the things we learn

Today I went to part of church (made a deal with God), and I'm really glad I did if only for the observations I made on the bus.

First, there was a man with some kind of mental disability. He sat down next to these kids, appeared to have some kind of panic attack, started freaking out, took out a stress ball, and started squeezing it. Then he asked the kids (my age), completely out of the blue, if they were getting married, and the boy said "no sir, we're not" (I think they were just friends). Then the man started asking them all these questions (seemingly to distract himself from whatever was giving him the panic attack), including what the boy was majoring in, and the boy was majoring in philosophy. So then the guy started asking the boy all these questions about different philosophers and political philosophy. It was a very interesting conversation.

I realize that I grew up with a lot of powerful stigmas that I really want to get rid of, including a lot of judgmental ways of looking at people with severe mental illness and homelessness. Because in my hometown I saw very little of either and all depictions were radicalized descriptions fed to me through the media (not an excuse, but still), I developed a very negative view of either class of people. Not a consciously negative view... I mean, I was always taught to be sympathetic to people in those situations. But more of a visceral rejection of those people as being *different* from me, an automatic judgment that I have nothing to learn from them. As I came to Boston and started volunteering at homeless shelters, and as I started working with severely mentally ill people back home, I realize what an error in judgment this is. I have *so* much to learn from people that I used to just dismiss without a conscious thought.

I guess what I'm saying isn't that I judged them, because I never viewed them as bad or not as good as me or anything, but that I otherized them. I made them the class into two divisions, people like me and people not like me, and homeless people and "crazy" people got lumped into people not like me. But now I'm realizing that dividing the world into two classes of people is very idiotic because we're all the same inside, and we all have so much to learn from each other. Assuming that we have some privileged knowledge a mentally ill person doesn't is a huge mistake. There's always something to learn from someone else.

Anyway, it is difficult, at the age of 20, to change this about myself, but I am glad I have finally recognized it and addressed it as the serious problem that it is. Because I think that in order to be a successful psychiatrist, I have to be the kind of doctor that relates to my patients on a personal level rather than adopting a separatist, holier-than-thou attitude (who wants to believe they're broken? everyone has fixed and broken parts inside of them).

So that was just one observation on the bus, and it's one complicated, semi-selfish goal of my volunteer work in homeless shelters. I guess it's both selfish and unselfish. I mean, I want to quit otherize people and improve myself as a person, which is selfish, but I want to do this so I can relate to people and help them more when I'm eventually in a position to do so, which I think is unselfish. So like everything, it's a bit of both.

Other interesting bus observations: a woman wearing sweatpants carrying a very expensive-looking camera and a very hairy dog, occasionally taking pictures of it (she even gave it its own seat on the bus until the bus became too busy).

And, the one conversation I am always sick of having: so I was somehow squashed on the way home from church between this girl who smelled like cigarette smoke which was giving me allergies and this man who smelled like alcohol (or maybe I was imagining that? But I swear he did, and he was practically sitting on top of me even though he could have had way more room if he'd sat in the seat adjacent to the one next to me). When I pressed the stop for MIT, he said,
"So, you go to MIT?"
"Yes,"
"You must be very smart."
Why is this everyone's first reaction???? I mean, I know it's a good school, but please people, give a little thought for the sake of conversation. What is the other person supposed to say to this? I mean, I don't think I'm very smart. But even if I did, what am I supposed to say, "Yes, thank you, why yes, actually I am"? No of course not! So anyone is cornered into responding, as I did, with some variant of,
"Ha, not really..." which just sounds like false modesty even if it's (as in my case) true.
I've just had this conversation so many times. I'm sure anyone going to a decent school has to deal with it. But it's just ridiculous. People don't think before they open their mouths. I mean, there are some conventions to polite conversation, are there not? One does not give complements that so effectively trap the conversation partner into such flimsy modesty. It's not considerate. Sigh.

Also, the truth is, nothing makes a kid feel dumb like MIT. We might have felt smart in high school, but here, almost all of us feel dumb. So it doesn't really make us feel better to have the whole smart card pulled on us. Usually.

I don't know. Now I sound ungrateful. I really am not ungrateful. I'm not, I swear.