my floor mates, everyone in the dorms was shuffled outside to watch a movie on campus safety. Along with the cards, we received magnets and book marks with phone numbers of the University and Champaign police. Body images issues were brought up in chapter meetings in my sorority through sororities. After discussing the warning signs for someone with an eating disorder, approaches to how we should go about talking about it with them, the session was over and more cards were handed out with the counseling center’s phone number on it.

Mandatory programs such as the First Year Campus Acquaintance Rape Education Program exposed us too the realities of sexual assault and rape on the University of Illinois campus. Aside from learning about strategies to help if our friend was raped, I also learned that upon graduation, almost 50% of the women graduating would have experienced attempted or completed sexual assault or rape. Stunned and scared, we left the session with more knowledge but also with little more than cards with the phone numbers for the Rape Crisis Hotline and the Women’s Center miles from campus. There was no sort of physical space housing women’s physical and emotional support right there when we, god forbid, needed it.

Even as a freshman, I knew it was not possible for all of us girls to avoid becoming a part of that 50% statistic. What were we to do when the counseling center is closed and we can not make it off campus to a center? Back at home from the meeting that night, I realized that the University of Illinois did not do its best in helping women reach their fullest potential; I decided to email the Office of Women’s Programs to let them know I was interested in helping bring a Women’s Center to our campus.

That first step in making the Women’s Center a reality occurred before anything measurable happened – it was my decision to recognize that the current University of Illinois campus, while not in shambles, could still improve its services to women significantly. I could have just as easily pretended as if I never heard about the idea of a Women’s Center. I also could have hoped someone else with more power than a college sophomore would pick up the issue. In his book better, Atul Gawande calls this type of behavior diligence – or the ability to take a hard look at what has gone wrong in a system and work hard to get it right.

Obviously, it is a lot easier for people to know is right and still not attempt to change anything. Oftentimes, this can lead programs not meeting the ever-changing needs of the people it serves. According to Gawande, a stagnant program stems from what Gawande defines in his book as lack of compliance – or the failure of an individual to apply know-how effectively. Gawande sees diligence as so important to combating non-compliance that he has dedicated the whole first part of his book to it. Here he explains how diligence has been a vital part of lowering the rate of infections obtained in hospitals (also known as nosocomial infections, helped nearly eradicate polio, and increase the wounded soldier survival rate in the U.S. Army.

In the first chapter of his book, Gawande focuses on how nosocomial infections are correlated with the lack of hand washing. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, over two million Americans acquire an infection while they are in the hospital. Shockingly, out of that two million, 90,000 people a year die from nosocomial infections. He goes on to tell the story of a hospital in Pittsburg was able to combat nosocomial infections with diligence.

Gawande first introduces us staff who work with him in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston - Deborah Yoke, an infectious disease specialist, and Susan Marino, a microbiologist. Their jobs specifically focus on keeping the rate of nosocomial infections under control. Among the things that they have detected and combated include the measles, plague, rabbit fever, which is so dangerous it is considered a bioterrorist weapon. At the time of talking with Gawande, they were fighting Staphlococcus aureus(otherwise known as MSRA) and Enterococcus faecalis (whose vancomycin-resistant version is abbreviated VRE), both of which often cause pneumonias, wound infections, and blood stream infections.

Despite the immense advancement in technology today, the number one factor that halts the spread of these various, dangerous, and microscopic ailments is doctors washing their hands. The efforts of Yokoe and Marina are vast but mainly unsuccessful – there are reminder posts on nearly every wall, new sinks have been installed and the old ones repositioned. They purchased precaution carts where everything a staff person needed to wash up, gown up, and glove up was in one appealing package. By giving away free movie tickets to the department with the highest compliance of hand washing, they have even tried bribery. Yokoe and Marina even went so far as to spot check different departments, monitoring the staff to remind them to comply to policy. Understandably, Yokoe and Marina didn’t enjoy feeling like babysitters, and the staff began to recognize them – one of the nurses even replied – “ I didn’t even touch anything in the room! I am clean!” upon being caught by the pair after picking up a supposed-to-be-sterile chart after coming out of a patients’ room with unwashed hands.

The number one factor that fights hand washing compliance in hospitals is the clock. The process of correctly washing your hands is time consuming – one must remove watches or jewelry and with warm water lather all surfaces thoroughly, including the lower one-third of the arm for about half a minute. Next, you must rinse off for another half minute, and then dry with a sterile and disposable towel. Use the towel to shut off the tap water, and repeat with any new contact with a patient.

One who knows anything about the typical life of a health professional immediately gets the sense that it is unrealistic to expect this type of behavior between all patients. Residents usually check in on about 20 patients an hour, and the nurses working in intensive care usually have about the same caseload. If hand washing only took a minute, to wash in between each one would take one third of the hour.

However, the anti-microbial duo recognized that time was an issue. In order to combat it, they implemented alcohol gel to sanitize hands, as it takes only 15 seconds to dry and completely sanitize. Just like Allies’ for a Women’s Center’s initial efforts for change were doubted and even flat out ridiculed, surprisingly the introduction of alcohol based sanitizers brought their own set of problems. It took Yokoe and Marina over a year to get the whole staff to accept the alcohol gel. Some people believed that it would produce noxious air in the hospital. Some thought it would be even more irritating to the skin than soap and water. Most unbelievably, even some of the nursing staff believed that it would lower their fertility rate until the hospital’s fertility expert came in and told them otherwise.

The compliance rate for proper hand sanitizing improved significantly at Brigham’s - from 40 to 70 percent. Still, this wasn’t good enough. Even with a 70 percent compliance rate, the nosocomial infection rates did not budge – the 30 percent of times that staff did not wash their hands left about 12 percent of patients infected with MRSA and VRE. The Brigham Hospital in Boston’s hygiene report card reflected the same grade as hospitals everywhere in the United States – doctors and nurses wash their hands from one-third to about one-half of the times that they are supposed to. The staff was stuck – the needed a strategy that would take into account the characteristics of their profession while keeping patients happy. But how?

