crookedfangs:

nautiscarader:

bebethsas:

*gestures to self* What am I???

see, I don’t know where I fit, generation-wise . I’ve recently learned that I was born on the cusp of Millennial/ Gen-Z. I’ve identified as a millennial for ~the last decade. I’m the baby of the Millennial generation, butalso the oldest for Gen-Z-ers.

*gazes down at open palms in awe* what do I do with this power?

You are clearly the chosen one. The prophecised hero, who is destined to unite the two young generations in common fight against the Karens of the old. You just need to find a quirky sidekick or two and lovable and merchandisable mascot and you’re ready to go.      

*whispers*ohmygod I’m the chosen one

nah, no merchandise, down with capitalist regimes, eat the rich.

lovablemascot, however, I can get behind

(to better explain my…hybridness: I remember VCRs and how they worked as well as that time in the 90s when McDonalds commercials were so saturated in color that you wanted to take a bite out of the TV screen, and when you could buy blank VCR cassettes at the grocery store. But I also remember when iPods and iPod-nanos came out, and they only played music (and I also remember the first ‘app’ game I played on an ipod–it was solitaire, and you ‘swiveled’ from card to card using the volume wheel), and when Blackberries were important. And I still have my 1st gen iTouch–and it still *works*. I don’t remember 9/11 but I remember the burst of patriotism that came with it in my childhood. I vaguely remember the world before social media, when the computer didn’t really have an internet and was a closed-off device that the whole family had to share.

I remember when Star Wars: Episode II came out and it was a Big Deal.

I remember when American Girl Dolls cost less than $100 each.

I even remember seeing those paper water cups with the turquoise and purple pattern on them.

I remember when ‘Soak Up the Sun’ was seemingly always playing on the radio.

I remember when I was introduced to YouTube by my best friend b/c she wanted to show me a deleted scene from HSM2 on it, about a couple months after the movie came out–oh yeah I also remember the High School Musical franchise (as well as other hit Disney Channel movies) hitting my pre-adolescent classmates like a freight train. I also remember when movie theaters were *packed*, and how Skittles used to taste before they changed the flavor *and* before they got rid of the lime ones in the Originals bag. Man, I miss how skittles used to taste…I think they changed the recipe in America.

in short: I remember VCRs and how to use them and how to prevent your recording from being taped over, but I also know how to properly frame my face on my laptop camera for a video chat.

thank you for coming to my TEDTalk on: Things I Remember.

*gestures to self* What am I???

see, I don’t know where I fit, generation-wise . I’ve recently learned that I was born on the cusp of Millennial/ Gen-Z. I’ve identified as a millennial for ~the last decade. I’m the baby of the Millennial generation, butalso the oldest for Gen-Z-ers.

*gazes down at open palms in awe* what do I do with this power?

Los rebeldes de hoy, serán los visionarios del mañana.

Me, after posting my first video to TikTok.

My experience (with too many people).

Full size (and more) here.

Motorcycle Meditations

In January 2019, UCLA published a study (in partnership with Harley-Davidson) cataloging the numerous health benefits of riding a motorcycle.

Research Highlights:

●    Riding a motorcycle decreases stress by 28% 

●    Similar to light exercise, a 20-minute ride increases heart rates by 11% and adrenaline levels by 27%

●    Compared to driving a car, focus enhances while riding a motorcycle (at levels comparable to meditating)

●    Increased alertness in participants’ brain activity while riding

As motorcyclists, we’re already aware of the advantages of opting for two wheels. We throw around phrases like throttle therapy. We stand by the claim that “four wheels move the body — but two wheels move the soul”. We swear that “you never see a motorcycle parked outside of a psychiatrist’s office.” 

But my question is: 

Why?

Why does motorcycling decrease stress?

Why do two wheels increase your focus?

In this day and age, it’s hard to do one thing at a time. We’re often watching Netflix while scrolling through Instagram, reading an email during a meeting, or worse yet, texting while driving. But on a motorcycle, if you’re not focused on doing this one thing, it can cost you everything. 

When I’m on the bike, I don’t worry about my bills or stress over workplace drama. I don’t ruminate over the past or get anxious about the future. I don’t let anything distract me from the now. 

I’m focused.  I’m aware. I’m present. 

Psychologists refer to this state of mind as flow.Flow is when all your energy goes into one activity and everything else falls away. It’s that sensation when you become fully immersed in what you’re doing. If you’re a painter, it’s when you paint. If you’re a writer, it’s when you write. If you’re a motorcyclist, it’s when you ride. It’s those rare moments in life when your thoughts and your actions are one, and that’s the best part of motorcycling — losing yourself in it.

