http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/ en Copyright 2008 Tue, 06 May 2008 09:24:24 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Along with the milk in the refrigerator, you should never worry about when life will turn bad or spoil. No doubt, it eventually will. However, there are ingredients you can add, perspectives you can take, and plans you can implement in order to transform it into…voila: yogurt…or cheese if you are in the mood. I made a healthier upgrade from the lemonade metaphor. It still conveys the point but with a greater nutritional value. You will encounter many worst-case scenarios during graduate school and throughout life. There are some you can anticipate and prevent. Then there are others that happen unexpectedly and unavoidably. They will all have their day so you should not feel afraid, anxious, or angry. You possess skills and strengths. You will apply and develop them; even acquire new ones. You will adapt and adjust. Regain your balance and continue your path, maybe in a new direction or at a slower pace toward the moon instead of the sun. You will still shine brilliantly regardless of the scenario, even if you stumble on the way up to the stage. Of course, we promise not to laugh but to applaud resoundingly. There are many answers and avenues that will lead you to the right state, the right fit. Each scenario, from the worst to the best, has opportunities imbedded in it. They contain opportunities for you to learn, to grow, to challenge, and to change. In the process, you may discover an unrealized, untapped power inside, maybe even of the Jedi lightsaber variety. Nonetheless, always, always know that people surround you, who, like Cyndi Lauper, will catch you when you fall and redirect you when you get lost. Do not hold back or hesitate. We are waiting…time after time. …together in the struggle… ...until next write... http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/05/worstcase_scenario.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/05/worstcase_scenario.html Tue, 06 May 2008 09:24:24 -0500 The time has come for me to purge and pack, to say goodbye and find another place called home. Like Woolf, I am searching for a room of my own. The roommate life was wonderful, both on the soul and the budget. Since August, I have shared a rowhouse with three other graduate students, who were all Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. We were kindred spirits. Although randomly thrown together, we formed a bond and provided each other with support and advice, home-cooked meals and Scrabble matches. Life mirrored episodes from Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld, and, even, Golden Girls. It was uplifting, enlightening, and entertaining. Just reminiscing over our time together invokes the song “Thank You For Being a Friend”. I was very fortunate, especially at $375 a month. My plans for the future require that I leave my dark room in the basement two blocks from campus. I have so much more of Baltimore to see, so much more to accomplish. I need space and light, a feeling of infinity and invincibility, a fortress, perhaps, of solitude. I need a place that can do more than just house me, but nurture and ground my ideas and creativity. This is normally not advertised in the apartment postings on Craigslist. However, it certainly was there when I viewed the apartment, definitely, in a sense, welcoming me home. I have chosen a one-bedroom apartment in Reservoir Hill rather than in the trendier Mount Vernon or Charles Village. I concluded that a greater refugee, inspiration, and rejuvenation lied in Druid Hills Park than in Starbucks. That, indeed, was priceless. So when my second semester ends, I will load up my car and drive to another address called home, a scenario repeated numerous times in my nomadic life. However, I know no matter where I go home is always, always in the land and the love, in the sea and the sand. Of course, you know what the card attached would say… However, if you need help finding your way, your home here in Baltimore, then just email. …together in the struggle… …until next write… http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/04/a_room_of_ones_own.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/04/a_room_of_ones_own.html Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:41:29 -0500 The ending has begun…please cue Prince’s Purple Rain. I have so many tasks to accomplish before the lights dim, before the sound stops, before I turn, pausing for a moment, and walk away. As I felt in the beginning, I feel even more so now: spread too thin. In the words of Bilbo Baggins, it’s like “butter over too much bread.” Of course, I would not prefer it any other way… …even in this time full of deadlines, the self, the spirit comes to life in new ways. What I have learned gives birth to possibilities, to plans, to new parts of the self taking their first voyages out into the world. There is belief and action, hope and imagination, loss and gain. All is bright and beautiful. All that I have juggled, balanced, stretched over too much bread has calloused the hands, fattened the body, and colored the eyes…purple…perhaps. There is a life in flight, moving off into the beyond. Beyond the beyond… Cue the Prince…and let it rain. …together in the struggle… …until next write… http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/04/spread_thin.