Recovery

    Nathaniel Ayers does not care what conditions he finds himself in, so long as he is free to play his instruments as depicted in Steve Lopez’s The Soloist. Lopez struggles to understand why Nathaniel chooses to sleep amongst the degenerates he bad-mouths, all for the sake of playing music, only to be drowned out by cars and horns. Nathaniel just wants to make music, showing little interest in being heard. He has no desire in the stress of becoming a professional musician or in recovery. As a young child, I had a lot of anxieties and paranoia. My siblings offered to teach me many hobbies, my favorites by far being arts and crafts, reading, and swimming. Although these outlets were healthy and fun, I would still feel internally tangled by the end of the activities. As I got older and lazier, I developed a disorder called trichotillomania. It is defined as having an irresistible urge to pull at one’s hair. I was at a loss on how to manage it.

     My godparents wanted me to seek therapy, but I refused. I did not want to be diagnosed and medicated, like every other kid in high school who claims to be bipolar. Instead, I got busy, filling up my schedule with a part time job and a college class. If I was constantly using both of my hands, then I couldn’t possibly pull my hair. Much to my dismay, I found myself thinking about pulling, an experience much more treacherous than actually pulling. When I was a cashier at Green Arrow Nurseries, the girls I worked with would comment on my fidgeting. It took all my willpower to resist my abnormal urges. Once the desire overwhelmed me, I would escape into the greenhouse to have some privacy. One day, as I felt for my next victim, I noticed an Epipremnum aureum, commonly known as Devil’s Ivy, covered in brown leaves. I grabbed it to toss it, but saw that it had plenty of happy sprouts popping up in every direction. I sat down and started pinching away the dead leaves. Something in me clicked. I was no gardener, but I felt at peace trying my hand. By the time I was done, the Devil’s Ivy looked nurtured and refreshed.

    I no longer work at Green Arrow, and Green Arrow no longer exists. My days of being in the beautiful 1950’s green plank-paneled greenhouse are over. I have created a potted garden in my modest balcony, with 62 plants from many places (some were even propagated from neighbor’s yards). I can name most of them, but I am only interested in names for the sake of looking up ideal conditions, soil requirements, and potential pollinators. I enjoy nurturing them, because I understand that I need them and that my plants and all the ones I ever knew and may never see again are made up of A, T, G, and C, just like me. When I see a stagnant stem, I see wasted energy that could be better spent replacing it. So I grab my scissors, the ones that either encourage growth or end a life, and cut away. Like magic, I usually see signs of new growth the next day. When I remove hair from my scalp, I am left with embarrassing bald spots that grow into obvious patches of hair. I seek to escape my limitations and pains. When I remove dead leaves from vivacious plants, however, I leave them with room to grow. I accept that I am growing, too.

    Nathaniel has schizophrenia, sometimes unable to tell the difference between the present and past. The only link he has is his craft, it ties him to what he once worked for to his present freedom. Fortunately, I do have the tools to get better and am living in a time where mental health and how it’s treated is a hot topic. In fact, it is likely that Nathaniel’s story contributed to the discussion on mental health. After two years of self-treating my disorder and anxiety with gardening, I realized I had helped myself as far as I could without treatment. I seeked help at Open Paths Counseling Center, a mental health clinic that aims to provide treatment at a low-cost for low-income individuals. I still struggle, but take solace in the fact that I am getting better because I was brave enough to admit I needed help.

Maybe I’m in the Wrong Profession

Art is my first love. It’s romantic in the way it colors my life. It began with coloring books and tracing paper, but as I grew older I realized that I loved the arts. Audio, visual, you name it. I took up piano and guitar; I took up drawing and painting. Although I tend to avoid the term “talent,” through practice I have developed an aptitude for drawing. It is where I go to escape the noise of life. Don’t get me wrong, I think life is beautiful! But occasionally the clamor and stress of being an active dreamer clouds the beauty of living.

Nathaniel also dealt with a clouded existence. On page 4 of the book, The Soloist, when asked if he remembers Mr. Lopez, Nathaniel says, “I remember your voice.” To me, this quote sums up Nathaniel’s story. He knows his mind is slipping, he knows his experiential knowledge is cloudy and foggy, but he is clear in a sound. He remembers the music of a person’s voice.