In the saddle, I tend to lose track of time.  For that reason, I refuse to set the clock on my bike’s instrument cluster. As I see it, I don’t want an excuse to take my mind off the road. I don’t want to feel rushed because that’s when mistakes occur. Yes, I could be late to work — and I have been — but it’s better than being injured or dead. After all, worrying about time (or anything else) would take me out of the nowand we could all use more now in our lives.

Today, we’re often in two places at one time. We sit at a dinner table with our significant other and scroll through our feeds—separately. Our bodies are physically present, but our minds are elsewhere. It seems that we’re always wanting something other than what is currently in front of us.

German Philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, believed that people go through life with an endless striving for more (I want a new car. I want a promotion. I want a better-looking spouse. etc.). Pessimistic as that sounds, he also felt that humans could find “freedom from suffering” during the moments when they’re captivated by beauty. 

If you’ve ever looked out over a great landscape (Yosemite Valley, Grand Canyon, etc.), you know the feeling. If you’ve ever thoroughly enjoyed a piece of music, you know the feeling. If you’ve ever found yourself completely immersed in a movie, you know the feeling. Well, for me, I find that feeling in motorcycling. 

The dangers of motorcycling indeed deter most people from taking up the sport and I understand that outlook. For instance, mountain climbing seems like a dangerous activity to me. You’re suspended thousands of feet above the ground with your life dangling from ropes and carabiners. However, for climbers, the rewards outweigh the risks. 

By concentrating on finding the next foothold or transferring weight appropriately, mountain climbers immerse themselves in the experience. In those moments, the prospects of death recede because they feel most alive. Similar to mountain climbing, injury and death are imminent threats with motorcycling, but it’s that threat of danger that forces riders to focus on the task at hand.

Yes, UCLA and Harley-Davidson have the percentages and figures to link riding and mental health, but they’re concentrating more on the what and I care more about the why. With Millennials valuing mental health, it’s a creative, forward-thinking approach for a company that’s historically conservative. 

However, I wish there was more emphasis on the subjective experience as well as the objective data. After all, it’s hard to measure beauty with percentages and figures. In the end, this study aims to coax potential new riders into taking the leap but they need more context than just hearing, “motorcycles make you happier.” Hopefully, my explanation helps illustrate the point that Harley and UCLA are trying to make, and as a result, more people take to two wheels.

So let me start off by saying I turned 26 last week, which for most people in America who are dependent on their parents’ health insurance means that I no longer have health insurance. I didn’t feel like my 26th birthday was worth celebrating. I felt like this whole year was just another year of me being broke, miserable and struggling because I can’t find a full-time job or just a job that doesn’t make me suicidal. I haven’t been able to find a permanent full-time since I graduated college. I recently had to quit my job because it was making so miserable that I was contemplating killing myself. I had been applying for jobs the whole year while I was working there and hadn’t found anything and I still haven’t secured a new job. It’s been over a month since I quit. 

Why I Quit My Job

I got a job with a volunteer/leadership organization that I used to be in when I was in high school but the program changed a lot. The program director that was there when I was in high school left and one of the previous facilitators took over. 

I was assigned to be a group leader at the program. I worked for the summer camp and for the time being, it was a full-time job. The first troubling thing about the job is that we didn’t get our paychecks until almost a month after we started working. And since the program director already knew me, I was just starting and hadn’t made any complaints about it, she actually loaned me some money to get through the weeks that we weren’t getting paid. I also actually thanked her for letting me know about the pay delay because I had just quit a job that never told us when there was going to be a delay in pay (they just waited for us to check our bank accounts and notice that our checks weren’t in there). Anyway, when I got paid, I had to pay her back. 

