This week I was finally able to conduct an interview with two guests from the San Diego for Children. This center focuses on aiding children and adolescents who have either emotional or behavioral disorders. One of the representatives we talked to was, Erica Gomez - Aranda who is the program manager at one of the their Life School Day Treatments. Their center branches out to many different programs such as outpatient therapy, foster care, residential, school based therapies and about six other services as well. Something Erica said that really stuck with me was, “These kids are not only struggling with emotional health issues but also the constant stigmas surrounding brain health, the most important thing we can do is let them be heard and do our best to raise awareness against these stigmatizing labels.” This really resonated overall, with what our goals are for this project, and especially what my group hopes to achieve during the NAMI walk. It was also just super nice to be able to sit down and have a conversation surrounding these common disorder and what we as a community can do to help out, whether it’s by participating in walk-a-thons or being a spokesperson for a certain cause. In the end it's important we normalize brain health and especially remove the harmful stigma associated with reaching out for help. This interview left me wondering how I could continue to play an active role in my community in regards to brain health after our project ends. I hope to continue being an advocate in my topic and participate in local events.
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Internship is right around the corner and I couldn’t be more excited! I am more then happy that I was able to find an internship that incorporates my interests for the future. During this past year I have grown more and more interested in human biology. In the future I definitely see myself studying emergency medicine since that is my primary focus as of now. I would also love to work in a hospital, specifically, the emergency room. Another goal of mine would be to not stay in one place. I would love to be moving around and hopefully be able to study in another country where I can gain cultural experience while doing the things I love and seeing the world! Another recent thought of mine involves the Medical Corps. This is an idea that I would like to further pursue, I’m interested to see what being a physician or medical officer in the military entails. Areas I need to work on in my work life include time management because I’m definitely the type of person that puts things off until the last second and then when the time comes, I begin to panic. Heading into my internship I feel very excited to be out in the real world gaining enriching experiences but also a little confused as to what I will be working on during internship. In conclusion I am very fortunate to have been able to score the internship I have and I am beyond grateful to my mentor for taking me in. This week we were able to receive critique from professionals all throughout San Diego. Overall it was a very enriching experience and it was nice to have a fresh pair of eyes. My group decided to focus on our t-shirt design because we were a bit stuck on how to continue. Our first pair was with Ms. Nuvia which was extremely helpful. Our original design was a stencil of a profile shot made out of a ticking time bomb meant to depict that adolescents are often seen as crazy and ready to explode. Immediately we were told that this could be viewed as stigmatizing, it was something we hadn’t really taken into consideration so I’m glad we addressed that. Since our topic is emotions on the brain her next piece of critique was to mix my t-shirt design (can be viewed on my last post) and combine the emoticons with our current profile stencil and completely remove the time bomb. To the upper left I included an image that is featured in our little book. It shows the left and right side of the brain sort of bursting with what pertains to them. Based off of that image Ms. Nuvia had the idea of making the emoticons look like theyŕe coming out of the head. Our second professional was Sandra from the UCSD C.A.R.E facility. She helped a lot with our activity that will be done during the NAMI walk and how we can find a way to simplify it since during exhibition it took a long time. Something that really stuck with me was when she said, ¨You want people to leave feeling empowered and having left knowing a bit more than before.” It was extremely motivating and I know during exhibition it will encourage me to step out of my comfort zone. All in all I am very grateful for everyone who took the time out of their day to come here and help us in the critique process. My wondering this week is based on the image above and if it is an accurate depiction of the brain. Do the left and right side correspond to completely different things or is this an exaggeration? Festival Del Sol was definitely jam packed! I had tons of fun exhibiting to various guests and teaching what we had learned so far as to how different emotions affect the brain and the stereotype that affects teens. My favorite aspect was being able to practice with kids from the middle school since I personally like working with them. It reminded me of a famous quote that reads, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” by Albert Einstein. I’ve seen this quote plastered all over High Tech classrooms on posters and of course it’s managed to work it’s way into my mind. I believe it’s a very good way to measure where you are and be able to improve from there. A lot of the feedback we received was based on our t-shirt. Since our topic is a bit tricky our main critique was to find a new design that expressed what we trying to say about the stigma towards adolescents. Examples of this critique includes, “I enjoy the simplicity, perhaps find a symbol that represents emotions, an emoticon, etc.” or ¨I also enjoy a simplified design but make sure to not over simplify since it can minimize your message.” We definitely still need to find a way to simplify the terms we are using since at the NAMI walk there will be many kids who engage in the activities and we want to make sure they leave knowing a bit more about emotions on the brain instead of leaving confused. I think we can also try to shorten our activity because it takes a good while to get through it since our audience has to be coloring as we ask questions. Instead of asking question by questions we can ask them all at once and have them listed so that part of the process goes by quicker and we can immediately transfer into our explanations. My wondering this week is how many ids with an emotional or behavior disorder are able to receive help? This sort of connects to the organization I am thinking of communicating with since they aid in helping kids with these disorders. Overall I am super excited for exhibition and think it’s awesome that a walk-a-thon will be happening right in front of us! |
AuthorHere I will be uploading weekly reflections on my Teen Brain Health Project! Archives
April 2017
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