After a few short meetings with the Office of Women’s Programs to get more familiar with what kinds of benefits a Women’s center would provide, I was on my own to gather a student group and petitions for support. I knew was going to need a lot of help if I was going to a least make a decent attempt to get a Women’s Center. Through giving short speeches at the beginning of classes and on the quad about what benefits a Women’s Center would bring, I met a small but dedicated group of students who wanted to help me make an impact, and we formed the student organization Allies for a Women’s Center.

Our initial efforts were met with little resistance - we easily obtained over 3,000 signatures supporting a Women’s Center that would serve to conjoin women’s services on campus. Yet as our efforts shifted from petitions to events such as setting up makeshift Women’s Centers out of camping tents on the quad, the degrading comments towards our group began. I was shocked at the derogatory remarks my classmates would say to me in broad daylight. “Go back to the seventies!”, and “Need help burning your bra?” were just some of the hurtful comments I received as president of Allies for a Women’s Center. Editorials in the Daily Illini claimed the University had higher priorities than irrelevant gender issues. The responses that we were getting from administration were vague and unencouraging, as they constantly reminded us of the tight budget and all of the other programs addressing inequality that needed funding. My initial excitement of creating a Women’s Center changed to frustration and disappointment.

On the night of hitting that send button to the Office of Women’s Programs, I naively thought it the process of bringing a Women’s Center to the University of Illinois would be smooth. I was at one of the best schools in the country. I was surrounded by administrators whose wisdom had guided me and students whose passion never ceased to inspire me. Like so many other endeavors I took on in social justice, I thought advocating for the Women’s Center would be the same – all I had to do was help spark the awareness we needed a center, and the support and advocacy from my peers and administrators would follow.

However, we were only a few weeks into our efforts when I learned the hard way that just because a great idea makes complete since, it doesn’t always mean the improvement is easily implemented. The members of Allies for a Women’s Center and I knew that administrators recognized that issues such as sexual assault and unequal pay existed. Although we had cultural centers on campus such as La Casa and the Native American house to address cultural and racial issues, we had nothing to address the unique needs of half of the student population.

A few months into our efforts, Allies for a Women’s Center weekly meetings were becoming less and less lively. We were beginning to come face to face with what we were up against. There were only about five of us that were truly dedicated, and the ignorance of our peers was wearing on us. Furthermore, the staff of the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Office who seemed to have much more important things on their agenda.

Still, we had come to far to give up – we obtained thousands of petitions, and the Office of the Women’s Program’s kept reminding us that this was the normal rate of progression for this large of an undertaking. At the same time, my members and I knew we couldn’t just keep on doing the same thing we had been doing unless we wanted all of our progress to go to waste. We agreed we needed to do something to push the administration’s ambiguity and lack of compliance into definitive outcomes. We just didn’t know how.

Paul O’Neil, the former secretary of the aluminum giant of Alcoa, of all things, also realized he couldn’t take on the task of lowering nosocomial infection rates on his own. When he was appointed to take over as the head of the regional health care initiative in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he recruited a young industrial engineer named Peter Perreiah to work on a 40-bed surgical unit. What was so revolutionary about Peter’s approach was that he didn’t ask doctors and nurses “Why don’t you wash your hands?” Instead he asked, “Why can’t you?”

As expected, their most common response was time. Here his engineer mind came in handy – he made changes such as keeping all the supplies doctors and nurses needed right by a patients bedside to reduce the time spent running in and out of rooms for supplies. He also gave each patient room their own stethoscope to lower the spread of germs. Most creatively, however, he made each patient undergo a nasal culture before they were admitted – whether they had an infection or not. This way, the staff knew which patients carried the bacteria so they could be more cautious around them.

Perreiah was unique in the sense that he focused the staffs’ efforts in a more efficient way to keep all of the patients healthy. Just like our event strategy and support changed for Allies for a Women’s Center, the hospital couldn’t do it all perfectly. What they could do however, is know where to focus their efforts on those they knew were infected. With this new “search and destroy” strategy, the infection rates for MRSA fell about 90% - important as MRSA causes more deaths from nosocomial infections than any other.

Despite its success, however, the reach of Parreiah’s project was limited. The ideas only spread to one other unit in the whole hospital, and once Parreiah left for another project the performance of the surgical unit was began to slip. O’Neill soon quit in frustration, and in the end, nothing significantly changed.

However, the belief in real change was not lost. Dr. Jon Lloyd, a surgeon who worked with Parreiah on the project, recruited help in the form of Jerry Sternin and his wife Monique. He sought out the couple’s help because they had implemented a new strategy in Vietnam to help malnourished children. Instead of repeating the failed strategies that have been used with foreign aid, the Sternins asked the villagers to identify the mothers with well nourished children. They then went to their homes and asked them what they did differently.

The Sternins found out that the mothers with well nourished children feed their kids even when they have diarrhea, fed them several small meals a day rather than two big meals a day, and add sweet potato greens to the children’s rice diet even if it is considered a low-class food. The Sternins went on to post the new information in the village, and within two years the malnutrition rate dropped 65 to 85 percent in every village the Sternins had visited.

This strategy is called the positive deviance idea – or the idea that those wanting to help should build on the capabilities people already have instead of trying to tell them how to change. Dr. Lloyd thought that this idea just might work in his hospital to lower nosocomial infection rates, and convinced Sternin to join him his efforts. Together, they held 30 minute meetings with doctors, nurses, food service workers, janitors, and even patients to ask them to give them a chance to share their ideas on how to combat the problem of lack of compliance in hand washing. The pair was given ideas on how to keep gowns and gloves stocked, where the gel dispensers were missing, and that they should talk to the nurses who always seemed to be able to wash their hands for better strategies.

Staff attitudes also began to shift after these meetings. When the new gel dispensers arrived, the staff took it upon themselves to put them in the most efficient places. Nurses felt comfortable reminding doctors to wash their hands. Therapists were reassured by their colleagues that it was OK to wear gloves when they were with a patient – they did it. They also continued to screen patients for infections through nasal cultures.

