That Question I Always Get Asked…

September 16, 2013 at 9:18 pm (Homelessness, Philosophy)
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After ten years hanging out and around homeless people, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about those experiencing homelessness and homelessness itself. When you work with people experiencing homelessness, there are a few questions that are givens. People will ask you about how others come to be homeless. They’ll ask you whether it’s really related to economic inequality. They’ll ask you for stories. In all honesty, the questions are actually quite varied… with the exception of one:

“What should I do when I see a panhandler?”

This is a question I get asked a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. It comes up in many conversations. It comes up when I give guest lectures. It comes up when I talk to grade six students about those living in homelessness. And so I’m summarizing my answer today in this blog post. 

Admittedly, smarter people than I have written on this before. Homeless Hub recently did a blog post on something similar. I doubt my advice will be any better, but since I’m asked often enough, I’m writing it here regardless.

Evidently encountering panhandlers on the street is an odd moment for many people (else this wouldn’t be the number one question I get). I remember when that was the case for me. I was 19 years old, and I knew everything. Well, I thought I knew everything. I decided that panhandlers were only there to void me from my money for drugs and/or alcohol. So I didn’t give. Ever. I would walk by, as quickly as possible, particularly as I was a relatively small 19 year old female normally walking alone in the downtown core.

I was incredibly naive, uneducated, and no one ever bothered to explain a few things to me–things that I am going to explain to you today. I have broken these down into numerical order… because I’m cool like that. 

1. The single most important thing you can do around a panhandler is make eye contact. I want you to take a moment and think about what it would be like to have dozens of people walk by you without any acknowledgement. Beyond that, I want you to thik about people walking faster the moment they see you, or, worse, choosing a different path to avoid any sign of contact. Panhandling is rough. Way back in the day I tried my hand at it for an afternoon (it was an assignment for a class–yeah, I had some awesome classes). At the time I was 20 (and I was and still am female), blonde haired, and relatively well-dressed. Even with my ridiculously perky can-do 20 year old attitude, it was challenging. And while I managed to make more money than anticipated, the experience stuck with me. It’s an incredibly dehumanizing experience in constant performance. You have to think on your feet, and engage people (who generally don’t want to be engaged). It’s challenging. When people avoid you, it’s disheartening (even if it’s JUST for an assignment and doesn’t reflect what you’ll be eating tonight because mom is cooking roast chicken).

2. After you’ve said ‘hi’ and made eye contact, it’s likely that the panhandler will actually ask you for money. It’s okay for you to say no. It’s okay for you to say yes. If you do say yes, however, know that you have no control over how they spend that money. Giving coins to a panhandler isn’t like giving a gift card to your niece for Christmas. You can’t designate how they spend their money. The moment you gave it away, you relinquished all rights to saying how it gets spent; it has no designated place. If the panhandler chooses to spend it on drugs and/or alcohol, that’s their perogative. You don’t get to dictate how anyone else spends their money, even if it originally came from you.

3. If you want to help out, but aren’t comfortable giving cash, you can tell them that. Guess what? They’ve probably heard it before. I rarely give coins. Partially because I rarely have them. I’m not someone who carries cash. This may or may not be a character flaw, but I rely on plastic a lot. This means that when I have the time/ability, I’ll buy a panhandler lunch. We generally walk together to Subway or McD’s and have lunch together on my dime. I actually find this to be fun. The beauty of sharing lunch is a great thing, and I get to hear someone else’s story. The other thing I typically do is carry around a book of bus tickets in case someone needs change to catch transit. While shelters and other organizations often have some bus tickets designated for different client activities (e.g. employment, hospital visits, etc), sometimes they run out (yeah, it happens, and yeah, sometimes it can really mess with someone who just needs a ticket to get to work). 

At the end of the day, you can’t make a mistake when it comes to panhandlers if you just pay them some human decency and kindness. Make eye contact, say hello, and do what you will–dignity goes a long way.

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Words to the Wise

September 7, 2013 at 6:24 am (Graduate School, Research)

I realized I’ve been at this post-secondary thing for a very long time. This realization came to me earlier this week when I was meeting a number of incoming graduate students. In some ways doing a PhD is like doing a marathon. After your BA its a steady race towards the finish line where too much speed will only serve to burn you out.

While some days my survival in all of this is questionable at best, I think it’s important to talk about grad student survival strategies, and random wisdoms that I think are essential to making it through any graduate degree (and really, probably any bachelor’s degree).

So here they are, my tips for school…

1. Grades are based on execution, not effort: There’s this weird thing in grade school where teachers acknowledge the effort students have put into something, and factor that into final grades. Come postsecondary, grades are really no longer  about effort, but about skills acquired. Coming out of postsecondary, employers will expect you to have certain mastery of skills. This means that the grade you receive on whatever you hand in reflects your mastery of said skills. Your grade is not based on how much work you put in. It’s important to wrap your mind around this as early as possible. This leads me to the next tip…

2. Try not to measure yourself against anyone else: This is a huge challenge for most graduate students, but the truth is, we all come in with different skillsets and skill levels. This means that some things will be easier to master for some people when compared to others. Yet these things normally balance out in the end.

