Tag Archives: change

Perhaps the inside out raccoon had a point after all.

When Seth and I lost our baby two years ago, my fairy godmother (Aunt Susan, you’ve heard lots about her and even once from her before) booked a funky loft in Minneapolis for a weekend and we met up to drink wine and tea, talk and talk and talk some more, eat out and window shop, walk all the miles, and cry. To heal, really. I needed that weekend and it remains one of my most distinct and important memories from that very difficult time.

She loved me enough to buy me moscato with a perfect label. I’ve since matured and do rather fancy a buttery chardonnay these days.

One of the (many, many) things we talked about was how rare life changing moments really are. We often express consternation regarding tough decisions as a “fork in the road” — one direction or the other. While that’s not necessarily untrue, there are very few times when you can’t get yourself back to the other path by blazing a trail through the woods or, failing that, turning around and heading back to the fork.

I think the first time I truly understood that, the impermanence of the big things that seem like Forever Things was as I looked for employment after grad school. There was this pervasive and toxic idea floating around, in my head and in the halls, that leaving academia was permanent and irreversible. Only one of my professors had the nerve to voice that concern to my face – there’s no coming back to academia, he said.

Perhaps as an equal-and-opposite reaction, or perhaps just because I’d finally had it, I somehow found the nerve to boldly retort:

So, you’re telling me that if two years from now, I’m miserable and realize I made a huge mistake and desperately wanted to come back to the bench, you wouldn’t take me on as a post-doc, knowing everything I can do? And if not, you don’t think Ann or Alison would?

A head nod in response. Acknowledgement of a point well made. And it was. Even most really big decisions can be undone, someway, somehow, with time and patience and perseverance and the willingness to change, maybe even backtrack a bit if necessary.

Even so, the rare, permanent, life-changing moments do indeed exist. Miscarriage was one of them. And since that time and my conversation with Susan, I think about that concept often – how permanent is this? It’s a valuable perspective.

I don’t mean to say that we should take reversal lightly. Certainly not. Just that it’s ok to let go a little bit when something feels agonizing or unbearable. Even the pain of miscarriage, life-changing though it was, is malleable. I feel it changing shape inside me all the time.

So while the things that are truly life-changing are rare.. the moments that can significantly and drastically alter our worldview? Not so much. And in this season, I’m learning to pay attention to them.

Do you remember when I showed you a gruesome picture of an inside out raccoon hanging from an apple tree in my neighbor’s backyard with the intention of describing depression? If so, I’m sure you understood from my tone my general distaste for the whole neighbor situation. Other neighbors had said some things, my dog never took to them, so many dead animals, and the distinct pellet holes discovered in our siding this past spring all kind of conspired to paint a not-so-positive picture of these people in my mind and my heart. Little things, like the invitation to pick apples right from the tree last fall, helped a bit, but as for closeness? I didn’t see it coming and I didn’t really mind.

The neighbors? Good for pie filling. Seemed to be it.

But in just a moment, your worldview can change.

I came home from work early this afternoon so that Seth and I could head north for a Vonck family wedding in God’s Country – come 3 pm and it’s Marquette, here we come! But we had some things to do around the house first, including transferring our old grill to my in-laws’ vehicle for transport to my sister-in-law’s sweet deck in St. Croix Falls. The aforementioned (and more detailed than necessary) task completed, we headed to the backyard to inspect the “grass” filling in the spots dug up for our recent addition of drainage tile (hint: it’s 100% weeds – sigh – but at least there aren’t any more puddles!), and as we headed back to the front, our neighbor John discretely waved us over.

After saying goodbye to Seth’s parents in the driveway, we headed around the house once again and walked toward John’s small, beckoning wave. We weren’t exchanging pleasantries across the lot line or sharing words about the weather. We were receiving news. John’s 93-year-old mother had suffered a series of disabling strokes shortly after being released from the hospital for fluid accumulation in her lungs and legs. She’d been offered warfarin at discharge to reduce the risk for stroke, but had made a clear choice at that time. About what she was willing to sacrifice in terms of quality for the sake of longevity. And she’d repeated herself to her son in a variety of different ways and in no uncertain terms. Quality over quantity. She was ready and the intravenous fluids keeping her alive were removed to avoid prolonging her suffering without any hope for improvement.

