For the past year and a half, I have been back in school. It was odd at first. I felt unproductive (and privileged as anything) as I listened to lectures and had intellectual conversations about how to "fix" the problems infesting our world. I felt overwhelmed by the influx of information that I tried to take in, concerned that I was only actually absorbing a small percentage of what was being tossed at me. I felt sad and I felt angry. I was back in school again and I couldn't process all that was happening.
So, I left school topics off the blog. I didn't talk about the devastation that privatization plans and structural adjustment policies have wrecked across Latin America. I didn't talk about the ineptitude of U.S. drug policies abroad and at home. I didn't talk about family therapy techniques that are often manipulating and condescending and gender stereotyping. I didn't talk about human trafficking and that's it's not just sex trafficking. I didn't talk about the broken refugee system we have and the power imbalance that is apparent based on the sole fact that the U.S. refuses to recognize gender violence as legitimate persecution. I didn't talk about how the local food movement impacts international markets and the foreign growers that have adjusted their product based on what U.S. consumers have demanded. I didn't talk about the trauma of intimate partner violence, the psychological scars that run deep and may not heal over time. I've taken 16 classes so far, I'm in 3 more currently, I'm completing all my clinical hours at an counseling agency, and I haven't talked about any of it.
And, well, that's going to stop.
Grad school and my internship are important pieces of my life right now and I'm not going to leave the hard topics out. So, things might get touchy around here. I'll probably say things that will offend people. But, I fully recognize that I'm a student, which means I'm not an expert. Which means that I don't have all the answers, so I welcome the dialogue.
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