Northwest Institute for Social Change: The Blog

Portland: One very bad habit

I am a workaholic. I try way too hard to accomplish far too many things. It’s probably not humanly possible to complete all the tasks I have set out for myself.

But then there’s caffeine.

It’s what keeps me going during the school year. In order to complete piles of homework, respond to millions of e-mails, show up for work every day, prep my radio show, finish my edits for the newspaper, be a major procrastinator and still retain some sense of coherency (or friends?), I must drink caffeine. It’s some sort of magical substance that half gives me energy and half serves as a placebo to force me to remember that I have energy. It’s a wretched habit, but we all have our weaknesses. Don’t judge too much.

So what is the drink of choice? Coffee? Too strong. Tea? Too weak. Soda? Gets old. Energy drinks? Just ridiculous enough to possibly be dangerous. YES.

To maintain this ridiculous at-school lifestyle, I usually “detox” by going caffeine free during school breaks—fall break, winter break, spring break, summer break.

But not this summer. I’ve remained caffeine free this far, but now that we’re going through the editing process, I can sense my creeping addiction whispering to me, “Monster. Amp. 5 Hour Energy. Red bull. Full Throttle!”

Editing is always an intense, nasty process, but at NWISC, we tighten an already tight schedule. Check back with me on Friday morning. The work will be done, it will be great, and we will be proud. But Emily’s and my recycling bin won’t be a pretty sight.

— Sara

Portland: ‘Otherizing’ countries, ‘otherizing’ kids

At Whitman last spring, I wrote a tidy little discursive analysis about Orientalism in the European Union and the way it manifests itself as a rhetorical and (consequentially) literal exclusion of Turkey from the EU.

I really had no clue what I was saying. I pretty much fancied myself as Edward Said for a month and wanted to annoy my advisor with my obsession with the analysis of discourse.

Courtesy of Hellenic Communication Service, L.L.C.

But the paper did bring an interesting theory to my attention: Creating the other, or otherizing. The idea that you create distance between yourself and that with which you are unfamiliar, simply because it is unfamiliar, and because it is easier to stereotype than to understand.

As I studied, I came to conclude that basically everyone does it, despite how many -isms or -phobias we might be propagating in the process. I started noticing “otherizing” everywhere, particularly in my non-academic life.

Take, for example, any kid labeled as “at risk” in the United States. They might be “at risk” because they are likely to drop out of high school, are credit deficient, are social rejects—they’re kids we don’t know, and we don’t want to know. So how does this stereotyping affect “at risk” youth?

Political correctness get a lot of shit for being overzealous, overly protective, totally unnecessary. But acknowledging the way words can otherize individuals—even the kids right in our neighborhood—is an important step in constructing a more understanding community. By avoiding labels for its voluntary program participants, it’s a step that the non-profit Urban Opportunities is taking in its job skills training and employment opportunity at the Voodoo Donut van.

For our video project, Emily, Madeline and I are studying this non-profit and its beneficiaries. Yesterday we spent 5 hours with one so-called “at risk” youth who, if anything, overwhelmed us with his normalcy. He’s not going to benefit from being otherized as an “at risk” individual, and neither will we.

— Sara

Portland: Too cool for school?

Our program assistant Ashly recently asked us students to write out our goals for and the skills we offered to NWISC.

This next sentence is going to make my colleagues want to slap me, or at least stop reading—but give me a chance. Here goes: Caught up in two weeks of classes, assignments and others’ technical difficulties, I started to wonder why I came.

I’m Sara. That’s right, Sara. Not Sarah, as my username might lead you to believe. Blame the wife of Abraham for popularizing the latter (less cool) spelling, or something. I’ve been in journalism for four years. I’ve had plenty of arguments over ethics—dealing with student deaths, bomb threats, headlines that say “fuck!” and columns advocating student-professor relationships. I’ve conducted more interviews than I’d like. I’m quite familiar with every aspect of print. I host a radio show. I work in a multimedia lab (shown below) where using two screens to edit with Audacity or Final Cut Pro is the norm. I’ve been using WordPress for a year. At school, I’m often late to class when I get too involved in troubleshooting computer problems for other students.

When I first heard of NWISC over a year and a half ago, I knew it was an ideal opportunity. But in these two weeks, I started to forget why. I began to think, maybe I didn’t have as much to learn as I thought I did?

Boy, was I wrong.

While working on my resume this weekend, I recalled that which I was forgetting—a crucial aspect of this program. First, I certainly don’t know everything there is to know about the tech world. I was kindly reminded of that by my cocky former manager from the aforementioned tech lab, when I sought out his resume an example for my own. (It was awesome.)

But second, and more importantly, just because I have journo skills and tech skills, it doesn’t mean I have anything to do with them. I see a lot of passion in my fellow students, which clearly translates into their words and behaviors. But for me, knowing the keyboard shortcuts in Audacity doesn’t compel me to do anything positive for the world around me. I’d like to, but I just don’t.

And that’s why I’m here this summer: To learn from my peers, who have taken action without necessarily having the “skills” to do so, to start looking for ways to put my own “skills” to good use, and to strike a resonant balance between the two.

— Sara