Like Nathaniel, my clearest moments are my most artistic ones. I too have found clarity in my art as an escape. I have found myself able to fully immerse myself in an art piece. I am able to lose myself in my drawing to the point where it’s almost meditative. If I am troubled, I puzzle out my issues while therapeutically making lines on a page. I have used this method of clarity for as long as I can remember. Often when I was young, I missed out on playing outside for the sanctuary of my art studio (my dining room table at home). But I believe that escaping into my art has helped me far more than hindered me. I have been able to connect with others via my drawings, and I have been able to clarify my world.

Recently, I doubted whether or not chemistry was right for me. I had gone to office hours and sat down with my professor, going over my last test question by question. I was stunned at the mistakes I made. My heart began to beat fast and I started to get tunnel vision, a byproduct of insecurities and seeming failure. I was torn, worried, and confused. I thought I was good enough to handle the class. Did this test prove otherwise? As the blood pounded in my ears, it seemed to echo my own concern: “Maybe I’m in the wrong profession.” I left my professor’s office for a secluded place on campus. I turned to my source of clarity; I began to draw.

I drew a heart, to remind me of my love for science. I became one with the smooth muscle, the contouring for depth, the shadows. Each line was deliberate. Each stipple was meaningful. I poured myself into the piece and escaped. My escape did not let me down. The vignette cleared, my mind stabilized. The drawing was by no means perfect. The heart was flawed, but after all, it’s only human. In its flaws I realized something fundamentally important about myself:

 

I am a work in progress. Like an unfinished canvas, although I am lacking now, I will continue to have depth and dimensions added to me as I learn and grow. I am a student. And I have definitely chosen the right profession. 

Breakout

Sometimes stress and problems build up to a point that we can no longer manage. We feel like we are suffocating and that those things that are keeping us from being calm are going to kill us inside eventually. When we reach this point, the one where we do not know what to do or what to say anymore, we look for things that will distract us, things that can allow us to forget the reality of our lives.

In the Soloist, for instance, Nathaniel escapes the reality of his world through music. It appears as if music permits him to forget his medical condition. Playing and listening to music is his outlet. By playing and listening to music, Nathaniel travels from the real world into a world that calms and soothes him. In like manner, whenever I am having problems either because of family, school, or relationships, I like to take a break from the world that is troubling me, and I escape into a world where I am in control.

There are many ways in which escape from my reality. I escape by listening to music, going to the gym, and creating art. First of all, music has many genres for all different people with different tastes. In my case, I like to listen to different genres according to how I am feeling, and what my current mood is. To demonstrate, if one of my problems is making me sad, I choose to listen to sad songs. It alleviates me to know that other people are feeling what I am feeling and that there is someone out there who understands me. My second option, if listening to music is not working anymore, is going to the gym. Whenever I go to the gym, I forget about everything. There is no time for thinking about my problems. Working out helps me get rid of my stress and it relaxes me. The third way that I escape from reality, which is my favorite one out of the three, is art. I am an artist and I have always enjoyed showing my emotions through a drawing, a sketch, or a painting. Art is my outlet and it is my comfort zone. When I do art, I feel like I can express myself in any way without being judged by society.

Escaping from reality allows me to calm myself, to give me hope that things will be resolved. Not only does it pacify me but escaping also helps me get a clearer mind and get fresher thoughts. After I have escaped, I come back to the real world, and I am able to analyze things better. However, there are times when escaping also disarrays with my reality. Instead of coming back with a new mind and solutions, I try to ignore what is troubling me. I try to pretend that everything is perfect and that there is no reason to worry.

Although escaping has its pros and cons, it is needed in our lives because it relieves us temporarily. 

Physical Activity Could be Relaxing, Right?

With stress being an inevitable obstacle in the “game” of life, one must pause the game and take a break, let their mind rest from the constant worrying of upcoming tests or deadlines. This break varies from person to person as everyone experiences relaxation in different ways. In the novel, The Soloist, Nathaniel finds this break in music, whereas I take my break in the sport of gymnastics and in teaching gymnastics. Gymnastics is a sport that requires intense focus, determination and patience; these traits help me vanish from the world of stress.