We stood somewhere between our two backyards for a long time that afternoon as John recounted years of caring for his mother and described her gracious, giving, stoic character. He told us about the incredible compassion of the physicians he talked to and all the others providing care to his mother, and his family, in the hospital — nurses, technicians, food service staff, chaplains, and volunteers. Many of the same themes were repeated over and over, but none so often, or so accompanied by the threat of tears as the central question – did I do the right thing?

Here is a man agonizing over an irreversible decision. A true pivotal point. Seth and I listened intently, murmuring our so-sorries and of-course-you-dids. But he still hurt and we couldn’t do anything for him but listen. And we did. For a long while. The story and the questions and the murmurs over and over again. He needed good neighbors and we were as good as we knew how to be. Even though maybe on the inside I was reeling at the sensitivity and compassion and gentleness of this man I saw in a completely from-the-other-side-of-the-lot-line way for the past five years.

It was a rare and genuine life altering moment for him. It became a far less rare moment of change in worldview for me.

So, my neighbor loves to hunt and makes interesting decisions about which types of neighborhood wildlife he likes to feed vs. shoot. He has a neighbor (i.e. me) who can’t seem to stop her dog from barking and sweats excessively while mowing the lawn. I also have a neighbor going through a rough time and he has a neighbor willing to listen and say a small prayer for Antoinette Marie and her family.

Our lives don’t dramatically change in sudden and irreversible ways all that often. The decisions that cause us intense periods of stress and anxiety are rarely as permanent, or perhaps even as important, as they appear. But misconceptions, preconceived notions, and limited capacity for insight can change in an instant if we’re open to it.

John’s mother will pass away soon and he made the gut wrenching decisions to remove the support keeping her alive. Though destroyed in this moment, he holds fast to the knowledge that not only is he ultimately reducing her suffering, but that he is also respecting her wishes. In a moment, my life was altered by the absence of a heartbeat on the ultrasound monitor. But I can perhaps see in John’s moment a potential for a worldview in which I remember that, tiny though she was, I would have done quite literally anything to prevent my baby from suffering. Perhaps for both of us, that means letting go.

Validate meeeeeeee…

My cousin Tegan recently graduated from Michigan State with a degree in art and a minor in Mandarin. Because what normal English-speaking teen contemplating a minor in a foreign language doesn’t go for an ancient, tonal, character-based language over say, oh I don’t know, Spanish? Tegan, that’s who. Also, she’s an absolute self-taught wiz of a computer programmer. No bigs.

Clearly, Tegan chose a path. A weird path. And she absolutely excelled. That’s awesome.

Yesterday, though, I thought back to my (non-)role in some of those moments where she was deciding on a path and had to laugh a bit at myself as I thought about the concept of validation. You see, back when Tegan was maybe a junior in high school, she was basically good at everything and trying to figure out where to go with that — both school- and major-wise. Naturally, my dream for her was a four year tenure at Michigan Tech for a chemistry degree. Because of course that’s what a bright young woman should want to do. See how well it worked out for me?

Obviously, I had zero effect on Tegan’s choice (unless she was actually leaning toward a chemistry degree at Michigan Tech and my life somehow turned her off, but I choose not to entertain that possibility with any real seriousness), but I sure as heck could have been a lot more supportive and/or helpful. I could have said, “It’s a tough choice, dear Tegan, maybe we should talk about what lights you up… so what do you love? What beautiful things do you imagine for your future? Where do you feel at home? Do you want me to share with you how I made my choices?”