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/04/spread_thin.html Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:17:51 -0500 While you await your acceptance letter or anticipate your first day of class, consider, perhaps during a break from You Tubing, the presence of these two concepts at work around you: content and process. Staff as well as students have uploaded a tremendous amount of content to this website in order to assist readers, like you, on their quest to obtain their MSW. Indeed, one could probably argue for better formats, clearer instructions, or more personalized services. This is a major transition and all of life could be a little more user-friendly. However, in the midst of it all, pause and reflect on these three suggestions regarding content. First, start with this obvious acknowledgement: I don’t know. Then relax and begin to find out by asking, exploring, and synthesizing all that you need to know. Store it in a paper or an electronic notebook. Second, recognize: There are things I don’t know I am supposed to know. Inhale deeply and exhale then address this by admitting it to the people that should. Get second and third opinions and write down their contact information. Call if you get lost or confused. Do so when you finally arrive or complete it all to say, “Thanks!” Lastly, know the outcomes, the skills, and the life you what to achieve. Do all the work—passionately, consciously, and relentlessly—to realize them. Yet, leave room and the possibility for spontaneity…for the miracles on 34th street to transpire. Like most universities, there are processes already at work: procedures, protocols, structures, departments, and deadlines. Don’t expect an evite requesting your attendance or action. Part of these processes are embedded and expressed in the content and the remaining lie in the interactions. Don’t be shy…you conquered kindergarten. Then, there is how you process it all. This will differ, in varying degrees, for everyone. However, we each can follow, support, alert, or lead the process in some form or fashion…even the ones here at the University of Maryland School of Work. My brothers and sisters Marx is still within our minds' reach. We can always mobilize to collectively challenge both the content and process. Then (re)build and behold “a brave new world.” …together in the struggle… …until next write… http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/03/for_those_who_have_ears_1.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/03/for_those_who_have_ears_1.html Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:25:22 -0500 place… The thrill of the first week, the first semester has, as B. B. King sang with the sway of the head and the stroke of the guitar, gone away. Since then I have been reflecting on my behavior and engagement, examining my fit and function in the classroom and beyond. This semester I am feeling out of place and awkward. My voice seems much louder than necessary, cracking and stretching at the corners: threadbare and thirsty. The sound never quite articulates the meaning. The words seem insufficient and the logic they hold unravels in midair. I raise my hand and lose the point I intended to make. I am reaching…reaching, in every sense of the word. I have tried out all these ideas and techniques, wore them like jackets from a thrift shop. I have traveled roads less and frequently taken. Felt dexterous, confused, challenged, hesitant, confident… Been gawked at, laughed at, criticized, and, even, complimented. My final destination, if there is one, has always been, will be somewhere “where the sidewalk ends.” As I try on and test out different ideas and techniques, I am mapping my way to and constructing the meaning of the what, where, who, and why of my life and career. It is like that song by Lauryn Hill: “I had to lose myself to love you better.” In that loss of self, in the loving, I am finding a fit, a place… …together in the struggle… …until next write… ]]> http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/02/goodness_of_fit.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/02/goodness_of_fit.html Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:58:25 -0500 I began January with intentions of being more creative, with an image I wanted to examine and express through oil pastels and rice paper. When the color touched the canvas, I still had not finalized how to capture or perceive this image or the ideas behind it. I sketched outlines and tore up several versions before deciding on a form and reaching a state of mind that would free the image as well as the ideas. As my hands moved across the canvas gluing and drawing, I knew, intuitively, that I had failed to give the piece a life all its own. I had hung too closely to what I thought it should be. I drove instead of being driven and did not accurately depict the mauve, turquoise, and cobalt pulsating and blazing within the sky. I looked at the picture I created and saw an image lost in translation, words waiting for a page of their own. I should have written this, sifted and shifted it until the sentences aligned themselves like the squares on a Rubik’s. I gained perspective. While sitting in class discussing paradigms the following week, I realized how art helped me to process and perceive life. Through the artwork, I had a media to give the images and ideas texture, dimension, and contrast. I could see it shaped in pastels and paper, provoking, portraying, and distorting. It was alive with meaning depending on the perspective. Similarly, a paradigm provides a lens, language, and logic for perceiving, speaking, imagining, interpreting, and acting. Each day in class, at field, and at night in the library, I am exercising my knowledge and use of paradigms, developing my skills as a clinician, an activist, and an artist. I am learning the many ways to process and perceive life. Whether through psychodynamic theory or oil pastels, a picture emerges that is accurate but misleading, beautiful but dangerous, whole but partial. There is always more to see, to know, another form it could take. What I once viewed mistakenly, I see clearly, burning and illuminating, like violet and sapphire, into a life all its own. http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/02/perspective_and_oil_pastels.