My professional journey has been a winding one. As I type this, I'm unemployed. I always thought of that as a place of failure, of rock bottom. Many people are at this time, the second-to-last day of 2020. I always assumed if I was ever here I would be ashamed of the path that took me here. But I am not. My gut led me here, and at nearly 300 pounds, that gut of mine is not something to be ignored. She has guided me well so far.
In high school, I had always been the one finishing projects more quickly than the other students. I know that sounds like pure brag and I guess it is but it's also true. I learn quickly and, more importantly, I learn in the method which our education system encourages (reading/rote memorization) and getting good grades was straight-up easy for me. So by default, the stragglers in class ended up turning to me to help them get it. I really enjoyed this; I found a high in helping others. I could feel their brains churning and could see the "light" go on when they got it. I also loved theatre. I was pretty good at it and enjoyed creating the art from the director's chair. The natural career choice for me ended up being becoming English and theatre teacher. I could teach kids in during the day and direct shows during the evening. Perfect, no?
Fast forward a few years, I had finished a double major of theatre and English in undergrad and had found myself in a Masters in Teaching Program (MiT) at The Evergreen State College. Now, this school is a world-renown college with an award winning teaching program. People from around the world fought to attend this school, and their MiT program was one of the best.
But. Evergreen's whole thing is they don't use grades. In many ways, this is a superb practice, on the cutting edge of pedagogical research on how and why people learn. However, I was a perfectionist, who had always loved school and grades. I needed grades. I needed concrete proof that I had done well, and I needed to know exactly how well. The vague feedback from the instructors and their pitying looks when I just didn't get an assignment were unbearable. I learn from reading and writing and then having that writing graded. Granted, this wasn't the only issue with the program; half of the cohort left the program, and when I spoke to the ones who stayed they said they were only doing so because they'd already put that first semester in and couldn't bring themselves to let that time go to waste. I distinctly remember trying to decide if I'd return for the second semester and the one thought I couldn't stop thinking was, "Damn I'm gonna miss the sauna at the Evergreen gym...." And I had to face the fact that that's no reason to choose a grad school.
So, here I was, 22, anchorless, jobless and broke. Venting to my mother, who had never really loved the path I had been on anyway, she said, "Well I don't know what to tell you, but my company is always hiring. You could always work there until you figure out what you want."
Her job was supporting people with intellectual disabilities in their homes. Now let me tell you, if you are a person who gets a high from helping a teenager understand the Pythagorean Theorem, you should so try to help a kid with PTSD get through a panic attack. There is nothing like it. Incidentally, in the middle of my undergrad work, I had been diagnosed with a panic disorder, so I knew exactly how uncomfortable these attacks were. I found that my experience with mental illness made me much better at my job than my peers. When one of my kind and thoughtful colleagues had just had enough and couldn't take one more emotional explosion, I was able to reach down into the part of me that had wanted support during any number of my own panic attacks, to find one last vestige of patience to help my client through their day. I had found my calling.
Unfortunately, my calling paid shit. And I wanted to travel and see the world and I have a taste for good red wine so I set out looking for jobs in this line of work that paid what I felt could fuel the lifestyle I needed. One week later, I walk up to my husband at the time and say, "I'm going to grad school again. Hear me out."
I explained that I had found jobs that did basically exactly what I wanted: designing behavior plans for clients and then teaching others how to carry them out. I would be teaching how to teach people to get through emotional crises. It was perfect for me. I just needed two tiny years and tens of thousands of dollars for school first. My gut told me this was a good idea though, so I enrolled in an online program the next week.
The great thing about online education is that it's basically designed for my particular learning style. One reads, one writes, and one is graded on that writing. And I was writing about brains! How cool is that? Have you ever wondered, "Why does this person do this thing they do?" Of course you have. Everyone has. Because brains are fucking fascinating.
Six quarters and one divorce later, I had landed a job as a psychology associate at a facility for people with intellectual disabilities (ID). It was my dream job. I excelled immediately, because I was passionate. I did nothing all day but study brains, think about brains, write about brains and teach about brains. I was in Heaven.
Then 2020 happened.
Work was going ok for the most part. My job in and of itself was awesome, but one thing people often neglect to tell you about working with people with intellectual disabilities is: No one but the family of and people who support people with disabilities give a flying fuck about people with disabilities. If you don't believe me, set down your laptop or phone whatever you're reading this on and go google how much your state funds their programs for folks with disabilities. I'll wait.
It's shit. Absolute shit. Nothing. These facilities are given about 40% of the money they need to run well. The staff are overworked and exhausted, the clients have to bargain shop for everything and there are never any funds for...anything. The fun thing about these people who refuse to give money to those supporting folks with disabilities is that they absolutely adore critiquing those who do. Every last one of them is an expert on how to handle an autistic tantrum. Just ask them. They have written codes upon codes of laws about how exactly to care for these people, with hardly any funds to do so, and then when you mess up you know what they do? Take away even more of your funds. It's a hoot and a half.
What this does, is it creates a large discrepancy between the two types of employees at a facility like this. There are passionate, caring people on the front lines, supporting these clients all day every day and doing so with a less-than-living wage just because they love the clients. Then some of those people have been promoted, and they manage the people on the front lines and spend half their time apologizing to their former peers. (This was my job). I had the privilege of saying: "There is no money to pay you more, I'm so sorry, also we have another report, the feds don't think you're doing your jobs well so we actually have to cut half the staff but please try to do better with fewer resources next time around thanks."