Aside from implementing the positive deviance idea, what made Lloyd and Sternin more successful than O’Neil and Perreiah was that they publicized their ideas on the hospital’s website and in newsletters. Furthermore, they monitored their own progress through also taking nasal cultures of patients upon both admission and discharge. Within a year of Lloyd and Sternin starting the project, the MRSA wound infection rates dropped to zero.

The silence in room 137 of the English building was becoming unbearable. We were all gathered for our Allies for a Women’s Center meeting, and we were stuck. Despite knowing our objectives were just, having plenty of support, petitions being signed and a constant flow of events with the media, the effect of our ideas on campus had brought us to a stand still. Our efforts weren’t targeting who would ultimately make the final decision - the administration.

After what seemed like an eternity of silence, Katelyn mentioned that maybe if we reached out to other experienced organizations interested in women’s rights, they would be able to help us buffer the negative comments. We would still be motivated to persist through them, they could also give us advice from the experiences they have had from their various events. Considering how our values were similar, we had high hopes that other organizations would give us the support we needed. Adam said he would invite other women’s rights organizations to help us improve our strategy at our next meeting.

Within a week, we were joined by representatives from the groups Men Against Sexual Violence, Feminist Majority, and Women of Color. After talking with them about the progress we had made so far, they agreed that we needed to make our next event even better if we were going to be successful. They advised us to make our second makeshift Women’s Center even better – not made out of a tent but out of real furniture. Complete with a lounge, library, and meeting room, we set it up right in front of the administration building. We also had about 50 come from all of the different groups to use the “center” all day. We wanted to show our campus how a Women’s Center would be used. Our many new supporters encouraged us to ignore negative comments and focus on our progress.

Our conjoined efforts led to us achieving our goal. Within weeks, the administration informed us that they allocated the funding to have a Women’s Center on campus by February 2009. While I will never forget the immense joy I felt at the opening ceremony of the Women’s Resource Center, what I am most proud of is what I learned from taking on the extra responsibility: the first step is the most difficult one, collaboration leads to more than just new ideas but also much needed support, and that anything really is possible with team work.

The successes of Lloyd and Sternin in lowering the hospitals’ nosocomial infection rates and Allies in bringing a Women’s Center to the University of Illinois have some commonalities. Both groups were wiling to take risks for their goals. Considering what we were up against, both of us could have easily failed. Allies was only a few people working under a huge institution. The Pittsburg Veteran’s hospital staff was working against billions of microbes - no easy task. Both of us also recognized that we couldn’t do it alone – Dr. Lloyd sought out Sternin’s help, while my first priority was finding students who would be as dedicated as I was to help me.

Of course, the process was not smooth. In the case of the hospitals, the two major attempts at lowering the infection rate failed. At the Brigham Hospital in Boston where Gawande works, their increase compliance just wasn’t high enough to lower infection rates. The strategies of O’Neil and Perreiah were successful for a time, but then their effects quickly faded when they left for a new project or quit. For a time, some women were even skeptical of the hand gel affecting their fertility! Allies for a Women’s Center had its fair share of challenges – ceaseless comments in public and in the newspapers and ambivalent responses from administrators persisted for months before the Vice Chancellor’s office had a meeting with us to share the good news.

When the effects of efforts to change became stagnant, both groups did not give up but instead changed their approach to the “positive deviant” strategy. Both parties sought different ideas from those more experienced than them - whether they were in the medical field or established student organization. Lloyd and Sternin held meetings with hospital staff and patients to attempt to implement strategies that would stick. Allies was willing to be open to new ideas and to utilize our resources – or in this case, the previous experience of other long-standing women’s organizations.

Overall, the most important commonality between the success of both the Pittsburg Veteran’s Hospital and Allies for a Women’s Center is the diligence. Diligence is what initially fueled us to take that first conscious step to admit that the system could be made better. For the most part, people left hospitals healthier than when they came in. For the most part, the women at the University of Illinois were OK with the services they were offered. But we both knew they could be made better. Still, the leaders of that hospital and of Allies were willing to admit these systems were not at their highest potential. Conclusively, we were both brave enough to take action through collaboration to make powerful change.

Gawande’s purpose in writing better is to examine how performance in medicine is more than the ability to come up with diagnoses, utilize technology, and empathize with patients. Gawande notes how medicine (along with significant systematic problems such as access to care) comes with problems of low resources, unhealthy work hours, and never ending paper work. Yet Gawande hope change is still possible through these challenges. Through detailed, vivid, and inspiring stories Gawande examines how leaders in medicine have advanced through these challenges to make a significant impact on others’ lives.

Gawande claims that there are three different traits that form the base of these successful efforts: diligence, benevolence, and ingenuity. He expands on these traits through three different parts of his book; each part includes two or three stories about how people have exemplified these traits to make a real change. While each part of Gawande’s book is fascinating in its own right, for this review I focused on diligence because without it, benevolence and ingenuity are useless. You have seen through my experiences in social justice work that diligence is often the number one determining factor for change. After examining how vital diligence is through Gawande’s stories and my own personal experience I have realized the potential and change diligence can bring by itself – no innate talents or equipment necessary.

Yes, it would have made my sophomore year would have been a lot less draining if I were to simply have hoped that someone else would be willing to do something about the Women’s Center. Even though at times it was exhausting and demanding, being president of Allies for a Women’s Center was fulfilling and exciting because I care about women’s rights. Everyone I know has something that they are passionate about. Whether it’s ending world hunger or simply finding out what they care about through trying new things, when we work at things we care about, we have the strength to have the diligence we need to make ourselves and our world better. When we care, diligence and effortful practice come easier.

Here is where the parallel lies between students and the doctors Gawande mentions who take the risk to who make a difference. As Gawande notes himself in an interview with Stephen Dubner of the New York Times, “We are now only beginning to realize that reliable performance just doesn’t happen in medicine. It is extremely difficult. And success requires work and innovation (Dubner, 2007).” Diligent people are aware that it is going to be more difficult, but their morals and passions push them onwards. The real challenge lies in being brave enough to take that risk to discover exactly what it is we care about.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dubner, S.J. (2007, June 25). Medical Failures, and Successes Too: A Q&A With Atul Gawande. Retrieved from http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/medical-failures-and-successes-too-a-qa-with-atul-gawande/

Gawande, A. (2007). better: A surgeon's notes on performance. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.