 

All of this came flooding back over lunch on Friday. I had traveled two hours north to Minocqua for a day long meeting and spent the brief lunch break chatting with Mike, a local pain psychologist. He said something about all psych folks being “fruit cakes” and I said that’s why I loved my psychologist so much — because he validates my crazy (good news: my grief process and dealing with depression appear to be normal as of Wednesday, also my injection of humor to serious situations is a good thing, sweet validation). Then… I’m not sure how we got on the topic, exactly, but Mike’s high school aged son is interested in a career in scientific writing (he sounds to be a grade-A introvert and super into learning, definitely a good candidate) and when I recommended a more scientific route (as opposed to a more English/writing-based approach), Mike mentioned that that was his son’s goal after having seen the husband of one of the local pediatricians perform some chemistry demonstrations at his high school.

Those chem demos? Performed by none other than my sophomore year p-chem lab partner from good old Michigan Tech, John (because small world). Ah ha! And I instantly started pushing — oh he’s just got to go to Michigan Tech for a chemistry degree, both John and I did, obviously the best of decisions. See!! Seeee!! Seeeeeeee?!?!

Validate meeeeeeee!!!

 

And in that record-scratching-to-a-stop-moment, probably because I had just admitted to requiring validation from my psychologist only minutes before, I recognized what I was doing. Did it stop me? No, I don’t think so. But it at least made me think about it. And how much I hated this very thing and yet, I saw it everywhere and all the time and I was guilty of it constantly.

I first recognized that need for validation when I was finishing up in grad school. I knew, like deep down in my weary bones knew, that I did not want to go into academia. I didn’t want to come up with the ideas or write the grants (ha) or run my own lab or be responsible for other people’s careers in a competitive, fund-limited field. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life studying one small thing. I wanted something different, something that used my talents and passions in a different way, but it was hard to even see any other options. Honestly, I’m just ridiculously lucky that I stumbled into scientific writing. I barely even registered it as a choice before coming across the job that I ultimately got. And when I did get it, people were pretty pissy with me — for opting out of academia, for going in not just a different direction, but the wrong direction.

I was mad about that for a long time. I wanted my professors to be proud of me, but as I walked away, I felt like everyone behind me was shaking their heads in disappointment instead. Then again, how could any of them know anything other than academia, the path they chose? And given that that was the case, how could I honestly expect them to encourage me otherwise? Who doesn’t like to be validated??? Who among us doesn’t honestly feel like they need it, especially when the choice they’ve made was a hard one? And no doubt, academia is amongst the hardest.

 

After the meeting in Minocqua ended, I got back in my car and drove south past home and all the way to Milwaukee for the annual Call To Action meeting. I made it just in time to hear Zach Wahls speak; you probably remember Zach as the eloquent young man who, raised by gay parents, went viral on YouTube after testifying in favor of marriage equality in front of the Iowa legislature a few years ago. That young man is now a few years older and a polished and professional advocate for equality and social justice. It was an amazing talk; many would disagree on principle. Similarly, this morning, I heard one of the most brilliant and prolific theologians of our time, Sister Joan Chittister, speak about the importance of the public intellectual for the evolution of social and institutional change; again, many would and do disagree.

And, in bringing these beautiful talks back to that idea of validation that I’ve been turning over in my mind, I’m left wondering: how much of this religious strife does validation account for? How much of that worry about the eternal salvation of that-guy-over-there-doing-the-wrong-thing’s soul is really a worry about the validation of our own???? I mean, if that guy is somehow doing the right thing, what does it say about my personal prejudices?

I don’t know the answer. Maybe it’s not at all. But it seems related. Like maybe most of our arguments against equality, change, growth, evolution might actually be about fear — about lack of validation for the status quo, for the habits, patterns, and beliefs we hold dear. Maybe instead, we should all consider saying what I should have said to Tegan all those years ago — you do you, whatever lights you up.

 

PS: I met Joan Chittister today. In person. So, yeah, that lights me up. No Mandarin necessary.

Meeting Sister Joan

I went to Aldi. It’s a bigger deal than you might think.