Then there is a rotating door of administrators. These admins typically haven't done front line work or at least haven't done it in decades. They have no idea what the frontline workers need or want. They get the reports, demand "better," work and then wonder why they are hated but 98% of the facility staff.
One such administrator had started about nine months before I left. She seemed ok. At least she was a woman, I thought; I was utterly fatigued of watching a group of workers who were at least 65% female be bossed around by admin teams of almost all males.
But this woman started to make some bad decisions. She started promoting people for whom I had little respect. She stopped listening to the advice of people for whom I had massive respect. My bosses, unendingly kind and intelligent managers who always held the clients' needs above their own, were suddenly not invited to important meetings.
Then Sarah left.
Sarah was a tiny, terrifying turncoat. She had been one of the auditors who had come in and constantly told us we were doing poorly. And she was the most feared of those auditors. She caught everything. I literally ran away from her when I happened to catch her outside of work one day at one of my favorite breweries. (No joke, literally saw her and left in a panic). Then, someone up high in a previous administration had gotten the brilliant idea to offer her a huge raise to come work for us. She accepted and she was the most fortifying, intelligent and on point resource we had. She was making changes everywhere and suddenly the facility was improving.
I made a personal connection with Sarah after I became able to speak to her without hyperventilating, and learned why she was such a hard ass an an auditor. Her younger sister has Downs Syndrome. Sarah had gotten into this work to make the world a better place for people like her sister. She just happened to have an eidetic memory for laws and just happened to be able to catch literally everything anyone had ever done wrong. Hiring her had been the best thing the facility had ever done for itself and for our clients. When she left I took her to lunch and asked what had happened. "The superintendent wouldn't take any of my suggestions. She shut me out of meetings. She didn't include me. So I moved on."
When covid-19 hit, it was particularly scary for the people who supported our clients. Many clients were elderly, many had co-occurring diseases and physical disorders, causing them to fit in, in more ways than one, the "at risk" categories for covid-19.
I had one client in particular. Let's call her Carla. Carla was this frail ninety pound little pip of a woman. She had the mind of probably a 3-year-old and the attitude of a feisty 21-year-old but was physically in her sixties. She was fucking adorable. She always wore a baseball cap with sunglasses indoors. She loved pink and sparkles and all things girly. If you asked her to do a chore she would respond with, "Ow!" as if you'd just hurt her, and she'd walk away. She loved naps, fashion and candy.
Carla had congestive heart failure. If you don't know what this is, it's basically a disease where your heart and lungs don't work well any longer and once your body has exhausted all the medications for the condition, your lungs fill with liquid and your heart stops.
Carla, of all people on the planet, needed to be kept safe from this new disease which targeted the lungs, as did all of our clients of course. So, when all the staff, or at least the staff below administration, learned the word "pandemic," and watched the death tolls skyrocket, we waited patiently for the plan from above about how to keep our clients safe.
We heard quarantine and figured we would be making big changes to the staffing. First, we'd be limiting who was allowed on the houses with the clients, obviously, right? Only people who needed to be there to keep them safe. When the governor issued a stay-at-home order, people like myself, who mostly wrote plans and trained on them would be working from home and calling in to staff and coming on the houses for emergencies only. Right? And of course, clients who had jobs would be staying home to isolate and not expected to go to work. Right? Right?????
I had gotten a new job and given my two weeks right at the end of March, 2020. As I prepared to leave, and watched this administration do basically nothing to keep my clients safe, I became increasingly irate. My last week, I spoke with a trusted colleague. I closed his office door and yelled at him. Why were my clients not being treated with more respect? Why were the frontline workers who bust their asses for a paycheck that barely keeps them above the poverty line not being supported better? Why in the ever living fuck was Carly still expected to go to work? He said, "Desiree, I completely agree with you. But she (the superintendent) won't listen to me and I can't speak up any more firmly than I already have. I have a wife and kids I can't afford to lose my job. You're on your way out. Go make a stink about this, see if you can get through to her."
So, throat hoarse from yelling, eyes sandy from lack of sleep, hands shaking with adrenaline I sent that horrible woman one mother of an email describing exactly how strongly I felt about the situation. She wrote back with what my partner described as, "a boiler plate brushing off of the matter."
The job I was leaving for fell through, because of the pandemic. I applied for unemployment and received it. And I have spent this year doing my best to make the most of it. I started a novel. I spent literally all summer sleeping in and hanging out with my step-daughter. I met (from six feet away) neighbors I had never had the time to get to know, I pet my cats and I played with the dog.
As I look into what I want to do with my career in 2021, my vision is from behind the lens of what I have learned in quarantine. I have learned to rest. I have created art. A chronic insomniac, I have finally been able to get some sleep. My priorities are different. I want to spend more time doing what I've learned to do. I want to think, I want to read. I want to love on my partner and my pets. And I want to write.
So cheers to 2021. I have no idea what the year will bring or how I will pay for it. But I'm hoping it will fill my soul with love and let that love spill from myself to the world. I don't know exactly what that will look like but my gut has never led me astray and I'm not about to start distrusting her today.
Comments