Quick thoughts on “Worlds apart: Disconnects between students and their colleges” and NSSE research

2009-10-03T13:43:00.001-07:00

At Illinois, there is no doubt that we offer an overwhelming amount of activities for students to do. Working as a registration leader over the summer for incoming freshman, I listened to a speech every morning given by the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Rene Romano. Her message was to take advantage of all that would be offered to them when they came back in September. I was glad she implanted that message in them then, as getting involved has made my college experience what it is.

Unfortunately, Arthur Levine believes that there is a disconnect between the wants of students’ and what the university is offering them. The chapter entitled “Worlds apart: Disconnects between students and their colleges” focuses on how this gap leaves students less engaged in their university community. Levine notes that there are five reasons why there is this gap- money, convenience, teaching and learning, free time, and priorities.

Now after reading Levine’s article I wonder what people like Rene Romano in Student Affairs think about this issue, much less if this disconnect really exists. I would be interested in knowing (just like there is Student Affairs to meet students’ needs) if there is an office dedicated to faculty needs. Furthermore, in connection with our readings in Drucker and our interview with the CIOs, if they could both work on this issue of disconnect together through alignment of their needs and wants.

Levine also notes that the purpose of an institution is to educate its students. Does meeting faculty needs really hinder that? It is hard to say. Also, I would be interested to see research results on why unengaged students choose not to take advantage of these opportunities.

When reading through the findings of the NSSE results, I just wanted to make a quick note about their findings on service related activities. I thought it was interesting to see that students who were older, lived off campus, or transferred from another university were less likely to volunteer. I also thought it was interesting that those who did volunteer were more likely to be engaged in other areas of their college, and overall they were more satisfied with their college experience. From my experience, was I surprised? Not exactly.

New Angle on Book Review

2009-09-26T12:16:00.000-07:00

After attempting to write about the first idea for my book review, I realized that to address all three themes in Gawande's book would not work for two reasons. First off, I didn't feel like I would be able to examine them in as much detail as I wanted. Most importantly, I felt like my experiences have supported the theme of diligence in terms of it leading to success in change.

Throughout this review, I have connected the idea of diligence to both our class readings and my experience with social justice work. The overall message of my paper is this - the difference between being extraordinary and just living up to expectations is in the few extra steps we are willing to make for others. Which one of these we become is up to us, and it is a whole lot easier to become extraordinary in a field we are passionate about. The hardest part is finding exactly what that is.

Intrinsic motivation: The extra push needed to get outside of your comfort zone

2009-09-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

Formaldehyde stench and all, anatomy has been more than what I expected. Other pre-health students warned me about the immense about of boring repetition it was going to take for me to pass the course. They complained about the hours they spent struggling over lifeless bodies about which muscle supinates and which muscle pronates. Still, when picked classes last March, I was adamant about taking courses where I would learn something that I would definitely make use of in the future.

Going into the class, I of course had my worries about the time commitment. Yet anatomy has turned out to be one of the most enjoyable subjects I have studied so far in college. Anatomy has helped me learn through a few ways –one has to do with the course matter and one has to do with the course structure. The first reason the class has helped me learn is that I know I am going to be using anatomy in my very near future; I know that this information is going to be completely vital in successfully treating patients.

My quickness and ease in learning the details of anatomy was brought to my own attention just a few days ago when I was in open lab hours. Open lab is where cadavers are available for students to find out where everything is themselves – teaching assistant of course near by to help when we get stuck, and of course, to monitor any possible pranks. I was reviewing with my TA, Miss Cho, the muscles of the arm that she had just gone over with me. As I was rambling off the names I had learned a few moments earlier, Miss Cho said, “ Man, you really have a knack for this stuff! Anatomy takes a certain type of learning, and I think you have it.”

I simply responded, “ Yeah, I just like this stuff, and it just clicks.” Could the reason behind my ease to learn new things simply be the ease as liking the subject matter? Sure. It also could be being more motivated by actively taking part in my own learning? I can’t really say for certain. My motivation was because of the reason I took the class and why I volunteer – other people.

The second reason is in relation to course structure. Both the professor and the TA’s treat us like adults. It is completely on the student to learn the ambiguities of the human cadaver on our own, on our own time. We are not even spoon fed reminders – if you miss something, it was on the syllabus, and that is just too damn bad. Being a senior in college, I really appreciate the immense amount of independence this class provides. In terms of motivation, there is something about not being nagged about things that makes the class seem, to me at least, to be more focused on learning instead of grades. Things like, “ Don’t forget to turn in your exam regrades by 5:00 PM!” are replaced with advice on different approaches to the lab. Through this reflection I have realized that the reason why being treated more like an adult is motivating is because it takes the focus off of the nit picky grading details and the class is more about me thinking to myself, “ OK, so what is the best way for me to learn this?”

It is not to say that I have studied more because when I am intrinsically motivated. For example, biochemistry was probably the worst class I ever took in terms of me actually caring about the material. Still, I studied for that class more than any other. Instead, the difference lies in how quickly I would learn. There is something almost magical and different about the way a new piece of information sinks in when you know you will apply it later. I am so happy I get to feel this way in a few of my classes this semester, as I picked what I wanted to learn about. In medical school, I can see this being the same way, as I will also know then of course that I will apply it.

Honestly, when trying to relate this post to Bruner’s chapter called “Motives for Learning” I find myself fumbling. I honestly find his approach geared towards elementary or high school teachers. I can agree with his points such as encouraging teachers to make lessons that still provide a challenge to the brightest students without making the other students hopeless. I also agree that there has to be a level in the classroom between apathy and excitement, but I agree with these points more from the view point of a teaching assistant rather than from my own experience with effective learning.

On the other hand, I could definitely find a few connections with my experience with anatomy in the article entitled “ The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance” by Ericsson and his fellow researchers. He notes that the most important condition for the effective learning has to do with the subject’s motivation to attend to the task and how much they exert the effort to improve their performance. Obviously, these two factors would help learning. Furthermore, another factor important to learning that is not so explicitly obvious is that the subject needs to be aware of the long term consequences of their deliberate practice and study. Anatomy definitely has both of these factors for me.