There’s an Aldi grocery store in the little city of Marshfield. I shop most most often at Festival Foods and I’ve been to the Pic N Save  and Super Walmart on a number of occasions for groceries, but despite frequenting the Menard’s right behind it and even the Applebee’s and Goodwill next to it, I’d never set food in Aldi.

About a year or so ago, Aldi put up a sign advertising open positions at a starting hourly rate well above minimum wage and Seth and I liked that– we thought maybe we ought to patronize Aldi to support their willingness to employ people for a living wage. And yet, month after month went by and I still hadn’t set a foot inside.

Why?

Honestly– because I was scared.

A grocery store is a ridiculous thing to be afraid of, I realize, but in addition to that bass (no treble!), I’m also all about that truth– and there you have it. I was scared to shop at Aldi.

Turns out, my fears were completely founded. I didn’t understand how the quarter-based cart release thing worked and stood there for what felt like an eternity (probably 45 seconds) trying to figure it out (think Zoolander, Hansel, and the computer), I somehow couldn’t find a pen in my purse (which contains pretty much everything else) so I couldn’t check items off my list which made navigating the unfamiliar store to find all of my items ridiculously challenging (up and down and up and down and up and down the same aisles over and over again– the store is not that big, I’m sure I looked like an absolute loony toon), and I didn’t understand how the after-the-fact bagging mechanism worked and was super confused by the ledge on the far well meant for bagging groceries after being checked out (also I dropped my bags on the floor not once or even twice, but three times– admittedly, that has nothing to do with Aldi and everything to do with me). So, basically, all of my fears came true– I didn’t know what I was doing, I was unprepared, I had a hard time navigating the store, and I looked stupid. (I did remember my debit card though– mini-win!)

Yet, here I am today. Surviving to tell the tale. The consequences of all my fears coming true? Negligible, save a bit of embarrassment, which in the grand scheme of things is pretty insignificant considering that I’m a 31-year-old woman walking around with two skinned knees and perpetually frizzy hair.

(I’m working on the frizzy hair though– I just brought the hair products that made Sister Athletic Trainer look this this!)

My hair was so huge I had to pin it up completely before we even went downtown-- Kayla's curls were perfection until the NEXT MORNING! Unreal!
My hair was so huge I had to pin it up completely before we even went downtown– Kayla’s curls were perfection until the NEXT MORNING! Unreal!

And after all of that, I will definitely be going back to Aldi again. Regularly. Because my grocery bill was ridiculously low AND I know that by shopping there, I am supporting a company willing that pays it’s employees a reasonable wage. But seriously, selfishly, the bill was so much lower. And the food, especially the produce, is just as good as any other store in town. (Ok, comparable to Festival, better than Pic N Save… I said it. I hate Pic N Save’s produce section. Hate it!)

All of that to say that Joan is right today. Right freaking on. Because change.

 “Change is the manifestation of our ability to grow and become.” –Anne Wilson Schaef

“I am still becoming: I am becoming myself — independent, different, free. Those are dangerous, unacceptable, qualities. They violate groupness. And yet, without this kind of change, can we possibly die adults? My problem is that this kind of change came so late and more in response to rejection than to process. But whatever the circumstances, the leap was worth it. I am not the person I was before. I am changed forever.” –Joan Chittister

Change is growth. And even little changes, little seemingly insignificant changes, like screwing up the courage to shop at a new grocery store, can be a big deal. Process, rejection, embarrassment and fumbling through– whatever the reason for change, change is growth. Growth is good.

Even though change is hard… and consequently, growth is hard. Worth it though, yes?

Especially because this particular change affected not only my actions (inexpensive groceries? heck yes!), but also my perspective– I saw a lot of predatory marketing at Aldi. Off-brand everything, but inexpensive Lunchables? That bothered me– those things are horrifying. It opened my eyes. And when I walked into Festival Foods immediately after completing my shopping trip at Aldi to pick up a few things I couldn’t find (and/or did not actually need, but wanted) I realized that I have definitely spent years paying the premium for appearance and space and little conveniences that are, all in all, not necessary.

