The joys of helping people

I'll probably keep this post short because not much has happened this week. Really, after being at the Obama rally two weeks ago and seeing Rob Pattinson last week, I would have had to fuck Johnny Depp to top all of that. My life is so awesome, I know.

Anyway, I do have stories about this one class I'm taking. We have to take a course on "Vulnerable Groups" because we're obviously all sheltered, rich babies who know nothing about "those less fortunate." My personal opinions on our curriculum aside, they did make this class more interesting. Instead of being talked at for a couple hours a week, the coordinators of the class arranged 20 different sites for us to choose from. We would pick our top five sites and they would assign us to one of them for three weeks. There were some genuinely cool ones. I picked a rehabilitation center for brain injury patients as my top choice, which I had heard great things about. Planned Parenthood was also listed as a site, and we could watch them counsel women on abortions and watch them perform abortions. That was my second pick. Of course, I got my last choice.

I was assigned to a substance abuse group session at a residential facility. I figured I may not be very interested in it, but I would most likely be prescribing people narcotics in a few years. It would probably be handy to recognize signs of substance abuse and maybe learn a little about counseling drug-seeking patients. Two other classmates were part of my group, and we headed up together for our first session.

We got to the residential facility, which, to be honest, I thought it would be a rehab center. I was wrong. Residential facility does not mean rehab. It was a care facility for severely mentally ill people. Surprise! This was not just a substance abuse group. It was a group for psychotic people who abused drugs. Somehow - I really do not know how this happened - but they failed to mention the part where these people were completely disabled, not by their substance abuse problems, but by schizophrenia or severe depression. Now, I know substance abuse and mental illness go hand in hand, but there are varying degrees. I have done a lot of work in psychiatry for a second year, and I wanted to see more substance abuse recovery this time. And I don't know if any of you have tried speaking with schizophrenics, but it is not very fruitful if you have no idea what you are doing and you are creeped out by their blank stares.

Also, the care facility was like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Apparently, not much has changed since then, except we no longer lobotomize people for shits and giggles (and yet, ECT lives on...). There was a very distinct smell, which was some combination of shit, cigarette smoke and disinfectant. There was the stale, hospital-like atmosphere trying too hard to be warm despite the fluorescent-lighting and bright white walls and floors. And then there were the mentally ill people. Just very Cuckoo's Nest. I don't know how else to describe it. There were the lower functioning ones who sat away from the group, shaking their heads, laughing and talking to themselves. That was creepy. Most of the group members were nice and seemed to care, but I don't think they realized that we were not actually doctors. We got a lot of questions about how they could get out of the facility. One guy wanted our contact information, including our addresses, which was frightening. I don't know why people think we know things.

Then we got the random comments that left us speechless. One guy talked about how people have receivers in their heads telling them what to do. There were a lot of conspiracy theories about how the staff at the facility were withholding money or trying to kill them. The winner was the story, which one of the patients shared freely, about how she pushed her husband out of a second-story window. He was fine, but died two days later...Yeah. I'm speechless. We also learned that most of the psychiatrists working at the facility were committing fraud by milking Medicaid for care they were not really providing. Good times.

I am just so at a loss as to what to think about this. It's not like I didn't know these things happened or that these sorts of people existed. I worked at a free clinic in Berkeley for a year, and lived there for five years, so I know there are crazy, poor people out there. I just do not know what I am supposed to get out of this. I am not interested in psychiatry, and even if I were I doubt I could help anything. It's clearly not making me more compassionate, which I think was the point of this whole thing. I guess it gave me something to blog about, though. I'll take that.

To be 15 again...

So, the past few days have actually been kinda interesting. I guess I need to preface this whole thing by saying I may have developed a slight obsession with the Twilight Saga over the summer. Yes, the books written for teenagers about a high school girl falling in love with a vampire. I know. I know. I assure you, though, the books are better than they sound. It's hard to explain, so just trust me on this one.

The movie based on the first of the four books comes out next week. There has been massive promotion going on for the whole thing. Part of the promotion is a "tour" involving different cast members doing autograph signings at malls across the country. I found out that the guy who plays the lead vampire role would be coming to a mall in on of the suburbs here. He was in the fourth Harry Potter movie (and was killed off at the end of the movie), but otherwise he hasn't been in much else. Anyway, I decided that I wanted to go meet him for a number of reasons. One, I doubt I would have the chance to do anything like it ever again, so I might as well take advantage of this opportunity... He really is a decent actor (I've seen some work he did for BBC) so I figure he has a good chance of having a successful career and maybe even winning some Oscars or something. That really was incentive enough to meet him, but I had other reasons... Two, I could either go meet him, or be in class. Three, it just seemed like a stupid/fun thing to do, and I haven't done anything stupid/fun in a long time. Also, he's rather beautiful, so that didn't hurt.

