Conversation Partner Blog 2

Today was my second meeting with my conversation partner.  We spent most of our time discussing the differences between American and Brazilian holidays.  This was an interesting topic of conversation since I did not know much about how our celebrations differ from those of other countries.

            With Halloween coming up this weekend, I asked Carol if she had any plans and how Halloween is celebrated in Brazil.  She expressed that it is a much bigger holiday here and, while growing in popularity, mostly involves partying in Brazil.  Since Carol lives with her aunt’s family, she looks forward to the new experience of passing out candy to trick-or-treaters. 

Carol also told me about an upcoming presentation she has on the differences between Easter in Brazil and America.  She asked how I celebrate Easter, and I told her about how my family focuses on the bunnies and Easter eggs part of the holiday despite its roots in Christianity. 

Additionally, Carol asked me about my family’s Christmas traditions.  This sparked a conversation about how our school years differ.  In Brazil, the seasons are opposite of ours since this country is in the southern hemisphere.  As a result, they begin their school year in January instead of August and end in November only getting a few weeks off in July.  This way, the main holiday still occurs during the summer with a shorter break in the winter similar to Christmas break in the United States.  I am so used to the northern hemisphere school schedule that it was strange for me to think about having breaks at a different time of year.  I also think it would be weird to have Christmas during the summer as they do in Brazil.  Despite the fact that we do not get much of a true winter here in Texas, so much of the Christmas spirit in the United States is associated with the cold and snow.  For example, the majority of the secular songs we sing around the holidays are about snowmen, sleighs, and reindeers and Christmas lights help to brighten the dark winter nights.  Our traditions and celebrations would be completely different if we associated Christmas with summer rather than winter. 

Overall I am really enjoying my conversations with Carol.  I am always curious to hear about how things are different in Brazil and sometimes surprised to hear about things that are the same.  I also find it interesting to hear about Carol’s views and opinions of the United States and her time here.  I am happy to hear that she is enjoying her experience here despite the challenge of not knowing the language very well, which she expresses is her biggest struggle.  I look forward to continuing to learn about Carol’s culture and sharing with her my experiences as well.

Learning Experience 4: Excusercising

This semester as part of my major requirements, I am taking Exercise Psychology.  This is a course that focuses on why people exercise and what keeps people exercising.  The professor of the class is a particularly strong believer that everyone has time to exercise, and that, if people claim not to have time to exercise, they need to improve their time management skills so that they can schedule this important activity into their day.  She calls the list of excuses that people use to get out of exercising “excusercising.”  I find this to be an extremely interesting concept particularly because it is not necessarily an idea I believe in. 

As someone who is involved in several organizations on campus and taking 17 hours this semester, I often rush from activities to classes to meetings from 8:00am or even before until at least 8:00 at night.  After the long day is over, I still have homework to do and assignments to complete.  I definitely do not have the time or energy to stay up even later in order to exercise.  I also do not believe that better time management would solve this problem.  I have a “Type A” personality, which means I am ultra organized and have my days scheduled down to the minute.  There is no way I could work in an extra hour for exercising without taking away from my sleep.

Through my experience in this class, I have learned to agree to disagree with my professor.  It is challenging to motivate myself to learn about a subject that I do not care about and frequently do not even agree with.  Excusercising is only one of the many topics we have covered that I question the validity of.  In addition, I also find the textbook for this class to be biased towards certain groups and populations. Yet, if I want to graduate as a kinesiology major, I must study this material well enough to make good grades in the class. 

As a result, I am learning to make the class worthwhile despite my lack of interest.  I find myself using various strategies to help myself remain attentive such as amusing myself with the many typos throughout the textbook and contemplating the multiple statements made that I do not agree with.  Even if I am not exactly following along with the learning goals of the class as stated in the syllabus, I have managed to find my own value in the time this class requires of me.  It is almost impossible to stay dedicated to a class that I am not interested in, but with a little bit of effort and creativity, any class can be personalized to a form that is meaningful and worthwhile for each individual student.

Conversation Partner Blog 1

This morning I finally met my conversation partner, Carol, for the 1^st time after having many struggles finding a time that would work for both of us.  Carol is from Brazil and has been in the United States since July.  She expressed that she was not too nervous when she first arrived here as she has visited many times before to see her aunt who she is now living with.  Carol and I discussed each of our plans for the future and why we chose to come to TCU.  While she is here to improve her English, Carol’s ultimate plan is to study psychology possibly returning to Brazil to do so. 

One part of our conversation that I think we both found particularly interesting was a discussion about learning new languages.  I told her that, while my mom was born in the Czech Republic and speaks three languages, I have never enjoyed learning new languages and stopped as soon as I could in high school.  Carol found it fascinating that my mom knows so many languages and yet my sister and I only know English.  She also described to me how, having attended an English school in Brazil, she assumed that she would arrive here being able to understand the language fairly well.  However, this was not the case.  She realized pretty quickly that her proficiency in reading English and speaking it with Brazilians did not translate well to speaking it with native speakers.  I was able to connect to this story since I have watched my mom speak German and Czech fluently to her parents for my whole life, but also seen her struggle when strangers attempt to speak these languages with her.