Quite frankly, I’m lucky to have a choice of where I do my grocery shopping at all. A little gratitude never hurt anyone.

I recognize that it seems small, but to me… not so small.

 

Hopefully, when my hair changes, it will be small. Exaggerated WINK.

Oops, I forgot a title. Hence the 669. Weird. Fixed now. Still not a good title.

Kind of a rough day. But some days are like that. Even in Australia, or so they say.

Maybe Joan has something to perk me up a bit.

“We cannot afford not to fight for growth and understanding, even when it is painful, as it is bound to be.” –May Sarton

Understanding really can be painful can’t it. You can hope and wish and what not, but really understanding the landscape and where you fit into it can be tough stuff. Boo.

“When we grow enough to understand that we are at a dead end, then what? Is it time to be resigned or time to struggle for breath, for new life, with all our might? I always thought that life got quieter, more settled, happier as time went on. But that’s not true. On the contrary. We simply become more aware of what we’ve missed, what we’ve given ourselves to that was not worth the giving.” –Joan Chittister

We always expect quiet and a feeling of being settled. We may even get lulled into sense of complacency and the notion that things are as they should be, but alas– change really is the only constant. And as we grow more, understand more, we once again find ourselves becoming increasingly unsettled and unsure. Is this the right place? Am I truly dedicating myself to something worthwhile?

When the answer is no longer yes, then the fight for new life begins. And what a struggle.

I can appreciate the desire to become resigned, complacent. Sometimes the temptation is so strong, but the quiet is false. And deadly. I’d rather struggle for breath, I think. Push forward for new light. A chance to be re-rooted and to bloom again.

Growth and understanding may be painful, but the most worthwhile things in life usually are, eh?

W is for the Writing Center… and finding my special purpose. (Wink.)

I started working in the Michigan Tech Writing Center when I was a sophomore in college. I loved it there SO much– more than being an RA, more than rowing crew, more even than my actual major. I only worked 8 – 12 hours per week, depending on the semester, but those 8 – 12 hours were much more formative for me than any 15 – 20 credit course load I ever had.

The chem sci building-- where I basically lived for four years.
The chem sci building– where I basically lived for four years.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good that I learned chemistry and physics and math (except differential equations– what a waste! I couldn’t even get a date out of that class, though I tried…) and such. It’s probably even good that I learned some things about myself by being an RA (which super sucked, but led to meeting my husband, so…) and rowing crew (which made my back, arms, and legs crazy strong for the year I did it, but just ended up being too much– let’s be honest here, I’m no athlete). Those are the things that made me look different from the outside, paid for my room and board, and filled in the bubbles on the GRE, but I’ve got to tell you, they are not the biggest things. The most influential things.

The most influential thing was absolutely, hands down, 100% for definitely sure the Writing Center.

The Writing Center. At an engineering university? That caters almost entirely to the most technically-minded of the nerds? In the middle of no where? I mean… the edge of no where?

Yes. The Writing Center. At Michigan Tech. Which is all those things, but such a hidden gem. (I should really recruit for the Huskies, I love that place so much.)

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I’ve talked a little bit before about my boss in the Writing Center, Sylvia Matthews, and how absolutely amazing she was (is, to be sure). And I really think that it was she, Jill Arola, and Nancy Grimm and their ridiculously insightful ways of thinking, living, and educating that made it the special place that it was.

You see, in the Writing Center, it wasn’t so much about the grammar and the punctuation and the sentence structure and all the other technical aspects of writing that tend to give the vast majority of people either a headache or a panic attack. It was about understanding and being understood. About using words to do that. And the things I learned. Oy.

As part of working at the Writing Center, all of the coaches had to take a small, one credit course in which we discussed pedagogy and techniques and experiences and the like. At the end of every semester of “work,” we all wrote reflections about our experiences and what we had learned. I saved a couple of them. Not sure how exactly… they’ve definitely survived several major paper purges since I graduated in 2005, but listen to this one:

I can’t help but feel like this shows the the Writing Center is the place where I am supposed to be and the work I’m doing is important.

