Just about a month ago, I made my first blog post. As my first post, it was only a week into my internships and I kept talking about things I would be doing in the time before my next post. Would you believe that the mental list of things I hope to accomplish has only grown longer in the time that has passed since then? I’m sorry Valpo, but I won’t be returning in August. I have far too much to accomplish and far too much left to change in the world of senior health.
Just kidding.
But no, I’m not entirely joking. At a recent CAPS Fellows Reflect-In (i.e. a gigantic Google Hangout video chat that consists of all of the Fellows and the Institute for Leadership and Service’s Program Coordinator) we discussed “The Eleventh” by Henri Barbusse. If I was to summarize “The Eleventh” in one sentence, I would say that it tells the story of a servant at a home for the poor who struggles with the fact that he can’t help everyone who comes to the door. (The story is posted in its entirety at the end of this post- enjoy!) I have less than 9 internship days left here at National Lutheran Communities and Services. As I near the end of my time, the themes introduced in “The Eleventh” are pounding on my conscience. There is so much left to be done to help our community residents, our community staff, seniors, veterans, individuals with intellectual disabilities, and while we’re at it, all of the caregivers who help the people we serve. In the midst of all of this, I don’t perceive myself to be at a good leaving point. I’m not naïve, I know that I can’t do it all myself. But just as I’m starting to feel like I’m actually contributing to National Lutheran Communities and Services mission in a meaningful way, I have to prepare to say goodbye. Just as I start to see how the NLCS mission guides what they do and just as it begins to guide my own personal mission to help seniors, I have to prepare to leave. This feels wrong.
My checklist is growing faster than I can add checks to it. That said, I have accomplished some nice checkmarks these past few weeks. Since in my first blog I said I hoped to talk about my internship accomplishments in my second blog, I’m going to list off some of the things I’ve actually done in my internships.
-I’ve made more phone calls than I can count to long-term care Power of Attorneys and Independent Living residents, updating their emergency contact information for a new database The Village at Rockville is working on. I have a colored highlighting system all figured out, and while I’m not 100% finished, I have less than 12 individuals to make contact with. Considering all the phone tag I’ve been playing, I’m pretty proud of this achievement.
-I’ve outlined a business plan for NLCS’s plan to create health clinics in each of the HUD locations that are a part of Fellowship Square. It’s not perfect, but it’s something and I’m in the midst of doing further research to “fill in the blanks”. I guess business plans aren’t as scary as I thought they would be! I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that the outlining skills I picked up in the few speech classes I have taken and research papers I have written are actually applicable in the business world.
-I’m finally understanding everything that goes into a strategic partnership with a university. This check doesn’t sound very concrete, I know. But The Village at Rockville is in the process of entering a strategic partnership with a nearby university, and I’ve had the pleasure of being involved in each of the steps that have taken place in the past month or so. I am very excited to meet with the university’s nursing professors and various nursing school deans next week to see what else I can learn about this process! (I really wish I could be here to see the partnership come to fruition… hint hint Valpo! Don’t make me come home!)
-I created a presentation on the Patient-Centered Medical Home model based on all the research I’ve been doing at NLCS since my first week. I didn’t really create my presentation for the purpose of presenting it, but my informal presentation on PCMH’s to Dan went so well that he had me put it into the NLCS PowerPoint template. All I can say is that it felt really good to organize all the information I’ve combed through about PCMH’s into one place!
-I created an Excel chart highlighting the crossover between the needs of caregivers and the services they provide in the cases of both senior and veteran care recipients. This felt really good to do too, because it came from research I’ve been doing since my first week here. The purpose of this chart was to show that the needs of caregivers are relatively universal- and that they need some support for all the work they are doing for their care recipients.
-I met Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies, in DC. Learning the viewpoints of different political organizations about health policy is really important, because healthcare is so often at the mercy of law- especially when said medicine is operating on Medicare’s dollars. Cato is a pretty amazing building and it was interesting to hear Michael’s opinions on Medicare spending, “death panels”, and the Halbig v. Burwel case. (You can read his most recent article on the topic here)
-I met with four of the team members over at LeadingAge Headquarters in DC. Meeting with individuals who work to “expand the world of possibilities for aging” in contexts that aren’t strictly clinical was an uplifting experience for me. The reason nursing homes and CCRC’s are the context I hope to work in post-graduation is that I don’t NEED to be a clinician to help in those places. My smiling face, my conversation and empathy skills, my intelligence, and my abilities to organize and spot points of weaknesses in systems can carry me far in the world of senior care (but not so far that I won’t get to interact with seniors!) I don’t need to know how to draw blood or dress a complex wound to help a senior, and the team over at LeadingAge gets that. You can learn more about LeadingAge here.
