Hello, Renrenspeakers! Happy Friday, Happy January, and Happy New Year! I hope all is well! Life so far has been treating me well overall, as with a new year comes a reset in values, mindset, ambition, and goals. I recently entered my LATE 20s – can yall believe that? Because I cannot! I still feel like a teenager sometimes, lol. My birthday was last week, and I had such a blessed time celebrating it with my loved ones and my family away from home here in AZ. I feel like I need to normalize celebrating ME more often, not just on my birthday, because I deserve it!

In addition to my birthday, I am excited to announce that I officially stepped into my LAST semester of graduate school EVER! Now can YALL believe that??? I feel like I have been in school forever, yet time has also flown by. It has been an interesting dichotomy. To conclude my final semester of graduate school, I have embarked on my doctoral capstone project. This experience thus far has been so rewarding and enriching. Upon entering grad school, one of the reasons why I was swayed to pursue a doctorate instead of a masters degree in occupational therapy was because I wanted to cultivate a unique project that augments occupational therapy in a non-traditional setting – working with immigrants and/or refugees, specifically, as many of yall know my proximity to this population. I didn’t know how it would be made possible, but it finally has come together full circle after three years of cultivating this goal. I am currently working for a non-profit organization that specifically works with refugee and asylum-seeking families offering essential services for self-sufficiency such as stable housing, financial support, English classes, and communal support. With the partnership of my organization I have been paired with for the next few months, I have been able to create a project that head spears a life skills program teaching various life skills deemed essential for enhancing self-sufficiency and easing adaptation to the U.S. I will be working with a small group of newly arrived Afghan women, and my program will be a hybrid of “in-class” sessions and community outings practicing these newfound skills to use in the community. It hasn’t been an easy journey getting to where I am now, I will say. LOTS of time reading literature, justifying the need for OT in this emerging practice area, coordinating participants, etc. has been spent, and I bet it will still change as I continue my process. However, through this experience, I have learned that being a self-starter and being my own boss is empowering, and I can actually make a positive difference in a community if I set my mind to it.  

I just finished my second week of my capstone so far. Some highlights of my time spent include the following:

1. Practicing my (note: very broken and limited) French and Swahili skills with a Congolese woman attending English classes and witnessing her immediate comfortability with me.
2. Conducting home visits and getting to know each participant in a very personalized way by learning more about their typical day upon arrival and being immersed in their culture.
3. Having a traditional Afghan meal during one of my home visits as a way of welcoming me into their home.
4. Meeting and working closely with my translator who is my right-hand woman and who has been a tremendous help to the success of my developing program.
5. Being considered part of the team by being invited to an empowering staff meeting and justifying my role as an OTD student at the site I am interning at.

Overall, this has been such a culturally enriching experience so far, and I am excited to be a part of a community where I not only implement my program, but reciprocally learn a ton from the population that I am working with! I think a passion project is the perfect way to re-awaken my passion for OT and wrap up my graduate schooling (because I’m not gonna lie, sometimes that passion was waning during the consistent studying grind I had to endure for long hours on end the first two years). Stay tuned for the progression of my capstone project!

Peace and love,

Irene