I specifically have placed noting Ericsson’s article here at this point in the reflection because I think that the idea of effortful practice can be applied both inside and outside the classroom. In the case of academics, this kind of practice for optimal learning can be reached, as noted above, when there is an motivation and the subject is aware of the long term benefits of their studies. Furthermore, I also believe that this type of practice and learning can be achieved through experiences. Yet being challenged in the classroom is easy to determine – how are we supposed to know when we are learning through our experiences?

Although I have obviously not done research on the subject, I think that the amount of information someone is going to learn through outside activities has to do with how much they go outside their comfort zone, struggle, and learn through those struggles. For example, a manager who views his role as static in a company is not going to learn anything knew about being a more effective manager, Furthermore, a person who is in the same position in a student organization is not going to learn much of anything unless they take risks – whether that be in the form of running for a new position or creating a new event that might fail.

Most of my activities outside the classroom have been based around the values of service and social justice. Here, the motivation to do something to help was completely internal. Learning was just an extra benefit from getting out of my comfort zone in our little bubble of Champaign – Urbana. The experience traveling to Mexico to be a medical translator and assistant in particular really sticks out in my mind. It has been one that really got me out of my comfort zone, and left me with more insights that I could possibly write in one reflection.

The one story I want to share with you all has to do with two sisters I met there. When these two little girls entered our healthcare clinic in rural Matamoros, Mexico I could sense their trepidation. After crouching down to introduce myself, I tried to say something that would make them feel more comfortable. Offering them my stethoscope, I asked them in Spanish: “Would you like to listen to your hearts?” When they didn’t respond, I asked them, “Why not, don’t you have ears?” As the girls began laughing, I knew I could help them have a successful visit.

In reaching out to more and more people during the trip to Mexico, I was able to learn much more than I would have if I were to simply have done what was expected of me. I was only a few hours from the border, but families lived in shacks with tin roofs without indoor plumbing. Many did not know where their next meal would come from. It was a world away from my comfortable home in suburban Chicago. Yet instead of feeling in the minority, when talking with people I found more similarities than differences. They wanted the same things in life we all want – health and happiness for themselves and their families. In treating the people of Matamoros like those two little girls I have seen how much more of an impact I could have as a physician - if only for a few giggling patients at a time.

To wrap up this article, I think we all inherently know that when we are fueled by intrinsic motivation, fulfilling our responsibilities is a lot easier. Through this reflection and my story I shared with you, I hope that you have gotten a clear idea on how intrinsic motivation can fuel the will to challenge yourself. It is only through action outside of the classroom where we will become more than just alumni of the University of Illinois, but where we will become truly engaged and active citizens.

Quick thoughts on the readings for Wednesday, 9.23.09

2009-09-22T21:28:00.000-07:00

On “ The Executive Mind and Double-Loop Learning”

After looking over Team Ewe’s discussion plan, I am looking forward to hearing about other people’s experiences with this type of negative Y and X relationship – let’s hope we can also clarify what Argyris’ solution is, as honestly I am a little confused aside from the fact that he is encouraging people to take an honest look at their own behavior. Sounds a little bit like part I of better on diligence. Unlike practicing alone like with chess, music, or even school work, often times the only way we are going to know how to improve in our professional lives is going to be through performance reviews, which are rare. If we are really interested in improving, the jist of what I thought Argyris was saying is that we should be active about asking for feedback. I am also curious as to which type of people these papers are aimed towards – I noticed on the bottom of the pages it notes the American Management Associations, but that means nothing to me.

On “ The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance”

The summary of this article basically puts no relevance on innate talent whatsoever in terms of getting to expert status. None. At all. Still, even through reading over 40 pages on the evidence as to why this isn’t true, I am still a little curious. I think this has to do with the fact that most of us have been raised to think that. Still, my parents often comment on how my talents lie in things completely opposite of my sister. Now I wonder if this was from their different encouragements or what. As someone mentioned in class, this mindset could get someone “stuck” in the sense that they feel that their talents are fixed, so they will not be as willing to try new things. I will definitely keep this in mind for my own children – not that I was planning on encouraging my girls towards English and my boys to math anyway.

While not the most serious or profound thought to note on this article, I really enjoyed reading about how the expert violin players and Olympic athletes took naps in the afternoon. I agree with Ericsson on the important of rest in improving performance, but I also think that, in my own experiences, naps help with the motivation side of effortful practice. As Ericsson notes, the process of effortful practice is not necessarily enjoyable for the one practicing – I could only imagine how much more effort it would take if you were tired. Now my naps are even more justified.

Just another thing I thought was worth noting for fun – on page 370 Ericsson notes, “Bloom found no evidence that, during the early phases, the individual exhibited any clear evidence of prowess. However, Bloom found that only one child per family was considered special.” Hm…

Book Review Plan for Better by Atul Gawande

2009-09-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

There is so much that I liked about Better that it has taken a significant amount of thought to decide on the direction I was going to take with this review. I understood that it was impossible to review the whole book and still make an interesting read, but I still couldn’t see myself focusing on one chapter for the whole book review. I wanted my reader to walk away with a good understanding about the overall message of the book – how even though effective change is not easy, it is within reach.

My plan for this book review is to help the reader understand this idea through examining Gawande’s three themes in more detail– diligence, the will to do good, and ingenuity. Furthermore, what also made me decide on this plan was the fact that I would get to make the most connections possible between them, my personal experience, and the class readings. In short, the suggestions for themes steered me in a different direction to what I think will be a more cohesive and well rounded paper.

Examining these themes from different angles will help both myself and the reader will have a better understanding of the them. Most importantly, with this deeper understanding of all of Gawande’s themes we will be better able to apply it to our own lives. Although this paper will be more challenging for me to write than if I were to focus on one theme or even one chapter, I feel that after completing this paper I will better retain Gawande’s ideas throughout my life as a physician and as a continuing advocate.

Quick thoughts before class: Bruner and Motivation ….