The second issue I had with my job was the youth worker (my assistant) that was assigned to me. Every week, we had to have planning meetings to decide what we were going to do on days where we had a few hours to kill before and after trips and other activities. For the first few weeks, even though he knew that we were supposed to be having these meetings, he wouldn’t show up. And then on other days, he would try to leave an hour early even though we were supposed to be preparing for the following day. He was constantly breaking rules, especially in regards to how we’re supposed to conduct ourselves with the kids. We’re not supposed to yell at them no matter how bad their behavior is or (of course) touch them. We’re supposed to pull them aside to speak to them and if that doesn’t work, write them up and report them to their parents and the program director whenever they have behavior issues. Instead of doing that, he would constantly yell at them. And every time I pulled him aside to tell him that we weren’t supposed to yell at these kids, he then yelled at me in front of the kids, telling me that he knew what he was doing. And because of this, the kids didn’t feel comfortable talking to us about anything, him in particular. There was an incident where one of our kids and a kid from an older group were arguing in the cafeteria during lunch. I asked my kid what happened. It took a while for him to tell me because he was really upset but he eventually told me that the older kid stole his hat and in return, he stole something of his and then they got into an argument because of it. I told the two boys to return each other’s belonging to each other and then asked the older boy’s group leader to take him back to their table. I then spoke to my kid and told him that the next time someone or something is bothering him to come to one of us and tell us instead of taking matters into his own hands. He told me that he didn’t trust the youth worker because he never listened to him. So I told him to come to me then. So after that, he calmed down. Then here comes the youth worker to ruin what I had just fixed. He yelled at the kid and stole some food off of his tray. 
I complained to the program director about his behavior and she didn’t do jack shit about it. She had a couple of conversations with him but apparently, nothing she said to him clicked. I don’t know what lies he told to her but once, she even pulled us into a meeting and basically told me that I just had to suck it up and learn to deal with him because I have to learn how to deal with people with different personalities.

The third issue was when the program director told the youth worker that the location for one of our trips had been changed and not only did he neglect to tell me but we wound up going to the wrong location. Now that wasn’t the biggest deal. I personally didn’t care that he screwed up, all I cared about was just getting to where we were supposed to go as soon as possible. I called the program director after contacting the educators at the location and she asked to speak to the youth worker. Instead of owning up to what he did, he started yelling at her over the phone. Why she didn’t do anything about disciplining him after that, I don’t know. Also, whenever we go on trips, we’re supposed to participate in whatever the educators are having the kids do. If the kids are being asked to work on an activity, staff are supposed to either help them or work on it too. The youth worker knew this and even after I reminded him, he never did this. All he did was hang out with the SYEP workers who got assigned to us. Our boss noticed this too and had a conversation with us separately about this. She told me to make sure that they were all doing their jobs and not hanging out because as the group leader, I was supposed to supervise them. 

At some point, all the stress of the youth worker not doing his job and me constantly having to fix his mistakes, and dealing with the kids and their problems and having to plan a lot of the activities for the kids on my own and having to deal with my boss not really being much of a help took a huge toll on me. While I was still at work on our way back from a field trip, I started feeling parts of my face going numb. Then when we got back, my arms started going numb and I started getting a migraine. I took some Advil for it but it didn’t do anything. When I got on the bus to go home, it started getting so painful that I started crying. When I got off the bus, the numbness was spreading throughout my body and I was beginning to fear that I was having a stroke. I had just learned last year that my piece of shit deadbeat father has a genetic disease called CADISIL that causes strokes and I started panicking because I thought that I had this disease as well and that it was causing meto have a stroke. I frantically called my mother, struggling to use my phone because I couldn’t feel or move my hands and fingers. When I finally got on the phone with her, I told her what was going on and then she told me to call an ambulance and call my girlfriend to see if she could meet with me before the ambulance came but she wasn’t answering. Oh, also, did I mention that it was pouring raining while this was happening to? And since I living in a poor neighborhood, if there was anyone around to see me lying down on the park bench in the rain and freaking out, they’d probably think I was crazy and refuse to help me. So eventually, the ambulance arrived and the EMTs told me that I was having a panic attack. I’m so glad that it wasn’t a stroke. When I got to the hospital, eventually my mom, her boyfriend and my girlfriend eventually arrived. It took an hour or more for someone to see me and the ER wasn’t even that packed. 

The following morning, I called my boss to tell her about what happened and that I wasn’t coming in. My group was supposed to be going on a trip that day and I texted the youth worker to tell him that I was in the hospital the night before and that I wasn’t coming in. I told him to make sure that he had everything he needed for the trip. This asshole tells me “that’s your job.” I swear, if I was a different person, I would have called him, cursed him the fuck out, then called my boss and told her that I can’t deal with him anymore and quit right then and there. But me, trying to being professional and act like the smart educated person that I’m supposed to be, called my boss and told her what he said to me. She told me that she would deal with it and told me to get some rest. After that, I went back into my room and went to sleep. 

