Week 9 is a very stressful time because we are approaching the end of the quarter and finals week altogether, however, our class during week 9 was very inspiring and an amazing experience altogether. On Wednesday I woke up in an OK mood, not the happiest but also I was not feeling completely down, but after meeting with Professor Lewis and my peers, my mood was so much better and my positivity for the rest of week 9 was higher than I expected. On Wednesday we visited Casa de Mañana in La Jolla. Seeing the ocean and feeling the breeze was… a breath of fresh air literally, and figuratively. Even though I live in San Diego I do not see the ocean that often because my life is very busy, so seeing that first thing Wednesday morning was very relaxing, and special. I will admit I felt a little jealous that the seniors get to wake up to that view every single day. The tour of Casa de Mañana was very eye opening. It is clear that the residents there live in a very nice community. During the tour, I thought about the Gary & Mary West Senior Wellness Center. I understand that there are no units at the Gary & Marcy Senior Wellness Center which is why they may not have that many activities for seniors to do but I did notice a clear difference between both centers. Firstly, the environment at Casa de Mañana was so much nicer and healthier than the Mary & Gary Center. The Mary & Gary Center is in the city and surrounded by busy polluted streets and the only open area they have is the parking lot compared to the ocean and open streets and sidewalks and grass areas that Casa de Mañana has. It is also important to note that I saw a much greater diversity among people at the Mary & Gary center compared to the Casa de Mañana center. In our class we discuss healthy aging and how our environment plays a huge role in that process. I think it's important we start to bring awareness to health inequities like these and make a change. Every aging person, including ourselves, deserves the same opportunities for healthy aging. I had the privilege of meeting Alice Yee, she was born in 1919 and she is from the state of Washington. We talked about women's rights and how difficult it was for her to grow in her career because she was a woman. She talked about all the times she fought for her rights as a woman working in the education field but she explained that as she grew older and wiser she understood that sometimes it was not worth it and that one must “choose their battles”. She asked me about my plans after graduation and she asked me about my personal life. I shared many personal details about struggles I face and she gave me very encouraging and inspiring advice. She explained how she was very proud of us and how we have to try our hardest to fix the world because it's “so messed up”, she said her generation ruined it and unfortunately it's now in our hands to fix it. She talked about the struggles in her life but overall how privileged she has been up to now, and how privileged she is to live in Casa de Mañana. She said she feels very fortunate to have lived so long. I was sad to see her go when our time was up but it definitely was an experience that I was not expecting and also an experience that I didn't know I needed to get me through the rest of this quarter and basically until graduation in June. Life Course Scholars has been the greatest experience of my 4 years at UC San Diego, the pandemic robbed me of my university years unfortunately but I feel very lucky that I was chosen for this year's cohort. I have learned so much and I have made connections with my peers and people in the community which is priceless. I am very sad that the quarter is basically over and that this experience is coming to an end but this has made me more open and interested in pursuing different fields within Public Health. Professor Lewis does an amazing job, and I am very grateful that I was given this opportunity to learn and grow as an individual.