2009-09-20T16:12:00.000-07:00

• I might be playing the devil’s advocate here, but isn’t it OK to have kids that are more interested in the social aspect of school, and just getting there grades to get by? Yes, it would be great if everyone cared about learning for learnings sake, but this is unrealistic. Even in professional settings, there is always the goofball, and I think this is just a part of what makes us human.

• On page 70 it notes that teachers are on a quest to challenge the superior student while still not destroying the confidence and will to learn of those who are “less fortunate”. To address the latter, is that just a nice way to say the not as bright kids? And who is to say that the superior student is more intelligent? According to the Scientific American article, they could just be more motivated….

Surprises and Suggestions

2009-09-18T09:48:00.000-07:00

I will admit I was skeptical at first when Professor Arvan claimed that reflections would help us solidify the ideas that we were being exposed to through the class readings. Writing these reflections, however, has been the main learning component for me in this class so far. I am very appreciative that I have the opportunity to connect ideas through my own style. In the freedom however, comes the challenge. The more specific a writing topic, the easier it is to churn something out and quickly forget about it.

Phillip Ross, the author of the fascinating Scientific American article entitled “The Expert Mind” supports my view that through challenge comes real learning. The article was without a doubt one of the most interesting and surprising pieces I have read for this class so far. Ross provides support for the idea that to become an expert in something, we simply constantly need to challenge ourselves in the field just outside of what we are capable of (Ross, 2006). The example he used to illustrate this point best is through mentioning golfing and driving; most people can improve very quickly on a certain procedure, yet then stop challenging themselves once they have gained enough skills to keep up with their buddies or get their license (Ross, 2006).

This idea I think totally blows away what most college students think – from engineering majors to art majors, we believe that these people have ended up where they are because of their innate talents. Phillips strongly supports just the opposite – people’s skill in a particular area has to do with success breeding success and hours upon hours of effortful study (Ross, 2006). Because of my lack of effortful study on writing, I will again admit that I often have a little bit of dread in starting to write. Still, since after reading the “ The Expert Mind”, I am comforted to know that this fact has to do with me having very little experience in writing – AKA very little effortful study. So from now on, when I am dreading the cursor mocking me from an empty word document, I will approach it with a little less disdain. As my dad has told me since I was little, “If it was easy you wouldn’t be learning anything!” I think my dad and Phillip Ross would get along.

It is a lot less difficult than I expected to assess whether or not I am improving the quality of my writing. Even through only doing four posts, I have seen the cohesiveness and flow of my writing improve. While it has been stated in other posts that writing is subjective, I do think that we all can agree that no matter what the subject matter, there is a certain feel a piece gives you after reading it. I am interested to see myself the difference between the posts made in August and December.

My first suggestion to improve what we get out of these posts would be to respond more to each other’s blogs. I understand that we are all very busy, but even taking out an hour a week to look at each others thoughts would help us do two things. First off, talking to and challenging each other outside the classroom would also help us get to know each other a little better. Secondly, we would be able to see different angles of issues and connect ideas to areas we haven’t thought about. In the post entitled “Slowing Down” Professor Arvan touches on a point that I have noted in my posts all along – “one way to validate that our conjecture about structure is correct is to generate additional contexts that seem parallel and see if the conjecture applies well in those new circumstances.” In this sense, participating more in terms of responding to other people’s blogs could help us see how these ideas could relate to various contexts, including our future.

Thirdly, I also agree with Jake that maybe taking a few minutes to do a short reflection on the readings before coming to class. It would help eliminate bias from the analysis of the issues and ideas during class. If nothing else, one of the keys to learning is repetition, and the more we work with these ideas the more apt we will be to remember them and apply them in the future. Also, maybe the blogs can be used not only for assigned reflections, but for posting even tiny insights we have come to or articles we have come across that relate to our class. This would add to the appeal of looking at other people’s sites.

Finally, within all my posts I have encouraged all of us to try and connect how the ideas we are learning in class could help us in our professional lives. I think that this would make both for even more interesting reflections to read and class discussions to participate in. We all love talking about the future – what better way to do it than by talking about how these ideas can our lives and others’ a little better?

____________________

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ross, P.E. (2006). The expert mind. Scientific American, 64-71.

Talents and Communication

2009-09-11T16:00:00.000-07:00

The art of conversation, while seemingly simple enough, is a trait, not a skill. It takes talent to sense the nuances of another human being to see ways you could relate to them. It takes a special sense to assess the particular tone you should use at certain times with certain people. Communication, like many other talents we see in others – is just that, a talent. Yes, some of our skills can be improved upon, but there will always be different areas where people excel and falter in.

I want to tie this idea in of talents to a book I want to recommend to all of you. The book is entitled Now, Discover Your Strengths, and it is written by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. The idea behind the book was to look at the most successful people in all different types of jobs and in various dimensions of a career and see what talents and traits helped them get there. The Gallup consultants then went on to analyze through interviews and surveys the thought patterns and actions that support these traits. With this information, they created an assessment for the reader. The reader then goes online with an access key to the online assessment, and within twenty minutes the person is left with five talents, all uniquely named, in which they excel.

Aside from the assessment, the second part of the book is the actual text which emphasizes we should live according to our strengths. One of the main points in the book is that we have talents that are innate. We should build up our talents instead of focusing on what we need to improve on. This idea is unique from other personal development books whose sole purpose seems to be to seek out our flaws and work on those. Strength Finder is different because it encourages us to build our life and career choices from what we are good at, and in turn, where we feel the happiest and most comfortable.

One of the talents I was matched with was called “Woo!” which means that making friends and acquaintances comes very easily to me. Making people open up in a conversation, as I have found it comes naturally to me. In all of the professional jobs I have had so far, my supervisors have always put me in positions where I would be right in the center of the crowd. For example, one of my supervisors is in charge of coordinating Quad Day. There are various jobs employees can take, from checking people in, to directing people on the map, to dealing with the crowds and making sure everyone is in the right line and has all their questions answered.