Then, the planning started. As I mentioned, I had a class at the same time as the actual signing. So I emailed the coordinator and rescheduled for earlier that week. The mall I needed to get to turned out to be about 30 miles away with no public transportation to get there. I thought of taking a cab, or signing up for one of those car share things, but then I realized that renting a car would probably be the cheapest and easiest way to go. It turns out you only need to be 21 to rent a car here for some reason, so that worked out quite nicely. I also did my research, and realized that I would probably have to camp out to get one of only 500 wristbands from Hot Topic guaranteeing me an autograph (my experiences as a teeny bopper when I was actually 15 helped out with this one...thanks Backstreet Boys). I got all the provisions I would need to survive a Chicago night outside, like a homeless person.

At this point, everything was set. Wristbands would be handed out at 7:30am on Wednesday for a 6pm signing. Monday came around, and the first of these events happened in San Francisco. Apparently, they were not prepared for the 3000 people that showed up for the 500 wristbands and a near riot ensued with people getting trampled and noses being broken. I kinda freaked out at this point because I did not account for possible violence. Silly me. I did a little more research and found someone through a fan site (I know, my dorkiness knows no bounds) and emailed her asking if I could tag along, so at least someone could account for my dead body after being trampled by rabid 12-year olds. She said that was fine and she would get to the mall at 9pm on Tuesday night.

On Tuesday, I go to get the car around 5:30pm so I can make a quick stop at Target and really take advantage of having a car. I reserved the cheapest car possible, an economy-sized Chevy Aveo. I end up with a Chevy Uplander, which is a 7-seater, SUV-minivan hybrid (not like a prius hybrid, just a hybrid of a SUV and minivan...you know what I mean). I looked at the rental car guy as soon as I saw the car, and I was like "Yeah, I'll take the damage and liability insurance, please." I would not be held responsible for the many things I would hit parking that beast.

Anyway, I get on the road...and I miss driving. Gah it was so nice. I drove to the mall, which was really outside of the city. I seriously went through some weird forest-y area to get there, and I realized that I really need to get out of the city more often. Apparently there's other stuff outside of downtown. Who knew?

I got to the mall at 9:30, and met up with the random person I emailed. There were already about 70 people ahead of us in line. At 9:30pm. The person I met was actually really cool. She was 23, and with a friend who was 21, so I didn't feel so bad about being too old for this. We joked and chatted for a while and set up our little area with sleeping bags and provisions. Hot Topic staff were roaming about and keeping people orderly and entertained, so another mess like San Francisco wouldn't happen. The weather wasn't too bad. It's about 35-40 degrees, which was manageable. But then, it started raining. This was not fun at all. We were all bundled up and had umbrellas and whatnot, but everything still got soaked. Not only are we cold now, but wet. People oddly enough, weren't really complaining though. I think we all realized it would be a long night. Here are some pictures of people camping out:

It's a little dark, but I think you get the idea. I wasn't the only crazy person out there.

The mall staff that was there though were smarter about it. Around midnight, they counted that there were already 500 people there. They decided there was no reason to wait until 7:30 am and worked to open up the mall and sell us the wristbands. By the time we got into the mall, it was around 1-1:30am. My toes were frozen. It hurt everytime I took a step. I'm pretty sure I would have lost some toes if we stayed out there the whole night...but whatever, I still have all 10 of them.
This is us, inside the mall at like 1:30am. Malls are kinda weird and creepy at night...But, we kept ourselves occupied with stories and jokes and stuff, it was pretty fun overall. I got a wristband, which made me happy, and I got home around 3:30am.

So the next day, I skipped lecture and classes entirely, showered, got dressed and headed out to the mall again. I got there around 4pm and there's already a giant line for the signing. It was a similar scene to that morning, but we all looked waaaay less war torn and miserable.
So, 6pm rolls around. The actor, Rob Pattinson, shows up and the screaming began. It was incredibly high-pitched, as you can imagine. I refused to take part in that kind of screaming, mostly because large crowds and loud noises kinda freak me out. Also, I'm tired and a little cranky. We started moving up in the line, and, as we got closer, I started to get a little nervous. Once we're in the store, I was really pretty excited/nervous. We moved up in line to the point where I could see him signing autographs, and I realized the guy is just as handsome in real life as he is in pictures. I always sort of imagine that pictures are doctored a lot and the person probably looks normal in real life. I was wrong. Here's a picture that a newspaper took of the signing. (we were warned by the staff that we weren't allowed to take pictures and no touching! hehe)

Anyway, I went up to him, and he had the posters in front of him and would sign them as each person came up. I'm pretty sure I had a very stupid smile on my face. He said, "Hi, how are you?" and I pretty much replied, "Good. Um, how are you?" And that was basically it. I'm really lame, I know, but it was totally worth it. Also, I'm proud for not completely losing my shit and saying something stupid. I call it a win. Here's the autograph:

Oh, and a fun fact. One of the girls I was with brought her brother. We all got his signature with the "X" after it except for him, which I find really funny. In the 5 seconds we had with the guy, he was quick enough to realize if another guy was coming up and not give him a "kiss" or whatever. Pure silliness.

