M7 Experiential Task

My Gratitude Visit 

When I read this assignment it made me so excited because it gave me an excuse to go and visit one of my favorite people on this planet. Coach Jones, my high school softball coach, is someone that I will love and cherish for life. She is inspiring and cares for me as if I am one of her own. She moved to a different town right before my senior year of high school, so since she lives farther away I don't get to see her as much as I would like to. When I found out that her team was playing close to here this past weekend I thought, why don't I surprise her and get credit for it for class. I'm not a fan of typing things so I hand-wrote my letter and sealed it in and envelope in hopes to make it more personal. 
I waited until the end of the game to talk to her and give her my letter, so her focus would remain on her team. We stayed talking at the field until mostly everyone else had cleared out because even if we hadn't seen each other or talked in a while we have a relationship where we pick up where we left off. I told her why I was there and she was really glad that she was the person that I thought of when given an assignment like this. She told me that she wasn't going to open her letter until later because of the setting that we were in. Later, that evening after we both had left she texted me to thank me for making the drive and for the letter. 

M6 Experiential Task

Mental Illness Interviews

The first person I interviewed was a close friend and teammate of mine who wanted to remain anonymous, but agreed that I could call her Faith. The interviewing experience was unique in comparison to any other interview I have conducted. I interviewed her while we were on the road traveling to Arkansas and I simply asked the questioned provided, but she did tell me some other things unrelated to the questions. Faith was diagnosed with chronic depression when she was a junior in high school so around 16-17 years old. She told me that her symptoms consisted of feelings of sadness and loneliness, loss and lack of confidence, fatigue/lots of sleeping, and self harm. Some challenges Faith encountered were getting out of bed, avoiding people and social events and was unable to see the positive side of things. But her biggest challenge was going to church because she felt like she was in such a bad place and couldn’t understand why because of her religious beliefs. She tried to avoid going to church all together. Her depression at its worst lasted for about a year and during this time she sought many different forms of treatment such as starting with seeing her regular doctor, she was referred to a counselor and saw that person once every 1-2 weeks, she also talked to a church affiliated counselor and that helped her gain more understanding about her issues with her religion, another form of treatment she had was a prescription medication. The people that helped and supported her the most were her parents, they helped her with treatments and being there for her. Other people that helped Faith were her close friends, boyfriend, and people in a support group that her church counselor set her up in. Something that really worked for Faith was when her family and friends took her out to do things and didn’t allow her to lay in bed or be alone.  

My second interview was very different from my first, but it was much easier than the first because I was more comfortable. The interviewee is significantly older than the first and is a relative of mine. My aunt Lou has suffered from depression for her entire adult life and now she's 53 and she said that is partially due to events that have occurred. In previous years she has talked with a counselor as a form of treatment and she continues to take zoloft for her depression. Some of the symptoms she had/has is sleeping a lot, no motivation and crying outbursts at work or in her car. My aunt said that there were lots of people to help her like her coworkers, friends and her two kids. Her two kids helped to keep her going and not completely give up on everything in her life.

The interviews I conducted were both unique and lead me to gain a better perspective on the two people as well as the illness.

M5 Experiential Task

When I read the word "multiculturism" my mind went away from myself and to most of my friends. My best friend from high school is biracial and she has faced many obstacles throughout her life living in a small judgmental Texas town. Her parents divorced when she was a little girl so she primarily lived with her mother and often felt as if she was more different than everyone else because of the way she looked because of her race. The high school we went to had approximately three hundred students and only five or six of those students came from the same racial background as her. She would often confide in me about how other students or "friends" would treat her differently or not include her things, and now that I look back on it I wonder if it was because of how she looked. As we went through school together I think it bothered her less and less though. She would make jokes about her being black like how shoe couldn't run very fast. She chose not to care about what other people thought of her and just did what made her happy and those qualities also play a role in why we are best friends.