Can you guess which position my boss puts me in? Yes – the one where I am mingling amongst hundreds of students in my tacky bright quad day shirt, and I love it. I have always been able to pick up on if someone needs something, if they are confused, or even if they would rather not have a conversation. My mind enters this thriving, exciting, and alert state when I am in a situation where I get to meet new people and build relationships with them through the flow of conversation.

“Making friends” is a little bit of an elementary term to call it, but it is true – I am good at it. The friends I have made and even the acquaintances I have made throughout college have been the best part of my college experience. These relationships have also exposed me to different experiences and benefits that the more introverted person wouldn’t have had the chance to receive.

Being a “Woo!” seems easy enough, but I support the Discover Your Strengths’view. Those who lack this particular talent can only improve upon it so much, while those who have it can use it to create movements or spread ideas – the possibilities are endless. In short, good conversational skills can’t be taught to someone whose talents are lacking in the social arena.

People shouldn’t fret if they don’t have a particular trait. America tends to emphasize that to be outgoing and social is the best way to be. But think, if we were all like that existing would be pretty annoying. You don’t need me to tell you this, but there are plenty of places in the world where people can excel even if sparking up conversations isn’t one of their strong points.

If someone seriously wants to improve on your conversation skills, practice. Of course I still have blunders where I mention an important issue to someone seconds before a meeting is about to start. I also occasionally don’t think before I speak, and end up seriously embarrassing myself. Still, I learn from them and move on.

My overall point is to motivate all of you to find where your talents lie. Don’t want to improve your conversation skills? Fine with me – just be sure to promise you will find your strengths and build on those. Do yourself a favor - order yourself this book**. Knowing what you are good at could change the focus of your ideas, and ideas could lead to more effective change.

____________________________________________
**LINK because this blog wont let me link it to look nice:

http://www.amazon.com/Discover-Your-Strengths-Marcus-Buckingham/dp/0743201140

CHP Class Reflection # 2: Empowerment Can Not Be Given By One, But Together Can Be Gained By All

2009-09-04T21:20:00.000-07:00

There is a common thread amongst all successful change – empowerment from involvement on all levels of the social change effort. In relation to our class readings, the importance of empowerment was the backbone to Yunis’ success. The women Yunis worked with were afraid at first to deal with money (Bruck, 2006). But because they were given the chance to use their potential, this in turn led them to them learning the skills they needed to be better support their family financially. Of course, this led them to being empowered, as they were able to help their families get out of poverty. Giving others the chance to learn the skills they need to solve their problems seem simple, but often is neglected for the easier path of donations.

Efforts surrounding access to healthcare in impoverished nations also needs to be tackled through giving people the chance to participate in the decision making process in order for the empowered approach. I am familiar with the book Questioning the Solution: The Politics of Primary Health Care and Child Survival because I have volunteered in the medical field in Mexico, and also am plan on joining Doctors Without Borders. The overall message of the book explains how empowerment of the people involved is vital to the success of all human rights efforts. The book goes on to note many effective efforts that involve getting local people involved with change at grassroots level.

For example, the book notes how a healthcare access program of the San Ramon district of Costa Rica was successful despite its severely limited resources (Warner & Sanders, 1997). The program was not run by health professionals but through large community gatherings of people who talked about the best way to go about change for their particular community (Warner & Sanders, 1997). The San Ramón district went on to achieve the best health and child mortality statistics in all of Latin America, with the exception of Cuba (Warner & Sanders, 1997).”

The authors also recognize that there is no formula for empowerment – but that there are some constants. “Empowerment is at once a personal and group process. It is part of a process of building collective confidence. This is needed for people to shed the feelings of powerlessness and resignation that result, at least in part, from the lack of skills and confidence required to improve their condition. By definition, one can not empower someone else; empowerment is something people must do for themselves (Warner & Sanders, 1997).”

What is fascinating about these two approaches to eradicating preventable diseases and poverty is that the leaders of change did not believe they were the solution – that they alone could solve huge problems. Instead, they saw the potential of the scant resources people needed to make a difference for themselves. Through either community organizing or a loan, these leaders gave the people the resources they needed. They had the wisdom to know that people could empower themselves.

This analysis shows that effective change is not possible without the empowerment of the group involved. Yet through our class discussions we have mainly been talking about change on the individual level. For example, the multiple reasons behind why physicians do not wash their hands as often as they should. I believe this focus has something to do with the way college is structured. While most students are engaged in student groups and have a lively social life, the academic side of things is very individualistic. Most of our assignments and of course examinations are purely on an individual level. I also once read that when American college students are asked where they believe they rank in comparison to their classmates, they rank their intelligence level higher than the supposed “average student”. When students in Asia were asked the same thing, they ranked themselves as exactly in the middle. In conclusion, we are trained in a sense to think on this level.

Yet I want this course to leave us with something we can apply to making change in our groups in both our professional and personal lives. For the remainder of the course, I plan to elicit responses from my classmates about how we can relate this to the real world – which rarely, if ever, exists in the type of individualistic scheme that college does. I would like to brain storm ways with the class to see everyone’s ideas as to how we can apply these ideas to our future professional lives. Like I have mentioned previously, we might not do something as grand as Muhammad Yunis, but there will always, always be room for improvement.

Citations:

Bruck, C. (2006, October 30). Millions for millions. The New Yorker, 1-10.

Warner, D. , & Sanders, D. (1997). Questioning the Solution: The Politics of Primary Health Care and Child Survival.Palo Alto: Health Wrights.

(REPOST) We all can't do everything, but we can do something

2009-08-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

In this class we are going to be learning about fascinating techniques behind making successful change for humanity. Yet what is most important is if we are willing to apply what we are learning to make the world just a bit better. I have always believed intelligence is only valuable when it is applied to better the world around you. Most importantly, the most important lessons and insights are learned outside the classroom. Muhammad Yunus’ economic theories he learned from the best institutions in the world couldn’t apply to the people he wanted to help. While we all recognize that academics are important, classes alone are not the end all be all to being what all colleges claim to change us into – active, engaged citizens. Only getting out of our comfort zone and our little bubble called the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will do that.