Week 9 is a very stressful time because we are approaching the end of the quarter and finals week altogether, however, our class during week 9 was very inspiring and an amazing experience altogether. On Wednesday I woke up in an OK mood, not the happiest but also I was not feeling completely down, but after meeting with Professor Lewis and my peers, my mood was so much better and my positivity for the rest of week 9 was higher than I expected. On Wednesday we visited Casa de Mañana in La Jolla. Seeing the ocean and feeling the breeze was… a breath of fresh air literally, and figuratively. Even though I live in San Diego I do not see the ocean that often because my life is very busy, so seeing that first thing Wednesday morning was very relaxing, and special. I will admit I felt a little jealous that the seniors get to wake up to that view every single day. The tour of Casa de Mañana was very eye opening. It is clear that the residents there live in a very nice community. During the tour, I thought about the Gary & Mary West Senior Wellness Center. I understand that there are no units at the Gary & Marcy Senior Wellness Center which is why they may not have that many activities for seniors to do but I did notice a clear difference between both centers. Firstly, the environment at Casa de Mañana was so much nicer and healthier than the Mary & Gary Center. The Mary & Gary Center is in the city and surrounded by busy polluted streets and the only open area they have is the parking lot compared to the ocean and open streets and sidewalks and grass areas that Casa de Mañana has. It is also important to note that I saw a much greater diversity among people at the Mary & Gary center compared to the Casa de Mañana center. In our class we discuss healthy aging and how our environment plays a huge role in that process. I think it's important we start to bring awareness to health inequities like these and make a change. Every aging person, including ourselves, deserves the same opportunities for healthy aging. I had the privilege of meeting Alice Yee, she was born in 1919 and she is from the state of Washington. We talked about women's rights and how difficult it was for her to grow in her career because she was a woman. She talked about all the times she fought for her rights as a woman working in the education field but she explained that as she grew older and wiser she understood that sometimes it was not worth it and that one must “choose their battles”. She asked me about my plans after graduation and she asked me about my personal life. I shared many personal details about struggles I face and she gave me very encouraging and inspiring advice. She explained how she was very proud of us and how we have to try our hardest to fix the world because it's “so messed up”, she said her generation ruined it and unfortunately it's now in our hands to fix it. She talked about the struggles in her life but overall how privileged she has been up to now, and how privileged she is to live in Casa de Mañana. She said she feels very fortunate to have lived so long. I was sad to see her go when our time was up but it definitely was an experience that I was not expecting and also an experience that I didn't know I needed to get me through the rest of this quarter and basically until graduation in June. Life Course Scholars has been the greatest experience of my 4 years at UC San Diego, the pandemic robbed me of my university years unfortunately but I feel very lucky that I was chosen for this year's cohort. I have learned so much and I have made connections with my peers and people in the community which is priceless. I am very sad that the quarter is basically over and that this experience is coming to an end but this has made me more open and interested in pursuing different fields within Public Health. Professor Lewis does an amazing job, and I am very grateful that I was given this opportunity to learn and grow as an individual.
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In our last during week 7 we made a visit to Barrio Logan in San Diego. This neighborhood was full of culture and I loved it. As a Mexican American, I felt very familiar with the type of people I saw walking around the streets, and the restaurants and shops they had, for example the birreria they had at the corner of a street my group and I walked on. I felt comfortable in the area because I could identify with this culture and its people. I loved Chicano park, I loved the murals. I love my Mexican culture and seeing it displayed for everyone to see was very refreshing. My peers and I were there to walk around the neighborhood and observe how age friendly it was. At the end of our walk we met up at Chicano park and discussed our observations. Although Barrio Logan is a culturally rich neighborhood compared to many other parts of San Diego we found that for the most part it was not an age friendly place for seniors. There were not any benches for seniors to sit at, the only exception was bus stop benches. We found that the sidewalks were not as flat and not very safe for seniors to walk on alone, we also discussed how we had to rush when crossing the street and that it could take a senior a longer time to cross than us, meaning that they needed more time to cross the street making it unsafe. We also found that the only large area with grass was Chicano park and even though it is full of trees, tables, and benches, it is directly under the freeways. It was very hard to hear each other because of the noise from the freeway and this led us to the discussion on pollution and how Barrio Logan is one of the areas where people are most affected by toxic air emissions such as particulate matter. We also discussed how this neighborhood is generally hotter than La Jolla because of the lack of grass and because there is more cement in Barrio Logan making it retain more heat. All of these environmental factors have a great effect on one's health. This also made me think about my home in Los Angeles where my grandparents live and how it's structured very similarly to Barrio Logan. As a young adult I am able to navigate the city much more efficiently and faster than my grandparents so that may be the reason why I never noticed it. I began to compare