Personal Reflections – Page 6

Layover

I’m writing this at Zurich Airport, in transit to Istanbul from London. I’m paying more for wifi at the airport for an hour than I do for the whole month back at home because I just wanted a screen to stare at to comfort me. I finished with my placement year not too long ago and there’s so much to talk about that experience, and I wanted to, about what it taught me. I never got around to doing that because the last couple of days have been rough. I don’t think talking about it right now is going to make me feel any better so I’m not going to. I have the worst headache ever and I spent most of yesterday curled up in a blanky so I don’t exactly feel stellar. All I can say is that this holiday to Turkey…I really need it right now to try and recover.

I’m also going to take this opportunity to disconnect from social media when I’m travelling. Part of my problem, I believe, is that I use Twitter and Facebook as outlets to boost my ego. There’s nothing inherently wrong with people sharing what they think on this sites. Sharing tweets / status updates itself is not an issue, many people can handle that. Just that for me, it has become part of a much bigger problem, where I feel a constant need for validation, a constant need to say something to make myself appear funny or interesting. It’s a small stab at solving a much larger problem with my behaviour but it’s a start. I will keep my accounts active on Twitter / Facebook because I use it to stay in touch with friends and discover news, and that’s all I’m going to use them for. I enjoy longform writing – something I’ve hardly done for the past year – so I’m going to keep blogging (and there’s a script that automatically publishes new posts to Twitter / Facebook, I’m going to keep that active for those friends who do want to know what I’m up to). I’ve never taken a stab at travel blogging so perhaps I’ll try that, if it helps me get my mind off things, and I’m going to focus on only publishing positive experiences here, for a while.

There’s a South Park episode titled Casa Bonita, where Cartman wants to be invited for Kyle’s birthday party at a Mexican restaurant so bad, but Kyle doesn’t invite him because he doesn’t consider Cartman a friend. Cartman vacillates between lashing out and going on a charm offensive. One day, he shows up at Kyle’s door and the conversation goes somewhat like this:

Cartman [in a sweet voice]: “Hello Kyle!”
Kyle: “That’s not being nice, that’s just wearing a nice sweater.”

Time to move beyond the nice sweater.

“Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult World”

From Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult World, a profile in The New York Times of Justin Canha, a high school student who suffers from autism that was written over a period of one year:

“Hello, everybody,” he announced, loud enough to be heard behind the company president’s door. “This is going to be my new job, and you are going to be my new friends.”
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…the transition program at Montclair High served as a kind of boot camp in community integration that might also be, for Justin, a last chance. Few such services are available after high school. And Justin was entitled to public education programs, by federal law, until only age 21.

Ms. Stanton-Paule had vowed to secure him a paid job before he left school — the best gauge, experts say, of whether a special needs student will maintain some autonomy later in life. She also hoped to help him forge the relationships, at work and beyond it, that form the basis of a full life.

But more prosaic lessons arose at every turn: when he should present money at the pizza place (not until after he ordered), how close to stand to the person using the weight machine he wanted at the gym (not so close), what to say when he saw a co-worker drinking a Coke (probably not “Coca-Cola is bad for your bones”).
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“There’s a prevailing philosophy that certain people can never function in the community,” Ms. Stanton-Paule told skeptics. “I just don’t think that’s true.”

I had tears in my eyes by the time I finished reading this article. It’s just so heartwarming to know that there are educators out there who go to such lengths, to have the courage and the will to fight against the system and give kids the support they deserve. Yet it’s also saddening that in the end it boils down to economics and a budding animator has had to give up his dream (for now).