I am used to my ideas and goals meeting the academic, and supposedly more “rational” mindset where people use the excuse, “Well, the problem is too immense and impossible to fix so we might as well not even bother.” I have one experience with a Lunch and Learn program and the Honors House that particularly sticks out in my memory. The topic was concerning child malnutrition and general health care abroad. The discussion was led by two Chancellor’s Scholars who had spent over a semester volunteering in an under developed country. I was interested in attending the program because I served as a medical translator and assistant in poor mountainous areas surrounding Matamoros, Mexico. In the future I plan to join Doctors without Borders, and in the states I plan to work in urban medicine.

While they were there they assisted physicians in providing medical care. They also did research on the most efficient ways to implement a supplementary food program. They were successful in implementing a new program by actually talking to the mothers who were successful in having well nourished children. They found that those who did still fed their children when they were sick and also fed them the green leaf part of the starchy vegetable they ate, even though it was considered a poor man’s food.

Yet the reactions from other CHP students were very pessimistic- going so far as to ask the two students what was the point of them helping the poor if they were not going to make a lasting impact of the villages economy, access to education, etc. Rightly so, the volunteers were stunned. Their efforts were degraded into something meaningless by the other students.

Before my trip to Mexico, I had volunteered with various social justice issues before I left - I knew the limited long lasting impact the medical team and I were going to have in our short time. Still, I have never found that as an excuse for inaction. Yet who is to say that people’s ailments being tended to for months wasn’t worth it? Who is to say that teaching families the most efficient and money saving way to keep their kids well nourished wasn’t worth it? Or in my case, who has the authority to claim whether or not providing medical care to those who would otherwise have no access to it was a waste of time? No one. In a sense, I find that mindset cowardly. It is one thing to realize what we are up against. It is another thing entirely to use that as an excuse to do nothing.

People have often called me idealist. Yet I can relate to Muhammad Yunus. I am not only a dreamer, but a doer. I have seen first hand how seemingly impossible goals can be accomplished. By taking the risk to be the first to spark ideas, I have found people willing to persist through doubt and criticism with me. 9 times out of 10, we end up shocking those who doubted us. While it is immensely more difficult to believe in change that being pessimistic and doubtful, I wouldn’t change who I am for anything. I have prepared myself to face people who will doubt me and my ideas and goals for a lifetime. Making healthcare a right and not a privilege is going to be difficult but possible with a lot of support and persistence.

I hope we all can agree that no matter what we are planning to go into we hope to make some sort of positive impact on others lives. My greatest hope for this class and beyond is for us to realize that we do not have to save the whole world in order to make a significant impact. None of us can save the whole world, but let’s not use that as an excuse to do nothing. I hope we recognize that even making a small difference is worth it. Just imagine how different the world would be if we were all willing to do just a little bit?

We all can't do everything, but we can do something

2009-08-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

In this class we are going to be learning about fascinating techniques behind making successful change for humanity. Yet what is most important is if we are willing to apply what we are learning to make the world just a bit better. I have always believed intelligence is only valuable when it is applied to better the world around you. Most importantly, the most important lessons and insights are learned outside the classroom. Muhammad Yunus’ economic theories he learned from the best institutions in the world couldn’t apply to the people he wanted to help. While we all recognize that academics are important, classes alone are not the end all be all to being what all colleges claim to change us into – active, engaged citizens. Only getting out of our comfort zone and our little bubble called the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will do that.
I am used to my ideas and goals meeting the academic, and supposedly more “rational” mindset where people use the excuse, “Well, the problem is too immense and impossible to fix so we might as well not even bother.” I have one experience with a Lunch and Learn program and the Honors House that particularly sticks out in my memory. The topic was concerning child malnutrition and general health care abroad. The discussion was led by two Chancellor’s Scholars who had spent over a semester volunteering in an under developed country. I was interested in attending the program because I served as a medical translator and assistant in poor mountainous areas surrounding Matamoros, Mexico. In the future I plan to join Doctors without Borders, and in the states I plan to work in urban medicine.
While they were there they assisted physicians in providing medical care. They also did research on the most efficient ways to implement a supplementary food program. They were successful in implementing a new program by actually talking to the mothers who were successful in having well nourished children. They found that those who did still fed their children when they were sick and also fed them the green leaf part of the starchy vegetable they ate, even though it was considered a poor man’s food.
Yet the reactions from other CHP students were very pessimistic- going so far as to ask the two students what was the point of them helping the poor if they were not going to make a lasting impact of the villages economy, access to education, etc. Rightly so, the volunteers were stunned. Their efforts were degraded into something meaningless by the other students.
Before my trip to Mexico, I had volunteered with various social justice issues before I left - I knew the limited long lasting impact the medical team and I were going to have in our short time. Still, I have never found that as an excuse for inaction. Yet who is to say that people’s ailments being tended to for months wasn’t worth it? Who is to say that teaching families the most efficient and money saving way to keep their kids well nourished wasn’t worth it? Or in my case, who has the authority to claim whether or not providing medical care to those who would otherwise have no access to it was a waste of time? No one. In a sense, I find that mindset cowardly. It is one thing to realize what we are up against. It is another thing entirely to use that as an excuse to do nothing.
People have often called me idealist. Yet I can relate to Muhammad Yunus. I am not only a dreamer, but a doer. I have seen first hand how seemingly impossible goals can be accomplished. By taking the risk to be the first to spark ideas, I have found people willing to persist through doubt and criticism with me. 9 times out of 10, we end up shocking those who doubted us. While it is immensely more difficult to believe in change that being pessimistic and doubtful, I wouldn’t change who I am for anything. I have prepared myself to face people who will doubt me and my ideas and goals for a lifetime. Making healthcare a right and not a privilege is going to be difficult but possible with a lot of support and persistence.
I hope we all can agree that no matter what we are planning to go into we hope to make some sort of positive impact on others lives. My greatest hope for this class and beyond is for us to realize that we do not have to save the whole world in order to make a significant impact. None of us can save the whole world, but let’s not use that as an excuse to do nothing. I hope we recognize that even making a small difference is worth it. Just imagine how different the world would be if we were all willing to do just a little bit?

Testing

2009-08-22T15:37:00.001-07:00

Test post!!!