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/02/perspective_and_oil_pastels.html Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:14:29 -0500 As I rummage and review the days that made up my first semester, the idea and the process of change dominates and undergirds all the memories and the madness. It was not so much the learning that filled and colored the bags beneath my eyes. However, I think it was the weight, work, and force of being transformed, of being changed and a change agent. Social workers rely on, among many other skills, theories, and practices, the conscious use of self. Through your time in the Master’s program, you refine, critique, study, embolden, and inform this conscious use of self. Like the transition from crawling to walking to driving, you fall and bruise your knees and bang into all sorts of things before you become competent, confident, reliable, stable, and precise. The process of changing, of growing, of applying can cause you to need, like a fussy and irritated two-year old, a nap and a break from it all. As I anticipate the upcoming semester, I list all the improvements I will make, the spices I will add to intensify, ignite, and unify the many flavors. Naturally, in life there are some experiences in which you should be, as much as possible, organized and prepared for. Then, there are others that you embark on or get pulled into that you live out—wildly, bravely, and full of mistakes—until you have reached… My time, since the very beginning, has encompassed both. All the adventures and assignments, friends and foes of the second semester are afoot. So I am off like Sherlock Holmes, like Jane Addams to engage in the struggle and it is not, by any means, elementary my dear friends… http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/01/retrospective.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2008/01/retrospective.html Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:14:09 -0500 From time to time, I will post some suggestions for readers to consider and to comment on as they plan their journey to and through graduate school. So for those who have ears, here are my ideas, for all its two cents of worth, about those “everyone recommends�? professors. Like in undergrad, there is, as we say on the island, the coconut radio, broadcasting, spreading, and connecting information and, of course, gossip (you know you tune in for it) to people. For listeners, you can found out those “everyone recommends�? professors, based on all different kinds of criteria. Before following these recommendations, I would read each professor’s biography first, located, for most of the professors, online. Look for what the professor’s field of expertise is in and other relevant information. Email them if you have questions about the syllabus or their teaching style. Know that your mandatory field placement days will limit the range of professors and classes you have to choose from. However, my ultimate suggestion, for those with the coconut radios tuned in, is to remember that as a learner you have considerable power and control over your educational experience. Your first thought might be to select the professor who only has one paper assigned rather than three. Regardless of the paper and even the professor, what you seek and expect to learn is what matters most. Learning, of course, is not just about being taught. It’s also about your own engagement with the material, with your classmates, and with your field placement. You have the power to direct the scope and depth of what you learn no matter who teaches it. However, you will not have time to learn it all in graduate school; that is not the goal. Attending graduate school is about you learning how to think, to critically analyze, and to research at a more advanced and self-directed level. It’s about you realizing that you’re the best teacher you will every have. …until next write… …together in the struggle… http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/12/for_those_who_have_ears.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/12/for_those_who_have_ears.html Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:06:12 -0500 On Monday, my roommates and I had our lets-give-thanks-dinner before we all departed our various ways. I got up, oddly, at 6:45am and baked a marble cake, using a recipe from The Cake Mix Doctor. It turned out moist but the almond flavor was a little too loud and overwhelming for me. Nonetheless, the dinner, of sweet potato casserole, cornbread, and string bean casserole, went well. We gave thanks, made a toast, and talked until I got up and went to the library. Instead of continuing this communing, celebrating, and feasting the reminder of the week, I will be working on three papers due, every last one, on December 3rd and getting a head start on my two finals. Of course, these papers and finals will determine if I will earn the coveted, for some students, A+. I must admit that I am one who has been coveting. I have been working like crazy proofreading, researching, note typing, studying, and talking with my professors in order to ensure I am meeting their standards and understanding the concepts. This, however, does not supersede or negate the fact that I am a person that can think critically and creatively outside of and against the status quo or the standard deviation. I am always the dangerous outlier—the artists with mighty Pentel ballpoint pen. Nevertheless, I am not the grader in this scenario. I will be happy with an A, but, until it’s over, I am fighting for my A+. So, who can really enjoy a second helping, or a first, with that battle looming in the background of the tofurkey and stuffing? I will warn you that when the work starts, it never seems to stop…there is no break…until the last day of the semester or field placement, which do not end, unfortunately, on the same day. You can let it go…go out on a Friday night…or go home for Thanksgiving. However, the work remains, accumulating alongside the leftovers and the dirty dishes. It’s doable but no less than a struggle, especially if you’re like me and strive for the A+ yet still know that it’s just a letter…�?full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.�? Enjoy! …together in the struggle… …wan love… http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/11/papers_and_tofurkey_dinner.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/11/papers_and_tofurkey_dinner.html Tue, 20 Nov 2007 10:48:02 -0500 American Idealist: The Story of Sargent Shriver. Shriver directed and developed many social welfare programs, such as Job Corps and Peace Corps. As a Peaceworker Fellow, I highly recommend attending. 