I was GOOD!

I was good. I wrote my paper.
Isn't this little puppy cute?

Thank you anyone who might have happened to read my blog and then pray for me! I am actually going to send a link because I feel too guilty overloading all my friends with long emails and I'm in a chatty mood!

Here's my paper.
This is a dumb one. Then why am I sharing it? Well, it will make more sense when I talk about how everyone ELSE's paper was.

You don't have to read it----
My interests in human development began in the spring of 1982. Although my school record was dismal, I sparked to life when I embarked on the study of psychology, a half-credit elective that I took following government in my junior year of high school. Suddenly, I could not get enough of the course readings, I relished my homework, I aced every test and the teacher that once seemed horrendously boring became my favorite. I realized that I was onto something. Clearly, I was able to accomplish a heavy workload if my interests were engaged.
I applied this new work ethic to the monotonous classes and they came to life for me as well, but nothing on the same line as the psychology class…until I came to the child development portion of a home economics class in my senior year. We were given a special textbook about child development for one portion of the class and I read the whole thing, even asking my teacher if I could purchase it. Delighting in babies was new. I had never really been around any, but their developmental paths seemed incredibly engaging and I toyed with the idea of having a baby myself.
It was not long before that was a reality. I was supposed to graduate and move with my father to California for college, but as my parents divorced, I chose to marry my high school sweetheart. My college plans were put on hold when I was pregnant after four months. Cheerfully, I decided I would have my family young and return to school when they were older. I read an American Baby Magazine special publication for new mothers to track my baby’s intellectual, social and physical development month by month.
When I had my third child, I studied midwifery and was reading books such as Your Baby and Child: Birth to Five Years by Penelope Leach and The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth by Sheila Kitzinger. I was involved and surrounded with people in my local church. I was present at friends’ births and was a doula for some of them, but I was most invested in promoting good families. I taught marriage and parenting classes at church and I mentored teen moms in the community, educating them as a volunteer prenatal educator through Any Baby Can of Austin and through the Teenage Parent Council of Austin.
I was critically aware of the development of my children and the many children around me in my life, even as they became teens and went off to college. But my husband brought substantial changes in our life when he went back to school in 1990 and then began working for Dell in 1995. I knew then I wanted schooling to be more accessible to the lower classes and minorities because of the discrepancies between the working class and the middle class.
My early years with my husband exposed me to families that were on the edge of poverty and I witnessed first hand some of their struggles. My community work exposed even greater disparities between what most Americans consider a normal life and what some people were enduring. I wanted to be part of the solution.
As for my disciplinary heritage, I come from the general psychology major. I have written papers based on attachment theory (psych of religion), social learning theory (research on Chinese women’s identity as women in America), and Erikson’s psycho-social theory (compared to McAdams narrative identity theory). I had an excellent course called Children’s Thinking (Siegler & Alibali, 2005) that delved into socio-cultural theories of development (Vygotsky ..and Rogoff), Piaget (of course), language, memory, social cognition, it was fascinating!
My personal framework would begin with the genes. There is no doubt of the heavy role of genes in the development of the person. On the light side, I have witnessed my own children have odd behaviors of grandparents they never see (walking tip-toe as infants, for example) and I’ve seen the radically different behavior of adopted children, both in other homes and in my own. I raised my half-great-niece for three years, ages two to five. It was a very interesting observation in genetic differences, down to smell. Each of my birth children’s idiosyncrasies can be traced to someone, but hers could not…she enjoyed pulling stickers off of things, crooked socks made her extremely uncomfortable, her hands and feet sweated profusely. From the womb, children come out differently and some of these differences persist.
I view genetic tendencies as a blueprint for the individual. There are potentials there within the person. Certain environments may trigger these potentials, whereas other developmental paths may not. Particularly with the children who are not as resilient….good, stable environments can support the best in these children. Although some children are not going to fare well anywhere, optimal environments impose the least harm.
To explain, suppose there is a child with strong genetic aggression. A good environment will not change that, but it may support cognitive or social learning of other ways of expression thereby neutralizing the worst of that potential. Conversely, a child who is in an adverse situation may not be able to overcome some of their weaker potentials. We each have a general nature that can be expressed at poles. While I may be gregarious and friendly, I can also be overly talkative and insensitive.
Then upon these blueprints, social learning occurs. A child learns from what they view, what they hear, and what they are told. If a mother tells her child that rain is God crying, then the child believes that is true about the world. Children begin to form their idea about themselves from what others tell them and from all the things around them, they form their own ideas about how the world works (the reflexive nature of the self). Their minds are incredibly equipped for this, such as with language learning. Later, as with McAdams narrative identity theory, individuals reformulate their story to make sense of their life.
Regarding self-selection of environments, one point to make for the poor is that they do not always know of alternatives. They may be full of positive potential and not understand their inherent skills waiting to be developed, thereby retarding their own growth inadvertently. This is why I am interested in Human Development and Social Policy. My intention is to teach at the university level and to partner with programs, such as the McNair Scholars program, to increase the underrepresented in academia.
As a McNair Scholar myself, I heard firsthand from Hispanic young women about the barriers to education that they face. Their families are frequently against higher education, believing it to be a waste of time so they encourage their daughters to come home and get a job. Somehow, these girls have gotten themselves into college in spite of their family’s stance on education and I want to help first generation college students get through the maze of obstacles that they see as they approach graduate degrees (even getting their undergraduate degree).
Although over a century of social work has not put an end to poverty, Jesus said we would always have the poor with us---and so we will continue to have a social and moral obligation to care for the orphans, the widows, and the poor. Housing, health care, and education will continue to bring some hope to a hurting world. I persist in optimism and idealism because it generates energy to keep fighting for solutions for the next one coming. I hope that learning more about policies and programs of the past can bring us into greater awareness of focal areas for the future. That is why I am here at HDSP. And I will bring that learning to minorities and first generation college students in my future work in the universities and communities, both in the USA and abroad.

Whew! At least I finished! I'll correct it tomorrow before I send it via email and bring the hard copy to class.

but it got me thinking about the real theories. and so I was looking in an Adult Development book that was an online UT class that Mr. took. It talked about Jane Loevinger's theory....like the conformist stage, self-aware level, conscientious stage, individualistic level, and autonomous stage.
I can see myself going through those. I am not exactly autonomous, but one hallmark is the capacity to deal with inner conflict and that other people are accepted and cherished for what and who they are, with no attempt to make them over.

That has been a good thing to attain. I am not fully immune and I've always got advice for everyone. Both of my parents are the same way.....so it comes naturally to me.....but I don't expect that others have to TAKE my advice. I've even begun to let my own CHILDREN find their way. That is a rough and difficult choice that takes letting go of my own ideals of who I am and what I impart to my children. But it is worth it. I always think of how furious I was with K for not heading right into college---what a waste of relationship! I regret it! I'd rather support him in what HE wants to do.

Be sure to email any comments.