-I spoke to a member of InFaith Foundation and learned from an insiders point of view about grant giving, grant tracking, and grant receiving. Prior to this phone call, I had no idea how sophisticated the process of grant giving, receiving, and tracking were. I never knew the issue many not-for-profits have with mission drift existed. If I am ever in the position to give or receive a grant someday, I have an insider’s point of view. Even if I never apply for or give a grant, the idea of mission drift is a concept that I can adapt to measure how I lead my own life and live out my own mission(s). (Mission Drift: drifting from an original mission or values, commonly in the pursuit of greater profit. I found an article describing more about Mission Drift here )
It gives me deep regret to report that it took me until this summer to realize that my current title (the one I’ve had for 16 years) is one of the most important titles I will ever possess and that in 10 months I will lose my title until I find another setting to hold it in. My title provides me with the power to quietly persuade, the power to be accepted, and the power to listen in on discussions regarding just about anything I choose. My title does not have the word “chief” attached to it and does not come from a fancy diploma. My title is universally recognized from setting to setting, and provides me exceptional levels of clearance. My title is student. With this title, I can choose to learn about whatever I wish to learn about and pick the brains of whomever I meet, on the basis that I’m “just” learning. “Just” learning is an oxymoron, by the way. I would hope that any person with life experience would agree with me that learning is never “just” anything. Learning is building a mental library, learning is teaching yourself new thought processes, learning is creating experience for yourself, and learning is transforming yourself into a competent individual with the power to accomplish- all through the experiences of encounters. With each checkmark I have made on the above list, I have realized how grateful I am to be a student and a CAPS fellow. Without my “student” title, my checklist would surely possess fewer checks.
In closing, please Valpo, I beg you, read this blog post and let me remain a student and CAPS Fellow at NLCS forever. I need to figure out a way to serve “the 11th” and I don’t particularly care to wait until post-grad to do so, especially when I won’t have the title I have learned to love!
-Kaitlyn, Student (see what I did there?)
P.S. I figured I’d include a short list of pictorial discoveries I’ve made in the past month or so.
The Metro has the longest, most terrifying escalators I’ve ever ridden.
I can’t even imagine the amount of work that went into developing the Metro system. It’s both underground and above ground- that’s some major shovel power!
I’m a big fan of giving away my cubicle to consultants and taking over the small conference room instead. I have a feeling that in my future career I will be the un-conventional employee who stakes out weird corners to do my work at in lieu of cubicles. Just yesterday I camped out in the large conference room with the lights off (it was calming!) and both the CFO and CEO felt the need to stop in and tell me it was ok for me to use electricity.
P.P.S- Here’s “The Eleventh” ! Enjoy!
“The Eleventh” Henri Barbusse
The Master, who had a pale head with long marble-like hair, and whose spectacles shone in solemnity, came to a standstill on his morning round opposite my little table at the door of Room 28, and condescended to announce to me that I was henceforth appointed to let in the ten poor people who every month were admitted to the hospitality of the House. Then he went on, so tall and so white among the assiduous flock of students that they seemed to be carrying a famous statuette from room to room.
I stammered the thanks which he did not hear. My twenty-five-year-old heart felt a happy pride in reflecting that I had been chosen to preside in one of the noblest traditions of the house in which, a humble assistant, I was wandering forlornly among wealthy invalids.
On the first day of every month the luxurious palace-hospital became the paradise of ten vagabonds. One of its outer doors was opened to admit the first ten who came, whoever they were, wherever they had fallen from or escaped. And for a whole month those ten human derelicts enjoyed the entire hospitality of the comfortable institution, just as much so as the master’s most valuable patients, as much as the archdukes and multimillionaires. For them, too, were the lofty halls whose walls were not only white but glistening, the huge corridors like covered streets, which in summer or in winter had the coolness or the mildness of spring. For them also, the immense garden beds set among green velvet, like bunches of flowers so enlarged by magic that one walked among them. For them equally, the outer walls, far off but impassable, which shield one against wide- open space, against rambling roads, against the plains which come to an end no more than the sky. For thirty days, the refugees busied themselves only with doing nothing, only worked when they ate, and were no longer afraid of the unknown or of the coming day. They who were remorseful learned to forget things, and they who were bereaved to forget people.
When by chance they met each other, the simply had to turn their heads away hurriedly. There was not in all the house, by order of the master, a mirror in which they would have found their bad dream again. At the day’s end came the dormitory, peaceful as a cemetery, a nice cemetery, where one is not dead, where one waits – where one lives, but without knowing it.
