Rachel Chen Honored as Woman of the Year

California State Senator for the 21st District Carol Liu, will be honoring Rachel Chen as one of 5 women of the year on March 20th.

Rachel is a very effective advocate for folks with developmental disabilities and their families. Rachel's son Joshua is a second year Pathway student who will be graduating in June.

Rachel has been a great asset to Pathway and is always willing to assist us as well as providing support and consultation to the families of Pathway students. Congratulations Rachel!


From Senator Liu's press release:

Rachel Chen, Temple City. Rachel has served as President of the Chinese Parents Association for the Disabled since 1997 and she is co-director of Community Parents Resource – Reach Out to Latino and Chinese Families, a federal Department of Education program. She is the mother of a high-functioning autistic young man who is a UCLA Extension Pathway student.

Joshua with fellow student Lauren (left) and Resident Assistant Nicole (right)

Internships

One of the requirements for Pathway students is to participate in an internship. The point of the internship is to allow students to get exposure to different work and career opportunities. For students with limited work experience, an internship is about learning the basic responsibilities - being on time, working with a supervisor, knowing when and how to get help with tasks etc. For students with more experience it is a chance to build on their existing skills and help define what kind of work they would like to pursue after graduation. For all students the internship is a opportunity to practice balancing work, school, and their social life.

Before a student starts an internship, Nadith Schuster our internship coordinator runs a weekly Internship Preparation seminar focused on finding student interest areas, preparing resumes and cover letters, as well as mock interviews. From there Nadith seeks out potential internship sites based on those student interests. Seems pretty simple, but there are a number of serious hurdles. First she has to find a site that has a need, is willing to take on an intern, and is close enough to the university for students to get to easily. The percentage of yeses is very low.

Once we get a yes, then the bureaucracy sets in. Every site must sign an internship agreement with the university to make sure that students are covered by insurance and that there is a clear delineation of responsibilities. Finally, many employers require background checks and physicals before an intern can start. In short each internship can be very time intensive before a student ever sets foot on the site.

We have had great luck with securing internship sites both on the UCLA campus and in the Westwood area. Our current internship sites include:

UCLA Recreation - John Wooden Center
Americorps - American Red Cross
UCLA Career Center
UCLA Extension Facilities Department
UCLA Extension Department of the Arts
UCLA Extension Office of the Dean
UCLA Extension American Language Center
St. Alban's Episcopal Church
Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Gardens
Tiverton House
UCLA Housing and Hospitality
Tarjan Center at UCLA

UCLA Recreation

From the very beginning, UCLA Recreation has been one of our strongest allies in gaining access to university resources for Pathway students. One of the first calls I got when I started in 2006 was from Jamie Hoffman at UCLA Recreation. Jamie was pulling together a group of interested parties to start an adaptive recreation program, and asked me to participate. This turned out to be a very fruitful connection.

Jamie has been a great ambassador for getting Pathway students involved in UCLA Recreation activities, as well as providing key contacts for internships for our students.

Jamie leading Pathway students in team building exercises (Sept 07)

This year Jamie has been working to incorporate our students into some of the outdoor programs offered through Recreation. This fall a group of Pathway students participated in a hike and barbecue in the Santa Monica Mountains. No pictures of that event, but it was during the height of fire season, and where they were was one of the only smoke-free areas in the area.

In February, Thomas one of our first-year students, went up to Big Bear to participate in the adaptive recreation skiing/snowboarding trip. He had a great time!

Thomas at Big Bear (Feb 09)

I Want to Quit

I think about quitting everyday - I have had many bad days where I sat at my desk holding my head and thinking, "I just can't do this anymore!" But I have made a commitment to be here - I have made a commitment to the students, the staff, my wife and children, parents and families, my colleagues around the country - to move Pathway forward. So I pick myself up, recite a few affirmations and go onward.

But this post is not about me. This post is about the times that each and every one of our students says that they want to quit.

Everyday I hear things like...

"It is too hard,"
"Nobody likes me,"
"They are leaving me out,"
"The math class is too easy/hard,"
"My roommate snores and talks at night, and I can't sleep,"
"So and so took my money,"
"This is not what I expected."

At one time or another every college student wants to quit. In fact, 50% of college students drop out - 25% of freshman do not return for their sophomore year. So our students are not alone in struggling with their college experience.

For many young people college may be the hardest thing they have ever attempted so far in their lives. For many it is their first time away from their families and the security of their parental safely net. For many it is their first glimpse at the real world.

IT IS HARD! There is no way around it - we try to cushion all blows by providing support where we think it is needed, but there are not enough pillows in the world to soften every fall. And it is excruciating for us as parents to see our kids fall. But Students fall, and fall they must, sometimes pretty hard.

It is finding the way to help them up that gives us the most difficulty. Even harder is finding the way up on the second, third, fourth, fifth...time. It is however, in finding the way up that we learn the most. Failure and hardship are an inevitable part of life, and we must all find a way to constructively deal with these natural consequences.

Our challenge is resisting the urge to step in and fix things rather than supporting a student to find their own solution. Certainly there are situations that require intervention, but our aim within Pathway is to provide an environment where students can learn these lessons in a safe environment, AND get support to learn constructive ways to pull themselves up.

So quitting is always an option, but is that really what you want to do? Not me.