A week or so later, my boss calls me into the office to tell me that she received some phone calls from parents whose daughters complained that he was touching their hair and instead of dealing with the consequences of his inappropriate behavior with these girls, he quit. I don’t remember how many times I complained about him to my boss, from the many times I complained to her about him yelling at me, the times I complained about him not showing up to planning meetings, to that one time he made fun of one of the girls who was experiencing menstrual cramps (must take a big man to make fun of an 11 year old girl on her period) and the times when he just straight up wouldn’t do his job, like literally sit around doing nothing while I was facilitating an activity with the kids and he was supposed to be helping me. She should have fired him before things got to the point where he was borderline molesting a child. My friend who later worked with me at this place told me that I should report her to her boss for this but honestly, after working in this hell-hole, I don’t want to have anything to do with this place anymore. 

So after working for this place during the summer, I reluctantly returned to this job for the school year. It was less hours (about 20 a week) and was after-school only. I was also told that we would be working some weekends and that it was going to be a lot easier than working at the summer camp. Since I still hadn’t been able to get a job anywhere else, I accepted. 

When the program began, it was ok for the most part. It was a lot slower than the summer camp. The weekly schedule was a lot easier to follow since any field trips we would be taking were on the weekends and not during the week and we remained on site pretty much every day unless there was an event going on or we had projects to work on off-site and we were to participate. One of the problems that arose in the first few weeks, however was that half the staff from the summer left so it was only three of us working there; me, another group worker and an activity specialist who was mostly responsible for helping with the general running of the program whether he had to act as a group leader, youth worker or whatever needed to be done. 

First issue of working for this place during the school year: Lack of staff. Me and these 2 other staff were saddled with so much work after the start of the program. There was just too much to do. Before my boss hired an administrative assistant, we were responsible for most of the administrative work on top of having to supervise the kids every day. So a typical day would go as follows:

2:30-3:15- Arrive at program, grab the attendance sheets, set up the classroom for the kids (getting water jugs and cups) creating a lesson plan for the day’s activities and prepping for those activities, and getting them approved (on STEM and club days), if we get any parents coming to the program during this time to enroll their children or ask for information, we had to help them if my boss was busy, make copies of permission slips, attendance sheets or anything our boss needed us to make and also watch the kids. There was so much work to do during this time of the day and during closing that we often got in trouble for not getting things done on time or not all because there was barely enough time and we were understaffed.

3:15-3:45- The kids are supposed to do their homework at this time. But because these are middle-school students whose parents don’t do enough to discipline them, they pretty much neverwanted to do their homework and would often to lie to staff about not having homework. We were also supposed to tutor the kids if they were struggling. If they claimed to not have any homework, they had to read a book–which they also never wanted to do. So if my boss ever walked in and saw them doing nothing, whichever staff was watching them–which was usually me, would get in trouble. Getting these kids to do anything was like pulling teeth and it only got worse as time went on.

3:45-4:15- Check-In, Snack and Ice-Breaker games. At this time, we asked the students to stop doing their homework (whether they were finished or not–which created a problem with some of the parents) and join staff in the circle. I handed out snack to the kids who were the quietest and who were cooperating first and then to everyone else last. Sometimes I made the mistake of having the kids come up to me for snack because they would grab extra–as if I wouldn’t notice when they were only supposed to have one. And when I asked them for the extra back, they refused and hid it somewhere. Also, sometimes, they would tell me that they didn’t want snack and then later on the day when I wasn’t supposed to give out anymore, thenthey decided that they wanted some and got mad at me when I refused to give it to them. I also had kids from the other group sneak into the kitchen to steal snacks whenever they lied to me, telling me that their group leader said that they could have snack when they couldn’t. That was always super frustrating. The activity specialist and I conducted check-in with the kids. We asked them how their day was and ask them a random question to learn more about them such as “if you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?” Best case scenario, every kid answered the questions and we actually learned something about them. Worst case scenario, they didn’t feel like answering. The activity specialist usually came up with the games and the kids typically enjoyed them and I would help make sure everyone was participating. I enjoyed playing games with the kids too.

On Mondays we had fire drills at this time. I basically put myself in charge of making sure we did this every Monday because there were times that we forgot about this and got in trouble. Basically, before or after check-in, I would remind the staff and the kids about the fire drill. If it was cold outside, we told the kids to put their jackets on. Then the activity specialist would blow his whistle to silence the kids, and I would lead the kids out of one of the emergency doors. The kids were supposed to be quiet and stay in line but they almost never did unless the activity specialist told them to because they all respected him. I constantly had to tell the kids to stop talking, stop touching each other and to stay in line but they never listened to me, even when I threatened to tell the program director or revoke privileges from them. I hated doing fire drills because of that.