I once talked to a colleague about this and she lamented that she compares herself because her peers are her competition. I can’t deny that in graduate school we’re all “competing” for the same monies, however, I don’t actually think environments of competition are particularly useful for furthering knowledge or growing as students. If anything, I am in constant competition with myself to be better and do better at whatever I’m working on.

3. Separate yourself from your work: For some of you this may be the single most challenging tip. You are not your work. You may pour hours and hours of time, energy, and general feeling into whatever paper you’re working on, but it still isn’t you. Separating yourself from your work, even a little, may help spare any hits your mental health may take when you receive negative feedback on your work. Note that I said when, not if. 

Professors are about making the work better. In fact, the entire Academy and academic process is designed in a way that sharpens scholars into continually better scholars–this is why the peer-review process exists. Making the work better is an incredibly important component in this. 

4. Finishing is all about blood, sweat, and tears; not innate ability: When I meet new people who aren’t in academia, they say things like, “Oh, you’re getting a PhD, you must be really smart.” Truth be known, finishing graduate school is less about being bright than it is about working ridiculously hard.

I firmly believe there is a combination of ability and work that determines success in grad school. Success is achieved by both, although I firmly believe it’s really less about ability and more about sheer determination and hard work. 

Anyone who tells you graduate school is easy is lying to you. It’s not easy. But it’s not impossible either. It’s about picking yourself up after receiving negative feedback, working very hard to think, write, and revise the same piece of work for a relatively long time. Graduate school really is about blood, sweat, and tears.

I’ve seen some incredibly bright people not make it through graduate studies because they tied their talent up with their capacity to finish. In the end it’s not really about talent, it’s about determination and hard work.

5. Everyone feels like an impostor sometimes: I’m not going to lie to you and tell you like I feel like I belong in a PhD every day. Some days, I worry that someone will realize the brilliant (for me) mistake they made in accepting me into my program, and that it was merely by some administrative oversight that I got in. For the record, I just started my fourth year and have long since finished coursework and candidacy. I’m pretty sure this feeling will never go away.

Impostor syndrome is the phrase used for the psychological disconnect that begs us to think: “I don’t belong here.” And believe me, I experience it a lot. I frequently feel that way during conferences (when I’m presenting alongside incredibly brilliant people), when I submit articles for review, and sometimes when I spend time discussing social theory (or something of the like) with my colleagues.

The first thing to know is that everyone feels it at some point in their lives. It’s normal. I think it’s especially normal in graduate school because you feel like you should know mroe than you do to be called a graduate student. Just know we all feel like this sometimes.

6. Foster good relationships with your colleagues and professors: I study social support, and in the end, almost everything I write ends up at the same place. Relationships have value. They enhance our mental and physical health. They change how we react to stress. Developing good relationships with your peers will be your lifeline. 

When I started my masters degree, I was the only student in my cohort in my department. It sucked. Having no one to bounce ideas off of was problematic, but having no one to share my impostor-inadequacies with was downright painful. No one else I knew started their masters degree at the same time. I was a fish out of water, and I didn’t really have anyone to share those moments with. And while my department had several continuing masters students, having people to support you at the same phase  as you is better–at least from my experience. Which makes sense from the standpoint of the homophily literature–support is often deemed the most useful from people going through the same things as you.

Fostering positive relationships with professors happens both in and out of the classroom. If your department has social events, attend them. You’d be surprised how great it is to get to know your profs outside the confines of the classroom. Yes, you may experience some role blurring (i.e. “Am I a student or my social self right now?), but these situations are some of the best places to get to know profs.

7. Ask for and accept help: I write a lot. I am still not the strongest writer I know. Will I ever be? No. But I can fake it pretty darned well. And part of the faking it is knowing when I need to go talk to someone else about it. Universities have resources to strength student skills. Use these. They’re included in your tuition. I’m not ashamed to say that I spent a lot of time visiting the writing centre to become a better writer. I went to a tutor once a week for two years to enhance my writing ability. It’s still not outstanding, but it really has substantially improved. And I’m not going to lie to you and say that it wasn’t a lot of work. It was a ridiculous amount of work. It has, however, paid off. My supervisor sees fewer and fewer errors in my writing, and the work is far better in first draft than it ever used to be.

Seeing a writing tutor isn’t shameful and it doesn’t mean that I’m an inadequate scholar. It means I’m being proactive and working hard at making myself a better scholar. I really want a job someday. This means I need skills. I’m doing what I can to acquire them.

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So there you have it. My tips for dealing with grad school and having happy fun times.

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