That was in 2004!

Pablo Picasso once said, “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”

Words, communicating with them… I think that’s my gift.

It’s not what I expected my gift to be. Nor is it what I thought it was or what I necessarily would have hoped for, but here we are. I think I finally found it.

It’s not like I just woke up one day in the recent past and liked writing or thought I was good at it.

No.

My “gift” found me a long, long time ago. The Young Authors thing-a-ma-jig at Lincoln (who remembers that big book? how good it felt to have your story “published”?) was always awesome for me in elementary school. I loved the Independent Study in English I did with my cross country coach, Mr. Moran, my sophomore year in high school… and even now I’m still proud of the essay I vaguely remember writing about Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles… no idea what it was about, but guys, it was good.

Later on, in college, I got this rave review on a biochemistry report:

An absolute pleasure to read, etc... yay yay yay! A+!
An absolute pleasure to read, etc… yay yay yay! A+!

Yep, kept that too. It made me feel awesome!

And I loved the writing center so so so much.

Yet, my brain, my logic, my ACT results and aptitude tests and interests had me convinced that it was science science science all the way. Science would lead me to success. I would cure something, help someone, do sciencey things and make the world a better place by being noticed, by making a big impact.

A little piece of me must have known that wasn’t true. Because if it were, I’d be a chemist somewhere… working at 3M, inventing polymers and interpreting spectra and such, because I could have done that after college. But it didn’t seem right. Something wasn’t fitting and I wasn’t happy. So I went to grad school… where I wasn’t happy… and tried to go to med school… but I realized that was a very expensive path to continued unhappiness… so I stuck it in grad school… and came to the end… and still wasn’t very happy with my options.

It took all that time for me to admit to myself that I didn’t want to be a bench scientist. I didn’t want to run a lab. I didn’t want to come up with new ideas and new ways to test them.

So what did I like?

Talking about it. Always. Telling other people about science, about medicine, about dinosaurs, about whatever.

Thankfully, the universe, powers that be, whatever, know better than I do… and ultimately I ended up where I am now, as a scientific research writer at a big clinic. Back in what is, essentially, a post-collegiate writing center! I’m finally in a place where I use my gift on the regular.

Well, half of it anyway.

The other half was definitely this blog.

An illustrative example for you…

At work, I say “epistaxis as a result of digital trauma…”

On the Internet, I say “nosebleed because you dug too deep. Get your fingers out of there. Geez.”

A different way of saying exactly the same thing. One gets published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings (hopefully) and the other makes someone laugh, but get it while they’re laughing.

And that’s the other half.

The things that makes me the happiest about writing now, at work and on the internet… and the thing that made me the happiest then, in the Writing Center… was the impact it had on people. And on me. Equal and opposite forces. An action and a reaction. Both things leaving the encounter changed.

At work, I help people make their science understandable and accessible. I cannot tell you how rewarding it is to see something in print, to get a funding notice for a grant… but most of all, to have an author I’ve previously worked with come back an improved writer. That’s the best best. (I’m talking to you, Dr. Kanth!) I learn about crazy things like deformed pancreases and what a vitamin D deficiency really does to your body (it’s not just rickets, yo)… I take that away, and someone takes something completely different away from me. A better technique for incorporating literature into a Discussion section, a modified sentence structure, a new way to format a table. Some little piece of communication.

It always happened that way at the Writing Center too. There was this kid one time, a freshman that I coached, and a professor made him cry in front of his entire class during the first week of school when he pronounced a word incorrectly. My heart broke for him. Absolutely broke. There was little I could actually do besides listen and encourage him and help him to communicate better. And seriously, by the end of the semester, he was volunteering to speak in front of the class. I’m not trying to say that was necessarily because of me, but I do know that he and I were both changed.