4:15-5:15/30- We had our activity for the day, usually STEM or a club once we created clubs. I was usually the one in charge of STEM activities or whatever lesson we had for the day. Beforehand, I would have gotten the supplies ready for the activity and all I would have to do is get up in front of the class and explain the activity of the day. I would then present a few examples of how the activity could be done (showing them images of projects done by other kids or sketching things out on the board). The activity specialist would then help me distribute supplies and then help me make sure they were doing what they were supposed to do. I would also walk around and help students if they needed it. We also had to take pictures of the kids while working. Some of them didn’t like this. I actually had a girl stick up her middle finger at me while I was taking a picture of her and her group. Mind you, these kids’ parents signed a release form saying that we were allowed to take photos of them so these kids should know that from time to time we had to take photos of them. Some kids usually refused to participate during the activities and I would have to speak to them about why this was and usually their response was “This is boring,” “I don’t feel like it” or “I don’t like the people in my group.” When the kids were done, we asked them to clean up. Most of the kids did this but we always had that 2/3 kids who thought they were special and didn’t need to clean up. At the end of the day, I always made a mental or physical note to myself about calling their parents but there were times when I didn’t have enough time to. 

5:30-5:45- My favorite part of the day, dismissal. After we cleaned up, we sat them down and made announcements to them about upcoming events and trips, asking them for permission slips and other documents they had to turn in and reminding them about rules. After that was done, we dismissed them. There was this one older kid who, for some reason, though that he never had to leave with the other kids and stuck around to hang out with us. He was a good kid but since he was the oldest, he always thought that he was allowed to hang out with the adults. Eventually, this got us in trouble. 

5:45-6:30- Administrative Assistant work. Whatever didn’t get cleaned up in the classroom when the kids were dismissed, I had to clean up, which was a pain in the ass because most of these kids don’t know how to clean anything or sometimes would refuse to clean. They would leave garbage and crumbs every where, especially in the back where we had a rug and a couch (we had to ban them from this space for some time because of that). And sometimes there was so much to clean that I didn’t have enough time to call all the parents I was supposed to call for behavioral issues or trip/event reminders. I also had to make sure that all the windows were closed, the emergency door for my classroom was locked and that all the tables were clear. Once I was finished with that, we had to call parents of the kids who were absent to ask them why they were absent and then fill out a form of explanations. We also had to call parent to let them know about field trips ahead of time and to ask if they had filled out permission slips and told them when they were due. We also had to enter in the contact information for any new kids that we got. If we had time, we also had to use this time to create lesson plans and to decorate the classrooms for the season or upcoming holiday or event. Sometimes my boss would ask us to do a bunch of other tasks during this time as well like making copies or she would ask me to make fliers. 

A Lot of The Kids Had Serious Behavioral Issues 

At it’s mildest, their behavioral issues are mostly the kids not wanting to participate in any of the activities, talking back to staff and giving us an attitude. And since I was the newest staff, it was even worse with me. Since they didn’t know me very well and I was new, they thought that they didn’t have to listen to me.

I had worked with kids for 6 years, grades K-12 and never had any serious issues with any of the kids that I have worked with. I sometimes got 1 or 2 kids with attitude problems but whenever I sat them down and spoke to them, they usually turned around. But with these kids, that would never work. Over the summer, the same kid I mentioned who started an argument with some kid who stole his hat and I spoke to him about coming to me with his issues instead of taking it into his own hands, he never listened to me. Until the last month that I was working at this place, he was still getting into fights with other kids instead of telling staff. And I told him that because he refused to tell staff about someone bothering him instead of fighting, he was going to be in trouble. He just couldn’t get it through his skull. And I know that these kids are in middle school and they’re in that stage of life where they’re between being a child and a teenager and they’re challenging their boundaries with adults but I still feel like a lot of their behavioral issues can be curtailed with some guidance from their parents…or not. Maybe this current generation of middle school kids where I’m from just feels that entitled to doing whatever they want without accepting the consequences. And all the staff I’ve worked with at this place feel the same way. Oh, and it only gets worse…

These kids started physical fights with each other all time–at least once a week or multiple times a month, we had several major incidents with the kids getting into physical altercations and these are only some of them…

-This girl was sitting behind this boy and she kept touching him. I told her repeatedly to stop and to change her seat and she refused. The boy got up and punched her square in the face.