At eight o’clock on the first day of the following month, all ten of them went away, cast back into the world one by one, as into the sea. Immediately after, ten others entered, the first ten of the file that, since the night before, had been washed up against the wall of the house as upon the shores of an island. The first ten, no more, no less, no favors, no exceptions, no injustices; one rule only – they who had already been were never again admitted. The arrivals were asked nothing else – not even for the confession of their names.
And on the first day of the month, as soon as nine o’clock had sounded, exactly together from the Anglican church and the Catholic chapel of the house, I opened the little poor- door.
A crowd of beings was massed against the door-wing and the wall. Hardly had the former turned in the shadow when the tattered heap rushed forward as though sucked in.
My helper had to thrown himself forward to enforce a little order upon the greedy invasion. We had to detach by force, to tear away from the mass each one of the besiegers, who were pressed side by side and elbow to elbow, fastened to each other like fantastic friends. The eight entered, the ninth, the tenth.
And then the door was quickly closed, but not so quickly that it prevented me from seeing, only a step from me, him upon whom it closed, the eleventh, the unlucky one, the accursed.
He was a man of uncertain age; in his gray and withered face lackluster eyes floated. He looked at me so despairingly that he seemed to smile. The touch of that extraordinary disappointment made me start, of that face that was mute as a wound. I glimpsed in a flash – the time that the door took to shut – all the effort he had made to get there, even if too late, and how much he too deserved to come in!
Then I busied myself with the others; but a few minutes later, still affected by the distress I had read on the face of the outcast, I half opened the door to see if he were still there. No one. He and the three or four others – uncertain rags that had fluttered behind him – had gone to the four winds of heaven, carried away along the roads like dead leaves. A little shiver went through me, a shiver almost of mourning for the conquered.
At night, as I was falling asleep, my thoughts went again to them, and I wondered why they stayed there till the last moment, they who arrived only when ten had already taken their places at the door. What did they hope for? Nothing. Yet they were hoping all the same, and therein was a mean miracle of the heart.
We had reached the month of March. On the last day of the old month, towards nightfall, a rather frightened murmur crept from the side of the high road, close to the door. Leaning over a balcony, I could make men out there, stirring like insects. These were the suppliants.
The next morning we opened to these phantoms whom the magical story of the house had called across the world, who had awakened and unburied themselves from the lowest and most awful of depths to get there. We welcomed the ten who first came forward; we were obliged to drive back into life the eleventh.
He was standing, motionless, and offering himself from the other side of the door. I looked at him, and then lowered my eyes. He had a terrible look, with his hollow face and lashless eyelids. There breathed from him a reproach of unbearable artlessness.
When the door divided us forever, I regretted him, and should have liked to see him again. I turned towards the others, swarming in gladness on the flagstones, almost with resignation, wondering at my own firm conviction that the other, sooner than these, ought to have come in with us.
And it was so every time. Every time I became more indifferent to the crowd of admitted and satisfied and devoted my gaze still more to him who was refused salvation. And every time he seemed to me the most pitiable case, and I felt that I was myself smitten in the person of the one condemned.
In June, it was a woman. I saw her understand and begin to cry. I trembled as I furtively scanned her; to crown all, the weeper’s eyelids were blood red as wounds.
In July, the appointed victim was incomparably regrettable by reason of his great age; and no living being was compassionable as he who was repulsed the month after, so young was he. Another time, he who had to be snatched from the group of the elect besought me with his poor hands, encircled with the remains of frayed linen, like lint. The one whom fate sacrificed the following month showed me a menacing fist. The entreaty of the one made me afraid, and the threat of the other pitiful.
I could have almost begged his pardon, the “eleventh” of October. He drew himself up stiffly; his neck was wrapped in a high grayish tie that looked like a bandage; he was thin, and his coat fluttered in the wind like a flag. But what could I have said to the unfortunate who succeeded him thirty days later? He blushed, stammered a nervous apology, and withdrew after bowing with tragic politeness – piteous remnant of an earlier lot.
And thus a year passed. Twelve times I let in the vagrants whom the stones had worn out, the workmen for whom all work was hopeless, the criminals subdued. Twelve times I let in some of those who clung to the stones of the wall as on to reefs of the sea coast. Twelve times I turned others away, similar ones, whom I confusedly preferred.
An idea beset me – that I was taking part in an abominable injustice. Truly there was no sense in dividing all those poor folk like that into friends and enemies. There was only one arbitrary reason – abstract, not admissible; a matter of a figure, a sign. At bottom, this was neither just nor even logical.
Soon I could no longer continue in this series of errors. I went to the master and begged him to give me some other post, so that I should not have to do the same evil deed again every month.
Reprinted from The Civically Engaged Reader: A Diverse Collection of Short Provocative Readings on Civic Activity, edited by Adam Davis and Elizabeth Lynn (Great Books Foundation, 2006).