DO, DON'T TELL
I recently started reviewing responses from a survey I gave to students who volunteered to work with me in the mobile Farm Worker clinic. I asked them all sorts of questions about their experience and how it changed their viewpoints, and a few messages really hit home, so I thought I would share them.
1) DO, DON'T TELL. This is my modification of the old writing adage, Show, Don't Tell. What I heard over and over again in my students' responses was that being able to experience the patient interaction, writing a treatment note in 15 minutes, evaluating a patient in a cramped van, performing a special test on someone's shoulder when that shoulder is actually in pain...all of these things solidified the long hours in the classroom. It allowed students to see what they knew, practice it, and figure out what they didn't know yet. So yes, some telling is necessary, but so is DOING and, in particular, DOING under stressful, unusual or particularly memorable circumstances. DOING, outside of the comfortable confines of the clinic environment, forced students to stretch their limits and realize their potential.
2) THE "UNDERSERVED" LIVE RIGHT NEXT DOOR. This is an almost word-for-word quote from one of my students' surveys. Many of them commented that they developed a whole new understanding of what it meant to be underserved (as in, you don't have a car and you live in the middle of nowhere, so you're not getting healthcare unless healthcare comes to you), what it meant to work a manual labor job, and that often the vision of the rural population they'd conjured in their heads was far less diverse than what the rural population actually looks like.
3) WHEN YOU SEE WHAT YOUR EDUCATION MEANS TO SOMEONE ELSE, IT MEANS A WHOLE LOT MORE TO YOU. Over and over again, students wrote that they hadn't truly understood the importance of their education until they realized what it could do for other people. Their knowledge allowed others to reduce pain, move better, continue working and continue providing for their families. Suddenly, all the tests passed and lectures attended meant something.
I can really identify with this last point the most. My first international service experience took me to Guatemala. At that point, I was already in my early 30s and had done some world traveling, so I considered myself pretty worldly and pretty aware. I lived in my own apartment and was pursuing a doctoral degree in physical therapy. In Guatemala, I provided education to clinicians and volunteered physical therapy services, according to my professional training. The experience that impacted me the most, though, was building a cement floor in a two-room house where a woman lived with her eight children. I remember taking a break from shoveling rocks (which, in case you're wondering, is back-breaking) and watching three girls walk up a steep cobblestone street carrying water. They weren't in school, which may have been an exception, but the fact was, it was rare for girls in that community to attend school much past eighth grade.
I don't think I'll ever forget the moment I came home after that trip to my small studio apartment perched above a garage. I live in a palace, I realized for the first time, and I am so privileged. Most of all, I am privileged that good luck, good parenting, modern times, nationality, opportunity, financial ability (mixed, of course, with hard work and drive but also, let's be honest, a whole lot of luck of the draw) all conspired to enable me not to spend my youth carrying water up the same hill over and over again but rather to invest in accruing knowledge, knowledge that, as my students now realize, can do a whole lot for people who haven't had quite as many lucky breaks.