-While we were working on an activity, these two boys started insulting each other. While one boy said that he was joking, the other boy didn’t take it that way. I was trying to help the other kids who were actually participating and there was no other staff in the room at the time because understaffing. The two boys starting hitting each other. Thankfully, the activity specialist happened to walk in and he saw them fighting and helped me break them up. The boy who threw the first punch was later suspended from the program because of this. 

-These two girls in the program who claim to be cousins (this was never proven) were constantly getting into fights with each other because, apparently, when they’re not in the program, they act like they’re best friends but when they’re at the program, one of them never wants to have anything to do with the other. One day after program, the smaller younger one allegedly pushed the older larger girl into a wall (we never saw a single scratch on her so we didn’t know if this was true). Then the larger, told girl retaliated by pushing her into the wall back. She came into the program after we had dismissed them and showed us a large bloody gash on her hand. After that, we suspended the older girl from the program. 

I also had a lot of kids give me an attitude, curse me out or flat-out ignore me. It ranged from me saying “hi” to a kid and them not saying anything back to me to a kid cursing at me or physically shoving me around. 

I finally got a youth worker to help me during the winter and he was awesome. He was great with the kids and he always helped me prepare for the day–the complete opposite of the asshole who worked with me over the summer. But, even with his help, the kids were still misbehaving. After working with us for only a week or two, he told me that these kids were terrible. He works with teenagers with serious behavior issues and problems at home who are still in middle school because of these things and he told me that these kids were worse than them-because they have supportive parents and they go to decent schools yet they make every excuse in the book as to why they can’t or don’t have to do what they need to do. He was also studying child psychology. I was relieved to know from someone who is actually studying to be a professional in this field confirmed my gripes about working with these kids. And I thought I was strict with these kids at times but he was even stricter than me when it came to dealing with their behavior issues. Whenever a kid acted up, I usually gave them another chance to change before reporting them. He on the other hand reported them right away. He was 0 tolerance. And one day, one of the kids, the girl who gave another girl a bloody gash on her hand after pushing her, cursed us out because she wasn’t participating in an activity and all we were trying to do is try to figure out what was wrong with her. He threatened to report her when she refused to talk to us and then she started going on a tirade, calling us “bitches” and “dick-riders” among other disgusting insults. My boss reprimanded her and suspended her again for a few weeks–which I think was a slap on the wrist but whatever. 

At the program, one of our rules was that after 3:15, the kids had to put their phones away. Whenever I was in the room and I told the kids to do this, they never listened but they listened to the other staff. Before I quit, I had an incident with one of the girls from my group not wanting to put her phone away. I was allowed to confiscate their phones if they didn’t comply but when I approached this girl and asked for her phone, she started playing keep-away with me and taunted me. If my boss saw her with her phone out, she would have just given it to her when she took it. But with me, no. These kids had no respect for me so whenever I asked for their phones, unless the other staff asked them to give me their phones, they wouldn’t do it. So I gave up on trying to take it and turned around to sit back down. As soon as my back was turned, the entire class said “oooh!” as if she had either cursed at me behind my back or she stuck up her middle finger at me. I asked them what happened but none of them would tell me. I asked her what she did and she claimed to have done nothing. At this point, I was so fed up with the disrespect that I reported her to my boss and my boss asked her to come into her office and speak to her the next day. During the meeting, the girl claimed to have said “oh my god” behind my back but I don’t believe that. Kids don’t respond to things like that in that manner unless the person said or did something reprehensible. Anyway, after that meeting, she never gave me and attitude ever again. 

Me and the activity specialist were playing a game with his sports club one day and these two boys were about to get into yet, another physical altercation. One of them claimed that the other cheated and some of the other boys claimed this as well. However, before the activity specialist could address this, they started getting in each other’s face and arguing. Me, the AS (activity specialist) and some of the boys managed to separate them before they could throw any punches and the AS pulled one of the boys out of the room. The other was still hurling insults and curses at the other boy long after he left. The AS came back in and told me that the game was over and to tell the boys to sit down and be quiet. Boy #2 is still cursing and insulting the other boy. I told him, I don’t know how many times to stop talking. I could have reported every single thing he was saying about this kid to my boss and he would have gotten suspended from the program just based on that but since he was a good kid, I was tying to stop him from getting himself in trouble. Then he started using anti-gay language and after that, I was over protecting him, especially because I had already had a conversation with him about how I and another staff were gay and that he shouldn’t use language like that anyway because it’s insulting and harmful. At that point, I began raising my voice at him, something I had, until that point, always tried to refrain from doing. Some of the other boys even found what he was saying funny and when I told them not to encourage him, he went off on me and started directing his insults at me, calling me a fag and telling me that I “suck dick” for a paycheck (which I now find hilariously ironic) and to “get the fuck outta here.” I told the other staff what he said to me and the activity specialist made him apologize to me. I was so done with being treated like shit by these kids that I didn’t accept it at that point. I just wanted him out of my face. So after I reported him to my boss and got him suspended, he came back to the program to ask for help getting a job. However, my boss told him that she was only willing to help him if he apologized to me again-since her and the other staff knew that I still didn’t really feel like he was truly sorry (like he was only apologizing to me because he was made to and not because he actually cared about how I felt or understood the gravity of what he had said to me) and if we had a conversation and I truly accepted his apology, which I told him that I did. I felt like there was an enormous pressure for me to do so because now he was learning how his actions could effect him in real life and that now that he was having to ask for my forgiveness again, he had finally truly learned his lesson. And after this, we were cool. After that incident, I decided that I was quitting. 