7:00pm on November 15, 2007 @ The Patterson Theater at The Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, MD. • Unity Day sponsored by the Organization of African American Students in Social Work (OASIS). There will be food and discussions from 12:15 – 2:00pm on November 16, 2007 on the 3rd floor in the School of Social Work. • Baltimore Writers Conference at Towson University Union on November 17, 2007. Registration begins at 8:00am; check out this website for more information: www.towson.edu/writersconference. ..regardless of what you do, enjoy it…and if you're undecided, then turn to Fiona Apple, “If you don’t have a song to sing…You’re ok…You know how to get along humming…If you don’t have a date…Celebrate…Go out and sit on the lawn…And do nothing…Cause it’s just what you must do and…Nobody does it anymore.�? …in the struggle together… …wan love… …and until next write… ]]> http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/11/featured_presentation.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/11/featured_presentation.html Wed, 14 Nov 2007 12:59:46 -0500 amen! Life feels good and balanced as I walk back to the apartment with my roommate—talking, laughing, listening, and living in the moment. We each carry bags filled with fruits and vegetables. Often we commune together, sharing our culinary delicacies and catastrophes, our life narratives. However, it’s Sunday and I am beginning to ramble, to lose the day to daydreaming. We have all week, all year. So I’ll see you next Sunday by the Curry Shack at the Farmers’ Market. Look for me in the 70’s leather jacket a la Shaft. I’ll bring the milkshakes and you’ll bring the daydreams…we'll chat over samosas... …wan love… ...and until next write.... ]]> http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/11/the_farmers_market_on_sunday_m.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/11/the_farmers_market_on_sunday_m.html Mon, 05 Nov 2007 23:53:58 -0500 This month I feel like I’m truly in graduate school. Half-sleep, my body always remains posed to wake suddenly and wildly in order to write a paper or to complete a class reading. I’m multi-tasking in the bathroom, in the kitchen, on the way to class and field placement trying to get it all accomplished. I cannot remember an action or an idea that I have had that was not informed, influenced, or inhibited by the social work curriculum. Hallelujah when winter break arrives and I can finally relax and make buckwheat pancakes and watch Anime. I remember times like these when everything seems due and coming undone: the papers, the tests, the bills, and the engine in the car. I missed the Common concert here in B-more and have yet to fully pursue my artistic endeavors. Life feels crowded and teetering on the edge of things, posed for a flight or a fall. It was during these moments when we felt our lives were not our own, when my friend (waz-up Adia) and I would ride our frustrations, our tiredness, our hunger out in my red Kia. We would travel the city, picking-up all the forgotten, fragmented, and forlorn parts of ourselves. We would bob our heads—singing a bit, dancing a bit—to words like: “Keep on moving. Don’t stop like the hands of time…find your own way to stay…the time will come one day�? (Soul2Soul, 1989). Indeed, we would keep going towards our dreams, towards our future selves—smiling, laughing and rising almost off the ground. As I find my own way through the Ides of October, through midterms, research proposals and psychosocial assessments, I’m moving to these words by Prince: “Lady cab driver—can u take me 4 a ride? Trouble winds r blowin’, I’m growin’ cold. Get me outta here—I feel I’m gonna die�? (1982). If you find yourself stressed out, needing to rise almost off the ground, then join me: “...just put your foot on the gas--let's drive Let’s go everywhere. Help me I’m drownin’, mass confusion in my head. Will u accept my tears 2 pay the fare? Lady cabdriver, roll up your window fast. Lately trouble winds r blowin’ hard, and I don’t know if I can last�? (1982). http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/10/the_ides_of_october.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/10/the_ides_of_october.html Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:02:46 -0500 The reliability of their sound was no more valid than their meaning. An evidence of truth emerged that challenged the grammar of it, the measurement. I wonder if I’ve conveyed the meaning, but I remembered the science of it. I could test this, rewrite it and allow it to build upon itself. The words devolved and all that they contained got distributed dangerously and I became an outlier. I wondered if I’ve conveyed the meaning… I/we have encountered words that never erased completely from the page; like a phantom pain, they are haunting…hiding…flaring-up. The mark of the letter…the trauma from the noun…the idea is scarring, bleeding, out living the lie and disproving the text... until next write... wan love... and together in the struggle... ]]> http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/09/the_mark_of_the_letter.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/09/the_mark_of_the_letter.html Fri, 28 Sep 2007 09:02:09 -0500 What do you write when all your words read like endings…when the definitions refuse to contain the meanings…when the verbs conflict, irreconcilably, with the nouns…when it all sounds more past perfect than present? What do you say to begin…the beginning of us? I could tell you the obvious, provide a narrative of plot and character for the photo on this blog. I could describe an island home, the skin of backyard papayas, the homework I have not yet done…but that would leave no room for you…and this is about the beginning of us. So I will write as if these words contained much more than myself…as if this media could do much more than it has: the splice of the comma, the tense of the future, ourselves as metaphor. For those times when we reach the silence, the spaces that border the page, I will turn to music to carry us, doing the same old two-step, a few feet further…speechless and thirsty. We can ride, like Chapman, in fast cars and begin all over again. …together in the struggle… …wan love… …and until next write... B-more, MD http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/09/the_beginning_of_us.html http://blogs.targetx.com/umbssw/Chad/2007/09/the_beginning_of_us.html Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:20:57 -0500