In gymnastics there is no multi-tasking, if a gymnast multi-tasks there is risk of injury. Stress and the outside world do not have a place inside the gym. One uses their entire body to help perform skills, strengthening themselves physically and mentally. When I do gymnastics, everything that worried me for the day is gone. I focus on my breathing remembering to keep breathing and not hurt myself. When performing certain skills, I cannot afford to be thinking about an assignment that I haven’t done yet or else I would risk not landing correctly. Every time I enter my gym, my mood changes and all I want to do is work on a skill that I have not mastered, for example a back handspring. On a side note, a back handspring is where you jump back onto your hands and whip your legs back to land on your feet. Although I have yet to master this skill, as I have been working on it for a little more than 2 years, I am very determined to master this skill on the floor. Whenever I attempted a spotted back handspring, there is absolutely no way I can be thinking of anything else besides my body movements. Whenever I am distracted and think of something else, I would have a horrible form and would certainly mess up. Doing gymnastics is my way of escaping my responsibilities for an hour and a half and just focus on what my body can do and how I can improve my flexibility.

The benefits of gymnastics are numerous. In an overall concept it is the “total package” of exercising and getting fit. Performing any skill whether it is a handstand, cartwheel, bridge kick over, chin up pullover, back hip circle or front tuck, it requires you to work out your muscles. Dissecting one skill, the handstand, performing a hand stand would utilize your upper back muscles and your forearm muscles to keep you up. Your core muscles will be strengthened to keep you balanced while your heart will be pumping blood throughout your body to provide oxygen. Cardio is used a lot as each skill is the equivalent to going full sprint on a track field. Each skill requires body control that will be developed over time and practice. From this focus and body control, there are numerous applications. My health is better in both the short and long term a well as my body control. Balance is key in gymnastics and thus it has improved both my reflexes and hand-eye coordination.

During the practice is where I would be “missing out” on my day. As I would leave all my responsibilities at the door of my gym, they would pile onto me as I walk back out. My class would be on Mondays from 7:30-9 and when I would leave my gym, all the assignments I haven’t done would slowly appear to me. I have unpaused the game when I have paused it mid-attack from my responsibilities.  In a way I have used up an hour and a half on doing gymnastics rather than finishing up an assignment that I have procrastinated on. Most of the time, this hour off is worth every single minute as I have gone almost two hours without worrying about my schedule, assignments that need to be done, family problems that uninterested me or major events I forgot about. Everyone needs to let go of their responsibilities now and then so that tackling them again would not be as painful as before.

           

            

The Different Worlds of Music.

I chose the first part.

     Nathaniel escapes using music. I have a similar method of de-stressing and getting away from temporary hardships in life. I turn to my guitar most of the time when I have to get away from any problems. Other times I turn to video games or the movies. America's pastime, the movies, let's time fly by while life moves on, but playing my guitar really calms me and relaxes my nerves.

     In the past I've looked towards playing my guitar to learn new songs and sway the girls into a serenade. Having my previous girlfriend listen to me play was the setting I needed to lure my thoughts into the world I created with music. I can play from minutes to hours on end. From Blues to Rock, Jazz to Pop, and even Classical, I find different genres to take my mind into several worlds.

     When I begin to strum my strings sometimes they sound a bit off, so I use an app on my phone called “GuitarTuna” that works just like a guitar tuner without the dreadful cost of a real one and works just as good. After a good tune-up I begin to play whatever comes into my mind. Usually, it’s a song called “Spanish Romance,” or just “Romance,” and is played mostly by picking the strings into a beautiful melody. It comes on to you as a dark melody at first, but transitions into a warm welcoming tune. Then, it ends by making you feel betrayed or beaten.

     After this song, I either decide to go more of a saddened approach or a more uplifting one. If I go towards the sadder approach, then I play “Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton. This song was made to express a deep sorrow for a lost love. Although I don’t entirely empathize the feeling this deep song expresses, I sympathize the feeling of regret and sorrow Clapton shows. Throughout the whole song the guitar sounds emit strong feelings of sadness just like what the Blues genre sounds like. If I decide to lean towards a more uplifting approach, then I decide on “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley. This is a confession song if I do say so myself. I once played this song to the woman I loved, so I have a great empathy towards it. When I play this I feel taken away to a field of grass under a cool, shady tree and having a red polka dot cover laying perfectly on the ground. My initials engraved onto the friendly tree alongside my lover, serenating away at the heart of my one true love with our eyes gazing at each other like the answer to life is majestically shown.