Too Much Work, Too Little Time and Help and Poor Management

Aside from struggling to deal with these kids and their behavioral issues, I was also struggling with the mountainous work-load and all the problems that arose out of us being understaffed. After my amazing youth-worker quit because on top of the kids being unruly, he was also being asked to do a lot of work that he was unqualified to do, things became really difficult. Well, they already were but before and after I had that extra help, things were pretty stressful. 

There were times where I was spending so much time dealing with the kids and their behavioral issues that I didn’t have enough time to get administrative work done and vise versa. My boss expected us to be administrative assistants, teachers and social workers all at once, all the time and it didn’t help that a lot of the equipment at the office like the computers and phones would break down all the time. We had 6 staff working there at one point and only 2 working computers for staff to use so getting shit done around the office was nearly impossible at times. And to make it even better (sarcasm) when the 2nd computer in the staff office broke down, my boss got angry at us and blamed us for breaking it even after telling me that the computers at the office had been there since I was in the program which was over 10 years ago! Any time something broke down in the office, the first thing my boss would do is get angry and look for someone to blame and then contact an IT guy later. It got even worse when my friend got hired as a group leader around the winter and she had to make lesson plans for her group. So at that point, we had 3 group leaders who all had to make lesson plans for club and leadership activities and only 2 working computers. We also only had 3 phones to call parents on and 5-6 staff who needed to make daily phone calls. Thankfully, when my youth worker was there, he was able to make phone calls for me while I handled other responsibilities but when he left, the problem came back. After my friend quit the program when she found a full-time job (so fucking lucky) me and the activity specialist had to take turns using the phone. 

I feel like all of this stress and lack of adequate facilities to do our jobs effectively caused me to have several mental breakdowns. And it started when my boss had me and my friend start the project with the kids to teach them about healthy eating and then create a counter-marketing campaign against fast food companies. Again, more staff, less equipment, more problems. As part of the project, I helped my friend facilitate and organize a series of lessons on negative health effects, PSAs against fast food and eating healthy–y’know, all the stuff a person with a degree in illustration is qualified to teach. Along with this, we were still going on trips and doing other activities that needed permission slips for. My boss scheduled my group to be part of a focus group. We needed 10 kids to take part in it and I had a month to get their permission slips in. I handed out the permission slips and told the kids when the deadline for submission was and that it was mandatory. Some of these kids flat-out told me that despite it being mandatory that they didn’t want to do if because they didn’t feel like it and refused to turn in their permission slips. And whenever I would call their houses, their parents would either tell me that they filled them out and would be sending their child to program with it or that they never got one. I would then ask the kids the following day if they all got one and I would get kids telling me that they didn’t or that they did and would turn it in the next day or in a couple of days or at the end of the week. And for weeks, this would repeat. I would keep hounding these kids down for their permission slips and the same would happen. I would even get kids telling me that they lost their permission slips and I would have to make copies and hand them out. Then some of the kids would be absent and not hand them in and some kids stopped coming entirely and/or new kids would come in. Out of all the groups in the program, my group was the largest. I was basically responsible for making sure that 10 out of nearly 30 kids turned in these permission slips–by myself while I was still trying to manage dealing with behavioral issues and other administrative duties. My boss had to extend the deadline another month but the cycle would then repeat. Also, at the last minute, she gave me another permission slip pertaining to this focus group that they would have to turn in. She did this a lot for many of the field trips that required multiple layers of paper-work that had to be signed by parents and the other staff complained about this when they weren’t able to get permission slips in on time either. When the deadline came for the permission slips to be turned in, I only got 7 back. My boss got really pissed and spent at least 10-20 minutes reprimanding me for how much I had embarrassed her and about how I should have been able to get all this work done while still balancing all the other shit I had to do–by myself and about how it shouldn’t have happened and that now she was going to have to fix my mess. My brain was fried and I had no mental energy left at that point. I broke down crying in front of her. Then later that week, she told me that the 2nd set of permission slips that I had to have them fill out was completed wrong when it was my understanding that they were supposed to fill out part of it by themselves and I later found out that I was right about that but again, she made me feel guilty about that too and I was having another mental breakdown as we were scrambling to fix that. When the organizers of the focus group came to the program, they told her that the other half of the permission slip was supposed to be filled out by her–and not the parents so shescrewed up on that. Not surprisingly, the other staff had told me that she made mistakes like that all the time. i understood that I could have done a better job of trying to get those permission slips in but her making a mistake and not apologizing to me for it and placing the blame squarely on me for that didn’t sit well with me at all. 