Apparently elections don't have to be depressing

So, Tuesday night was the first good thing to come out of my moving to Chicago. Somehow, I'm ok with that. And as you might guess, I'm going to tell you my election story, but don't worry, there are halfway decent pictures for those of you less inclined toward the whole reading thing.

Anyway, I lucked out on Tuesday because I had class all morning and I had work in the hospital during the afternoon. This kept me from thinking too much about the election. I got home around 5:30pm, ate, bought some champagne and headed back to my computer to obsessively check the polls. I had heard earlier in the day that the mayor of Chicago opened up Grant Park to the general public to watch the election. I had missed the chance to get tickets to see Obama speak, but it did occur to me that this could still be a lot of fun.

I went over to my classmate's place with my champagne around 8:30, and she was a bit hesitant about going to Grant Park even though it's only a 15-20 minute walk. It had something to do with her being foreign and people getting trampled whenever crowds formed. Another one of her friends was there, and the two of us were able to convince her to get moving. We left for the park around 9:15, and before we even got remotely close to where the jumbotrons were set up, we were in the midst of a large crowd, all walking to the rally. Compared to Lollapalooza, which had something like 80,000 people each day, this was waaay more crowded. At this point, we all knew Obama would win; it was just a matter of time. I now realize what people mean when they say you could feel excitement and electricity in the air. There was nothing like it.

We started hearing random cheers in the distance, and we freaked out that we had missed Obama reaching 270 votes. We started running...and I mean running...to the nearest jumbotron. I guess now would be a good time to mention that I was a little stoned/drunk (I found a good classmate), so the whole sprinting thing while my lungs are giving out and my stomach's cramping was a big deal. I think I also may have taken this picture while running, I don't remember.

Yeah, I know. It's grainy and blurry, but you can see the people. So many people.

We reached one of the jumbotrons, and found out Obama was still at 250 votes. This is the crowd at the first jumbotron we went to.

There's another jumbotron further down in the background there and there was another one on the other side of us. All of which had huge crowds around them. I don't even know how many they had set up total. Anyway, the crowd was amazing. Everyone was just so happy and friendly. And I saw something I haven't seen in a long time without getting annoyed.

Yeah, that's right. I'm at a hippie rally for the new Democratic president of the United States, with thousands of other people and "USA" written in giant lights in the background. For the past 7 years, flags and "USA" written everywhere have been symbols of blind patriotism with nothing really to back it up. And as cheesy as this sounds, this was the first time I kinda realized that I am patriotic. It made me so proud to see all these people coming together to celebrate the election of our new president.

We moved to another jumbotron where the crowd wasn't so dense. Everyone was asking each other what the count was, and then everyone started cheering loudly and we heard Obama had hit 297 votes. Dude. The cheers of joy were deafening and everyone was jumping up and down, including me. I was like the energizer bunny (I don't think any of you have seen me that excited, but I couldn't stop jumping up and down). We waited for McCain to concede, and although people booed when he came on the tv, everyone respectfully listened to his speech and were clapping by the end of it (perhaps they were clapping because he lost, but it sounded like polite clapping). Then we waited for Obama to speak. It kinda took a while. But wow, the screaming and general noise-making that took place when he did finally walk out. It was amazing. Simply amazing. Here's my crappy pic I took while he was speaking. You'll have to trust me that it's him.

I loved his speech. People were crying and smiling and laughing. Hell I nearly cried. I don't think I've been moved by anything like that...well, ever. He was very much the president we had all hoped and dreamed for. It was surreal.

Afterward, everyone left in a very orderly and calm manner. There was sporadic cheering and whatnot, but nothing got out of hand. It was really surprising considering the occasion and how many people were gathered in one place. There were so many people, that the police shut down most of the loop, including Michigan Avenue so we could leave quickly and easily.

That's Michigan Avenue. That's a shitload of people on Michigan Avenue...

...So, maybe it's my turn for some blind patriotism. :)

More of Michigan Avenue. There were people as far as we could see down the street. It made me so happy.