Here’s what I said about it on December 7, 2004 (Writing Center reflection style, again)–

I have been continually impressed with Jason this semester. He has determination and work ethic like no one I have ever met. I can say with confidence that having been faced with the same situation, I would have become very apathetic toward my work, sure that I could do nothing to please the teacher. I would have been very angry, but Jason never was. As much as I feel like I helped him to come out of his shell, he showed me the way that a person can handle difficulties gracefully. Through all of these difficulties, I am really glad that I got to be Jason’s coach.

And I think that maybe, just maybe, that’s what Picasso meant. When you give your gift away, this intangible gift that is the purpose of your life, you don’t lose anything. The little space you opened up is filled with something even better, something different and new and exciting. A new facet on your perspective. And the person who took that little piece of your gift away? They grow it– they grow it into something completely new, and different, and exciting inside themselves. Like planting a seed, or rooting a plant cutting.

At least, that’s what Picasso said means to me.

Communicating with words, erudite and crass, is my mission and my jam, my calling and my thang. I can do it for science, I can do it for life, I can do it for the twisted workings of my brain, and I can do it for others.

For others though, that’s my favorite part. I can brag about my sister-in-law if she’s having trouble doing herself (she’s always have trouble doing it herself– Sister Doctor just got the biggest honor you can get in all of medical school and tells people it’s “just” an organization thing. Sigh.). I can proofread and format a resume for someone who has lost a job. I can fix up a poster when someone panics a week before a conference. These are the things I can do. The gifts that I can share. Always something in return, of course, even if it’s just the satisfaction of having been able to do something when I would otherwise be helpless. And I like that so much.

The Writing Center helped me to find my special purpose… not the same special purpose that Steve Martin came across a little prematurely in The Jerk (Trista, let’s watch that this weekend! trip to Family Video!), but a special purpose in the sense that his mom really meant it. I couldn’t have done what I do now if I hadn’t pursued all of the sciences, so I’m glad that I did the chemistry degree and the grad school with all the STDs and the like, but at the time, science was always the goal. Not so, it turns out! The Writing Center was to be the place I circled back to, in another form, yes, but the same idea. I work with authors with all ranges of education levels, backgrounds, accents, talent and skill levels on far more topics than I could ever possibly fully understand, but regardless of all that– I help people get their words out, to be heard, to share, and in return, I am constantly changed.

It’s funny that way back in 2004, I worked so hard with other Writing Center coaches to present on what we called “The Ripple Effect” at a writing center conference… but only as an abstract and beautiful thing that I mostly hoped would happen. Good news: it did. It does. Always.

Here we are at that sweet writing center conference-- Sylvia right in the middle :)
Here we are at that sweet writing center conference– Sylvia right in the middle 🙂

Well… this is awkward. I go searching to find a link to take you to the Writing Center website and find out it’s now called the Michigan Tech Multiliteracies Center. Makes sense. Still in Walker 107. A rose by any other name, I guess! More importantly, M for Multiliteracies is basically just an upside-down W for Writing… so… we’re good.

Oh wait... apparently I did know. I took this picture when I was there for Winter Carnival in 2012. Well then...
Oh wait… apparently I did know. I took this picture when I was there for Winter Carnival in 2012. Well then…

Ripples, Spirals, and, of course, STDs

As an undergraduate, I worked as a coach in the Michigan Tech Writing Center.  It was pretty much the greatest place on earth I could possibly have worked and I’m relatively certain that I learned as much from working there as I did from every other class I took and experience I had during those four years combined.  It was a truly incredible experience, thanks in large part to the most amazing boss and leader I could every have imagined– Sylvia Matthews.  She is a quietly brilliant and beautiful woman, inside and out.  Her inability to be anything but genuine and sincere was, quite frankly, breathtaking, and I enjoyed every single moment I spent working for her.

My senior year, Sylvia took a couple of us coaches to the Midwestern Writing Center Conference in St. Cloud, MinnesOta, where the theme had something to do with water.  I can’t remember exactly what it was, but we put together a poster-style presentation where we discussed what we termed “The Ripple Effect” and shared some of the resources we had developed for working with international students in our center.

