The heart-wrenching story told by Suzanne, in this week’s TED talk had a major emotional impact on me. Suzanne’s brother(Deah), his wife(Yusor), and his sister in law (Razan) were all shot in the head in a hate crime committed by their neighbor who has been harassing them and he had anti-religious posts on his social media, and them being Muslim made them his target. Suzanne discussed a lot about the impact of islamophobia. One of her quotes that really stuck out to me was “ I guess we’ve all become so numb to the hatred we couldn’t ever imagine(d) it turning into fatal violence.” It is sad to know that this is someone’s reality because no one should have to live like that. This was extremely eye-opening and motivated me to be more active on the issues of today. She told her story in a way where I was engaged and demanding justice for her family and when people reached out to help her and when they chose to be silent I knew that, if I wanted to be anyone in this story it was Neal, Suzanne’s neighbor, that reached out and helped her tell her truth using the connections and power he had as a journalist. I think people like him who support others with what the can provide are the most compassionate people and I think people like Suzanne who is actively raising awareness and taking action on injustice are so brave and strong.
This week we finally did the VEP recruitment interviews that we have been planning so long for. In my opinion, it went really well. For personal fears, I was worried that I would struggle with talking but I did well. I mainly listened to the applicants’ responses diligently. I made sure that I took good notes so that when I came back to the notes I can get a good sense of what each applicant is like. I was also disappointed that some of those who applied did not show up because I was excited since they had really good responses. I am relieved that we had at least ten people who did show up so that we have options and a lot of them seem like they would make a good addition to the team. The next process is actually dividing them into different committees and rejecting at least one of them.
Our workshop for this week was a Cover letter workshop with Linnea. Honestly I really enjoyed the process of writing the cover letter. It was my first time writing one but I was able to figure out how to do it fairly fast. It was also fun to look for jobs and internship opportunities to apply for. I felt like I did well so I was looking forward to this workshop and hearing Linnea’s feedback. She said that mine was good and the only issue was that I did not notice that the text color changed from black to gray throughout the letter. It was also beneficial to see my team members different cover letter styles and listen to their feedback too.
Although I feel like I have fallen behind last week I was able to catch up with it all this week and that feels really good because I was able to learn how to adapt to situations like these. For me, it takes communication, consistency, checklists, and persistence. I was also able to schedule an informational interview which was something I was anxious about. I was worried that this was the task I was going to be incapable of doing on my own because when I was looking for professionals they either never got back to me or I kept walking into a wall. For a moment I doubted myself Even though this professional was someone that we had previously interviewed before I am looking forward to it because I have more questions now that I am looking into being a social worker.