My boss almost never admitted when she was wrong about anything. There were times when she would send us on field trips with the kids and not give us enough money and we would just have to figure things out for ourselves. The activity specialist told me that he thinks that she does that on purpose. There were also times when she wouldn’t do research on what she was paying for and she would embarrass us, whenever we would go up to a staff at a museum and tell them that we were paying x amount of money for an event or activity and they would tell us “uh, no, that’s not what you signed up for, you signed up for this.” And then I would have to speak to the other staff about what we should do about it and then the kids would get frustrated with us because we would have to wait even longer to do what we arrived there to do and we would have to explain to them that the program director made a mistake and to bare with us while we fixed it. And then later on, she would find something to get mad at us for instead of apologizing to us for her mistake. 

I had a second mental breakdown, not at work, but on my way to work. I dreaded going to that job every single day that I was working there and to this day, the only thing that I can say I ever looked forward to about this job was getting to work with my friend and the two other staff there who were amazing and fun to work with. Not even the field trips and fun activities were that much fun for me because preparing for those things and dealing with the eventual fighting between the kids and monitoring their behavior was so fucking annoying. A few months back, I was really feeling the stress of the job taking a toll on my mental health, especially after I broke down in front of my boss and with the stress of having to finish this big counter-marking project with the kids mostly on my own. I started thinking about how I was barely making enough money at this job to do anything that I wanted or needed to do like buying a new pair of jeans after finding holes in a few pairs or taking my girlfriend out once in a while or signing up for driver’s ed. I started thinking about how much I busted my ass in high school and in college to try to have a better future and a decent job and about how I felt like all my hard work was for shit. Wasted. I started thinking about how all the people who ever told me that I’d make a great teacher and that I should work with kids despite me having no interest in that whatsoever and didn’t go to school for that were dead fucking wrong and that I was living a life that other people wanted me to live and that it was making me miserable. I started thinking about how I knew people who didn’t even have degrees who were living better lives than me with their own apartments and full-time high-paying jobs and the harsh reality that I had to face that sometimes, hard work just doesn’t pay off sometimes and that I would just have to deal with it…or not. I also started thinking of killing myself. I mean, I’m in a ton of debt that will only go away once I’m dead. Why not? It would solve that problem. No one wants to give me a full-time job, maybe no one thinks that I’m worth having one. Maybe there’s no way out of any of my problems. Maybe the only way to solve my problems is to just end it all… 

I hadn’t been this suicidal since high school. 

I can’t believe that I let this stupid meaningless job make me this miserable and make me believe that I was worthless. Even attending 4 years of the most competitive and challenging art school in the world (Parsons) where I was getting little to no sleep every week and saddled with unbelievable amounts of work didn’t make me as nearly as miserable as this job had made me. I even find myself missing college because of the awesome people I met, the classes that I learned so much from, being able to study abroad in Paris and getting to work for a pre-college program where I got to help the next generation of artists succeed in places where I still haven’t. 

I still feeling like I am mentally recovering from this past year. I never got to go to therapy. I’m still depressed and miserable, still broke, still jobless and still trying to fight off suicidal thoughts. Still waiting for things to get better. 

Going to say what I recently had to tell someone else… 

NO JOB IS WORTH YOUR MENTAL HEALTH! 

also,

FUCK ANYONE WHO TELLS YOU OTHERWISE!

Mah Boo, Phil Sullivan❣️

Mah boo, Phil Sullivan!!!!!