The ripple effect was essentially what it sounds like– like you drop a pebble in a pool of water and watch the waves spread out from that central point, making a change, even in yourself, will spread out from you in every direction and change the minds, hearts, and lives of those around you.  It was such a beautiful and simple idea and we really made it our mission in the Writing Center that year– to continually effect and be affected by change in others.

When I went to grad school, I moved away from writing and focused instead on infectious disease for 6 years, and interestingly, microogranisms seem to promote change in the same sort of way– primarily horizontally.  True, there are some infections that can be transmitted vertically (especially STDs!– gonorrhea? check… chlamydia? check… herpes? check… HIV? check… need I continue?), or from parent to offspring, but the most effectively spread pathogens spread horizontally from person-to-person-to-person… think the common cold, influenza, or norovirus on a cruise ship.  (Or even the primary spread of STDs– its horizontal, no matter how you look at it.  Ha!!)

And I heard the same sort of idea again when I heard Sister Miriam Therese Winter speak at the CTA conference a couple weeks ago.  She talked about ideas moving most effectively through the world in a spiraling pattern… not so much from the top down or the bottom up, but from person to person to person from the center out in a spiral pattern.

Recurring life theme?  I think so.

Sr. Miriam’s point was so beautiful.  She talked about how the divine, the Holy Spirit, the good, whatever you want to call it, is inside everything and everything is simultaneously inside the divine.  Those good things inside you can spiral outward to others, and the good things you are part of can simultaneously spiral back in to you.  Lovely, right?

It’s especially lovely when I think about how this has happened in so many ways throughout my own life.

Let’s start with the Writing Center, shall we?

I met my friend Ming in the Writing Center.  He was a brilliant mechanical engineer working toward his PhD… yet we spent most of our time talking about vegetables.  Vegetables!  Because he knew all the English words for building materials and other fancy technical terms, but he couldn’t match the produce he was seeing in the grocery store to the names on the signs above and therefore, couldn’t tell how much something cost… which was troublesome for a grad student on a budget.  So I brought in pictures of vegetables and we talked about their names, among other things.  It was so much fun!  He told people I saved him from starving to death (ha…), but he taught me a whole lot more than that.  Ming became my friend and accented English stopped bothering me in the slightest.  In addition, I dropped my prejudice against Asian accents, which was important for me… I had a preconceived notion that Asian accents were harder to understand than European accents.  How wrong I was! (Finnish was definitely the toughest for me, by far.)  And that, for me anyway, is true to this day.  Ming and I were both changed.  And I never miss the opportunity to work on understanding a new and exciting accent, foreign or otherwise.  (I live in Wiscahnsin now, dontchaknow!)

Likewise, things changed me and I like to think that I changed things in grad school.  No, I didn’t spread STDs (to any humans, anyway), but I did try to spread my thoughts about the importance of studying STDs for the sake of women’s health.  I remember sitting on the end of a dock on Clear Lake in Tomahawk one summer day with my aunt-in-law whom I barely knew at the time– we were chatting and catching some rays when she asked me about my work.  I talked (at length, of course) about gonococcal and chlamydial coinfection and my model and what it meant and blah, blah, blah and infertility blah… when she stopped me and said, “But if someone had gonorrhea and chlamydia maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to have kids– what kind of mother would they be?”  Or something along those lines… I explained that it doesn’t seem quite right for a responsible woman ready to start a family to have to continue suffering from an unfortunate mistake made at the age of 16.  Everyone makes mistakes, after all.  She liked my point, and I felt really good about making it.

And most recently, Sr. Miriam reminded me to keep it up– to keep dropping pebbles in the pond, to infect infect infect, and to send my love spiraling outward at every opportunity.

Seth helps me make waves these days!
Seth helps me make waves these days!

(Don’t worry– I left the STDs behind in Maryland…)