     The songs I play on my guitar all have a memory of a world that I invent in my head. It takes me away to those special places. The songs by Jack Johnson have an earthly sense to them; the songs by Bruno Mars have, mostly, a love-struck touch to them; the songs by The Beatles give a wide assortment of feelings to them. Still, when I play time sometimes flies by and the things I need to do are left undone. Chores are left alone, homework is forgotten, and even friends are held up. When I snap back into reality I remember the things I needed to do and they don’t seem as bad anymore. Escaping the reality that one embraces often leads to stress and anxiety. It’s a good thing to find something to escape from it for a while and come back refreshed.

                                                           Saved by O. Chem         

Located in Glendale, CA, Herbert Hoover High School welcomes students who just arrived to the United States with a great ESL program that includes not only English classes but also history and science classes to maximize student’s development in their new home, America. Among those students was Jose Manuel Ruiz Ruiz, who arrived as a junior from Michoacan, Mexico. Being raised in a small community with less than 1000 habitats and going to a school with more than 2000 students was intimidating and to make it worse there was always racial tension between Hispanics and Armenians with Armenians making up more than 60 percent of school population. Succeeding in a high school with such conditions seemed impossible but Jose was determined to not only get a high school diploma but be eligible to go to a four year university and become a biochemist.

            Discouragement came from the least expected places when trying to be place in higher level math course by recommendation from math teacher but was rejected by counseling office and was told to relax a little because no matter how much he tried, he would not pass the math, English and technology exams required for graduation by Glendale Unified School District and will have to go to high school one extra year as a super senior.  Wasting one year was not an option and he didn’t give up until placed on higher level courses being the best student in most of them.  Counseling office was proved wrong when the time to take the exit came as Jose managed to pass both math and technology exams the first time and only requiring a second time to pass English exam. With a strong GPA and exit exams out of the way, finishing high school on time and being qualified for a four year university was very likely.

            After spending the summer taking classes, an even more challenging senior year awaited with extra classes to be taken and successfully completed to keep his dream alive. On November of 2009, during the first semester of his senior year, Jose got a job at Porto’s bakery and was finally able to support himself and become totally independent. Balancing work and school was not easy and made Jose reconsider the option of going to a community college and the transfer to a four year university to be able to save some money and buy a care and be more prepared.  After a very successful fall semester, Jose was encouraged to apply for Glendale Latino Association Scholarship and he was one of the chosen ones to be interviewed. During the interview, Jose was told that most students seemed more prepared and that they were going to a four year university and asked how could he compete with them. His answer was simple: “I am doing in two years what they are doing in four” panel was left speechless. Panel was very impressed with him that they decided to give him the scholarship being the only student going to a community college in that year to receive it.

            After two very intense years, graduation had arrived and Jose was graduating and not only that, he received a scholarship and several awards from Glendale Latino Association and Adelante Latinos Association. Going to college and having extra money, gave Jose a sense of freedom he never had before and totally forgot about his education to the pint to take a two year break. Coming back to school was not easy, he did not have the discipline to be a top student and struggle to the point of thinking of quitting school again but organic chemistry professor, Asmik Oganesyan noticed that that Jose actually enjoyed chemistry and saw in him potential to be a great scientist by the way in which he understood chemical reactions and his ability to find possible solutions to problems faced in lab. She told Jose about the bridges to the future program that CSULA had and convinced him to be part of it. Currently, Jose is working in Dr. Tunstad research lab and is determined to go back to Glendale Community College and improve his grades to come back next fall as a student and become a chemist. 

Stepping Into Your Shoes

In the soloist, Nathaniel often escapes into his world of music, where there is beauty and order in Beethoven and his violin.  He does not see, however, that his reality is not so beautiful.  My situation may not be as severe as Nathaniel’s, but I can sympathize with wanting some form of mental escape when it’s not possible to physically leave the problem.

My escape is entering someone else’s world, adopting another person's worries and troubles.  Growing up, that meant reading fiction novels, Harry Potter, Gone, and any vampire romance were my favorites.  It was so easy to slip into the drama of defeating an evil wizard and having a vampire-soulmate that I could easily forget my own troubles.  My tastes, though, have somewhat changed.  I prefer to watch the movie or subsequent television show rather than read the original book, and I am even preferring comedy to dramas.  I do love to read still, but I am losing my taste for fiction.

Another escape that I have recently found is music.  Unlike Nathaniel, however, I cannot play any instruments, but I do love to listen.  Lately, my heart sings at the soulful tunes of Ed Sheeran and acoustic instrumentals of Hozier. But my favorite thing to do with music is to dance.  Growing up, I didn’t always like dancing because I was so clumsy, but I loved watching others dance, the way a ballerina could execute a spin into an arabesque, the liveliness of jazz, and the expression of pain and love on a praise dancer. It was all so beautiful.  It wasn’t until I was 15 that I realized how much I loved it.  Though I am not particularly talented, dancing is an escape for me, an expression of music and motion through movement.

