I've spent the last six years of my life working as a human rights activist...sounds like the best job in the world, doesn't it?well it wasn't...it was an experience so full of manipulation, power games, mental abuse, threatens in the end I broke down...I realized it was killing me...so i packed my bags, ran away and decided to start again.
Greetings,
Further congratulations on securing entry to medical school! If it helps, know that I tried if you will to take my experiences of home (most unpleasant) and those of primary and secondary school (wildly unpleasant with much bullying endured) and tried to reframe such into an activist orientation of merit. I attended school in NYC studying urban policy within a very progressive and esteemed institution, hoping for full immersion that I could flip a switch within myself to cue engaged interpretation of this and that input consistent with being a caring and humane influence whereever it is I might find myself. Not understanding the existant trauma legacies I was sitting upon, the stress became too great and I rescaled my efforts to pursue a library degree; i.e. I would be a one-on-one activist of unusual sophistication and power! Well, that was the plan...
Fast forward to a pair of library roles in severely depressed socioeconomic circumstance. I read endlessly, both ordering materials and studying the same to effect action on the ground - positive change if such could be enacted. One work role had me in a deeply religious community strictly adverse to presumed caustic influence of the outside world, whereas many a patron was a displaced autoworker possessed of few (or no) computer skills - i.e. effectively helpless before the challenges of filing for aid, searching for work in a contemporary vein, etc.
The second role witnessed me affording academic reference library service in an environment that now can only be judged a circumstance of subprime educational opportunity; i.e. only 9% - 13% graduated in six years from programs typically no longer than certificate or associates degree programs in plain point of fact. I poured into my reading with ever greater fervor hoping to stem the tide of mass suffering - and there was so much to see. Wildly grating was to notice work colleagues who insulated themselves from such awareness if they could at all manage it. Their 'secret' to psychological survival was nothing I wished to be party to, whereas I developed a reputation for grit and, in truth, being particularly humorless. What others blithely tagged a shiftless underclass I construed (rightly - I believe) as the front lines of a class war. I couldn't believe just how lazy my coworkers were...
My readings (think sociology, think New Left, think public interest/progressive tracts and studies, think studies of academia and the emergence of the corporate university) hugely amplified my awareness of much, and yet at the same time I believe this degree of focus has demonstrably amplified my experience of traumatic recall. So much I see takes on a class shading, evidence of abuse of leverage here, there and everywhere. When students from lower class or working class circumstance pass close by - especially if they function comparatively well in a social sense as harshly contrasted to myself, the total effect of my sensitivity to their vulnerability to systemic exploitation is nothing short of ghoulish.
At some point I didn't want to know their names (thinking of woefully ill-prepared students in a near 'for-profit' model vocational school heavily marketed to the poor as the answer to all prayers) for to register within my mind that while each mattered as individuals but were so often demonstrably doomed became far too much for me to handle. I felt like an emergency room informational triage nurse charged with the task of deliniating who would live or die for there was only so much in the way of resources, time, and their stamina in relation to hurdles often too high or too great.
Indeed, at what point is 'education as a commodity' afforded to vulnerable populations without avowed intent to greatly supplement for past societal and educational neglect if not abuse to be recognized as a disreputable cheat? All the abuses at the bottom of the postsecondary educational 'market' were mine to view at extremely close range. Now I peruse materials on 'Secondary PTSD', 'Proximity PTSD', and can recommend with confidence at title written by Arlie Hochschild, The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling which deconstructs some aspects of a dynamic where our feelings and perceptions constitute what the company exchanges pay for - what is termed 'emotion work'. Concerning the Hochschild title, read it and the concept of emotion work will register as so undeniably valid you'll employ it forever more.
For myself, I could no longer be party to a dynamic marketed as opportunity to the working poor/working class/lower-middle class/alt. student/nontraditional student, etc. when the structure necessary to deliver on the promise was systemically not afforded. One doesn't concentrate the most vulnerable in a class, afford them canned instruction delivered either online or via a disorganized and unaware army of free floating adjuncts, and expect anything but a mass die-off of overwhelmed underclass underclassmen. Disoriented and ill-equipped to advocate for what is so hard for many to grasp (i.e. the complex reality of socioeconomic difference that isn't to be strictly construed as eclectic cultural difference to be celebrated), I witnessed many a good and hard-pressed student automatically blame themself and quit. Awful early circumstance does not have to be reinforced and amplified by heartless and cruel systemic neglect that looks like school in the contemporary mold - I suppose such is my point.
If I fight, I'll have to take it to a higher level - in essence I'm an activist, but I cannot be a foot soldier in relation to a conflict that blithely consumes and destroys lives of both students and those charged with the task of supporting an illusion of effectiveness. Though a bit bewildered, in some capacity I'll do all I may to rectify the abuses witnessed, the studied neglect of vulnerable populations that are tagged and targeted for the Federal Student Aid that can be attached to their name even as the majority leave with few skills, no degree and sizable debt besides. The institution I shamefacedly served took in the largest total of state educational aid (by far) and simultaneously registered the highest student default rate for the undifferentiated educational product (seemingly squeezed out of a tube) they brought to the educational 'market' - public trust be damned. My childhood PTSD has been overlaid which much I participated within in an institutional sense. Awful, awful, awful this...
In sum, some roles are too costly to sustain continued exposure if such obliterates our day to day capacity to function. Call me a 'psych. casualty' - the term is wholly appropriate and justified in this instance. The thing is that we might each remain creatively and effectively engaged on an appropriate plain where overwhelm is less obviously risked. I thought that rushing into the thick of matters constituted the strongest evidence of my commitment to left progressive causes. I've been forced to reconsider matters, but one can carry forth still being so-guided without hazarding the total loss of self. Identity can mature, identity can evolve, and so too our respective definitions of what it entails to be and to live effectively. Kind regards...
M.
