obvious lesson of the week
Turns out that working with adults is a lot different than working with children! Last semester, I was motivating a middle schooler by promising a Play-Doh break and charting homework progress on a sticker chart, and now I’m nagging a smoker and asking really personal questions about the state of one transgender woman’s transition: When did you realize your gender didn’t match your body? When did you first start dressing as a female? The closest experience I have to any kind of counseling is real-talking an 11 year old about how kids in middle school are savage insecure bullies who torment others for their minor quirks, and explaining therefore that her speech impediment might get in the way of her making positive first impressions next year. SO YEAH it turns out adults are complicated heterogeneous baggage-bearing individuals, and not eager-to-please sweethearts OKAY BUT WHY DID THIS FACT SURPRISE ME THIS WEEK?