Through whatever means, “escape” must give me a much needed break from my thoughts.  When I am absorbed in the world of music, books, or television dramas, I am no longer consumed with worry.  I can step away from all that and focus on something that isn’t troubling.  Escaping keeps me grounded; by leaving my problems behind, I realize that they aren’t so big, that they are fixable.

Sometimes, however, I escape for too long.  I get so absorbed in the book or television show that I neglect my duties.  Instead of writing my term paper or studying for tests, I’m reading the latest Percy Jackson book, or binge-watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or The Walking Dead.  I conveniently forget that I have work to do and, like Nathaniel, I don’t always do what needs to be done.  My methods of escape work a little too well.  I have to learn to manage my life, and so does Nathaniel.  Though he may never be normal, his problems can be managed, with effort and time.

So, is your world worth stepping into?

Khala Harvey

Bridges

Write an article about yourself, written in third person. It needs to be in a positive tone, describing any obstacles or hurdles you’ve overcome and accomplishments you’ve achieved. Pretend it will be published on the front page of the Sunday L.A. Times. What do you want the world to know about you? No obstacle, hurdle, or accomplishment is too small.

Every year, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers host a national competition, called Extreme Engineering, at their yearly conference. In 2012, Candelaria Flores, an engineering community college student was encouraged by her fellow peers to participate in this 24 hour, no sleep, competition against 300 University students. Candelaria saw this as an opportunity to gain leadership experience by being in a team of big companies like the NAVY, Raytheon, Boeing, NASA etc. She had no previous formal interview experience, she wasn’t prepared and didn’t know how to behave well under pressure. During the first stage of the competition, students are interviewed by 10 top notch engineering companies. Candelaria, was very nervous as she chose to have her first interview with the NAVY. The long lines of competitive University students became intimidating and soon enough it was her turn to experience the initial threshold of Extreme Engineering. Candelaria greeted the sergeant with a nervous handshake, sat down on the chair across the booth from him, and the sergeant asked, “Why should I pick you out of everyone in this room? What makes you special?”. Candelaria froze. What made her stand out from all the University students when she was only in community college? She couldn’t answer the question. She apologized to the sergeant for not being able to answer the questions, and left the room in tears and discouraged from becoming an engineer. After she spoke to her advisor Brian Vazquez, he took initiative to helping her and her peers who were interested in attending the next conference and prepared them well for interviews and professional presentation. In 2013, the yearly conference was approaching rapidly and everyone began speaking about Extreme Engineering. As Candelaria prepared for the interview, she began to gain confidence in answering questions, and practiced a firm handshake with eye to eye contact. On the day of the first stage of the competition she had unpleasant flashbacks from the last year’s interview but she stayed strong and managed to once again be interviewed by the NAVY first. It was Candelaria’s turn to be interviewed. The sergeant asked questions about her leadership, and how she prepared. She answered with confidence and less nervousness. “TIME’S UP!” said the time keeper after 3 minutes of being interviewed. She firmly shook the sergeant’s hand and thanked him for the interview. She passed her first interview! She felt good about continuing onto the next booth and chose Raytheon. Raytheon asked Candelaria to draw a picture using a pig, fork and a car and to tell the interviewer a story. She drew a formula 1 vehicle, with a fork as the antenna, and the pig as the sponsor. As she told the story she brought her picture to life. The Raytheon interviewer asked her, “How did you prepare for this interview? Do you have a laptop?” After answering the interviewer’s questions he asked her the ultimate question, “If we choose you, will we win first place?” of course she must reply “yes!”. She shook the interviewers hand and made her way to getting the last interview to qualify for the next stage of the competition. After the first stage ended every student returned to a large room where companies announced who would be in their team for the rest of the competition. One after another, the competitive students were being called to be a part of the NAVY, and NASA. Candelaria had not heard her name yet. Raytheon was next, students being called and she still didn’t hear name. Raytheon needed one more student, when they finally said “Candelaria Flores”. She had redeemed herself! Hard work and motivation led her into one of the strongest team and elite competition. Her devotion to getting back up when she had failed inspired her for success and as a team Raytheon won 1^st place.