In addition, Carol talked about how different it is to speak English with people from other countries and those who are used to talking with non-native speakers like the Intensive English Program (IEP) students and teachers than it is to speak with other native English Speakers.  Since Carol lives with her Brazilian aunt and is otherwise always around IEP students, she says that she has had little opportunity to interact with other TCU students.  In a way, I feel like IEP keeps her from being exposed to American culture in the same way that international students not in IEP are.  She said that she has never been to a football game and did not seem to be aware of many of the other sporting and social events that TCU offers.  This was surprising to me because my experience with international students in the past has always been that there are too many opportunities for them to get involved rather than not enough.  They are invited to events constantly and find themselves exhausted from the many new experiences.  The fact that Carol does not live close to TCU and lives with family causes her to miss out on many of these fun events.

Overall, I found our time together to be quite informative.  While we had a few moments of awkward silence, Carol and I always managed to quickly find new things to talk about that kept us learning from each other.  I think we both appreciated the opportunity to meet someone with a new and different life experience from our own.

Learning Experience 3: Special Olympics

Over fall break, one of my professors took a group of students to Special Olympics Fall Classic to perform health screenings.  This event attracts over 1000 individuals with special needs from all over Texas who compete in golf, aquatics, bocce, and softball.  During this event, our group from TCU measured height and weight, took blood pressure, and did bone density scans on about 120 athletes.  While I have worked with people with special needs on many occasions, this event was different in that I was there to perform health evaluations rather than assist the athletes one on one or just have fun.  This gave me a new perspective on what life is like for these families on a daily basis and furthered my insight into the healthcare field.

            Normally when I am around people with special needs I am there purely to assist with fun events.  I help with programs including summer camps, parents night out, and sporting events, which are often the highlight of these people’s month or even year.  The participants come in high spirits and are excited about what the event will hold.  Contrastingly, at this Special Olympics event we were doing things that most people consider to be particularly un-enjoyable.  We were using tools like blood pressure cuffs and bone density scanners that may look scary and are usually associated with the doctor’s office.  Many of the participants were even afraid that we were going to do something painful like give them a shot.  As someone planning to work with individuals with special needs, I found it interesting that these people were so scared of medical tools despite the fact that most of them visit doctors far more often than the average person due to their complex medical conditions.

            This made me consider how I as a future healthcare professional can help to alter my patients preconceived notions about the medical field.  As I performed bone scans throughout the day, I found that the most effective way to help these patients was simply to spend extra time with them.  If I took the time to explain why were doing the bone scan and how it worked, the participants were usually more comfortable and less afraid even though they had never seen the machine we were using before. 

Spending this extra time with patients is unfortunately not always feasible for healthcare professionals who often have completely booked schedules with limited time allotted to see each patient.  However, if physicians, therapists, nurses, and other individuals in the medical field could take even five minutes out of each appointment to slow down and explain things especially for these individuals with special needs, it may have a large impact on their experiences in hospitals and doctors’ offices in the future.  I realized during my experience at Special Olympics that patience is imperative in turning an initially scary experience into one that is informative and even enjoyable for both the athletes and their families.

Laughter Blog 2: An Odd Student Professor Experience

I find that most often when I laugh uncontrollably, the story does not sound nearly as funny when I recount it to others who were not there.  Events that cause uncontrollable laughter tend to be personal and dependent on the situation and the people who experienced it with me.  One such situation happened to me this past summer.

            Over the past year, I have been working on my senior thesis project.  As part of this study, participants wore a physical activity monitor that must be downloaded onto the computer in my professor’s office.  Fortunately I had plans to visit Fort Worth in July for a friend’s wedding, and this was the perfect opportunity to reset the monitors.  There was only one problem: my professor was spending his summer in Canada and would not be there to help us through the process.

            A friend who is also researching with this professor and I were able to borrow a key to his office and call him so he could walk us through the steps, but then we had to turn on his laptop, which is connected to his desktop computer.  This seems like it should have been a simple task.  Just push the power button, right?  Well, all five times that we tried this, the desktop came on, but nothing happened on the laptop.  We even went so far as to take out the battery and put it back it.  Still nothing.  By this point we were getting pretty frustrated and concerned.

            This is when my professor decided to ask us if the desktop had ever come on.  We told him that, of course it had, but still nothing from the laptop.  Much to our surprise, he began laughing and told us that this was exactly what was supposed to happen all along.  The laptop does not turn on until you log in on the desktop.  That was when we starting laughing too and could not stop.  We were laughing in relief; laughing at our own stupidity; we just could not stop laughing.  We had spent over half an hour turning the computer off and on only to find out it had been working the whole time!

            Thinking back on it, it is amazing that such a simple thing could make us laugh so hard.  However, even now, every time one of the three of us brings up that day in July we start laughing again.  Moments like these are not soon forgotten and instead help to grow relationships and add deeper meaning to the time people spend together.  Sometimes it is not the actual hilarity of the situation that makes one laugh uncontrollably, but rather it is having just the right chain of events lead up to a moment that can turn an initially frustrating situation into one that we will remember and laugh about for years to come.