It's been a tumultuous week. I'm looking forward to visits from friends this weekend, and a little bit of a break from the intensity of my school experience. I am definitely learning a lot about making the transition from the world into the academy. I haven't been totally successful in the transition so far, but I am learning from my mistakes.
Speaking of mistakes, I was stunned to hear excerpts of President Bush's last press conference in office this week. I don't want to get political in this blog, but I simply can't comprehend his unwillingness to admit to any mistakes during the last eight years. To err is human, right? We all make mistakes. I make them daily. I only hope I can learn from them and avoid the same mistakes in the future.
Yesterday, I treated myself to some acupuncture. I had found a practitioner when I was here for the Summer Institute for Youth Mentoring. She worked on me soon after my emergency appendectomy, when I was feeling quite out of sorts. Seeing her then made me feel a lot more put back together. So I wanted to go back and see her as soon as I could. My sleep has been a wreck for the past year or so and I still suffer from TMJ. But sure enough, I slept like a baby last night, and could barely stay up past 10 pm. If you are every looking for a practitioner in Portland, I highly recommend Armstrong Acupuncture.
Today was my first day in fencing class. There are about 30 other students in this PE class. After hearing some background about the fundamentals of fencing, we practiced collapsing in case we feel faint. We also practiced our hand movements by tossing tennis balls to a partner and did a little work with a dowel in place of a saber. I think I will like this class. It should help with my concentration skills and hopefully connect my mind and body a little bit better. Maybe it will also finally give me some of the grace I've been looking for all my life.
After grabbing lunch at a wonderful Saudi food cart on campus, I needed a little pick-me-up. So I went to my new favorite place in Portland, Cacao, for a shot of european drinking chocolate. It's delicious, like drinking a melted dark chocolate bar. It brings me back to the hot chocolate I had in Italy, but it's even better. And it provides enough lift to get you through the rest of the day when you're starting to drag around the lunch hour. But my little jaunt for chocolate made me just late enough to force me to break my little rule. So instead of taking the stairs, I took the elevator to the ninth floor of my office building to meet Tom and the other graduate students in the independent study group I'm in. I promised myself I would take the stairs every day I go to the office in appreciation of the spectacular view from my desk (see photo below). But I'll probably have to break the rule every now and then in respect for others.
Our study group is planning on reading a host of research papers on youth mentoring over the next eight weeks. For this week, we read two papers which discussed some of the basic ways in which youth mentoring programs work. In reality, we know very little of how mentoring programs work to achieve impacts in children's lives. There is some theory from child development and psychology that postulates some of the processes through which mentoring operates. But a lot more study is needed to determine how mentoring programs actually function in the lives of youth. While this may be an exciting opportunity for researchers, it's a little frustrating from a practitioner's point of view. It would be wonderful to know exactly how mentoring works so that we can adjust it to have the maximum impact for each child we serve.
We started a very interesting discussion about the qualities of successful mentors. So next week, we're going to read one of the fundamental studies on youth mentors, by Morrow and Styles, as well as a more recent study looking at the amount of structure provided by different mentors and how successful they are.
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