what I saw in Barrio Logan and draw similarities between where my grandparents live in Hawthorne California. I discovered that the sidewalks are also very old and cracked, and that in general it is not a neighborhood that promotes interactions between people or that is friendly for seniors. My grandparents love their home because they are comfortable and they have lived in their house for many, many years but the city is definitely not the safest in terms of crime. This also made me think about how I have never asked my grandparents if they feel safe in their neighborhood or if they wish there were more resources for them. Luckily they have their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to help them and take them to those medical resources they may need, but this is not always the case for many seniors. As Life Course Scholars in this class, I think it is important that we create awareness around this issue because many young people like myself never noticed little details like this before. Overall this was a great enriching experience, and I am excited to learn more through communities such as Barrio Logan
In my previous blog, I talked about the book we are reading and how it made me reflect a lot on society's assumptions on older people and how it made me think mostly about how I do not know much about my grandparents and their lives as seniors. The Oral Project we did was a great experience and I am so happy that I had the opportunity to sit and talk with my grandma and get to know her more. I enjoyed looking through albums with her and looking at pictures of my aunt, uncle, and dad from when they were very young. I feel like before I started taking this class, I always saw seniors as people who do not have interesting lives anymore, or just people that have boring lives. I feel like before I did this project I didn’t think there was anything my grandma and I could mutually relate too. Completing this project made me realize that my grandma and I actually have a lot in common. When she talked about her years as a young teen and adult, even though we both lived those ages in completely different times there were many similarities between how we viewed ourselves at that age and issues we faced as latina women. I felt that I could relate to my grandma, and hearing her struggles made me empathize with her on another level. I am a first generation college student, and this also came up in our conversation. She explained how incredibly proud she was of me and I thanked her because her struggles and sacrifices have allowed me to pursue an education; something she was never able to do. The event we coordinated at the Gary and Mary West Senior Wellness Center was an amazing experience, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have participated in the event. After doing the project with my grandma, I felt that I gained communication skills that allowed me to connect with seniors and overcome that intergenerational gap that prevents us young adults from approaching the seniors in our communities. I met many seniors during the event but spoke to a few for a long period of time, and got to know them on a more personal level. Watching the smiles that taking pictures brought to their faces was priceless and being able to interact with them and joke with them was a very rewarding experience. I later realized that I had experienced and had those conversations with seniors that John Leland wrote about in his book. I could now relate to how he described certain conversations with his interviewees. He explains how some of his interviewees were very happy and enthusiastic, and others complained about their life. I also interacted with seniors that were always smiling and others that were not as happy and complained about politics and society. In the past seven weeks of winter quarter I have learned a lot and have gained valuable experience and knowledge. I am very excited to continue to learn from my peers, Professor Lewis, and seniors in our communities.
During the first three weeks of class I have been mostly interested in the book we were assigned to read, “Happiness is a Choice You Make” by John Leland. The chapters we have read so far have been about the six elder people he interviewed. Leland interviewed them and wrote all about it in his book. I will admit that some of the first topics were difficult for me to get through just because I did not find much of it interesting but after the first chapter I began to appreciate the stories the author wrote about his interviewees. What I found most interesting was that older people are in fact happier than younger people, and there are studies that prove this. Of course there's also Leland’s argument that society has an ageist view on the older population, which is definitely true. He explains how these stereotypes have been implemented into our brains making it very difficult to unlearn. The truth is that I never realized all of the jokes, comments, or ideas people made about older people until I started reading this book. After learning about this, I noticed the comments and jokes people of my generation made about older people that I never did before. It makes me wonder about how much this idea that old people are miserable and a burden was imposed on me before, because I never found it as offensive as I do now. Before it was a joke, but I appreciate the fact that Leland has made me see it in a different way. I found that what I thought about older people is the complete opposite from the truth. Such as the fact that most of the time older people are completely content with living their life how it is compared to the younger generation who tend to suffer more from illnesses such as depression. This also made me reflect on my grandparents and how I may not know them as well as I thought. Aside from this book that has made me reflect a lot, and the very interesting conversations I have with my peers on zoom, I am excited to continue reading and participating in discussions in class.
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Jimena Carolina SalazarJimena Salazar is a Public Health major with a concentration in Community Health Sciences. She is from Archives
March 2022
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