Additional Post: Independent Component.

In all honesty, I do not like children. At all. I can't tolerate them at all in any way because they just irritate me so much & I have no patience to deal with them. But because I know that I'm going to have to learn to work with kids eventually if I want to pursue clinical social work as my profession, I decided I might as well teach myself to tolerate them now rather than later. Thus bringing me to my volunteer work with Damaris at the day care at YMCA!

Damaris & I watch over the kids here every Wednesday from around 4:30-5 to 8, & I honestly feel like tolerating these kids is a little big easier because I have a friend with me. Without her to entertain me & keep me company, I don't think I could keep my sanity. But regardless, being at the day care hasn't been terrible. Most of the kids behave really well & they are easily occupied. We usually just put on a movie for them or supply them with art supplies. Some kids just play with each other & play games. Overall, we just supervise the kids & doing that has helped me recognize certain behaviors in certain kids. For example, there's a boy named Brandon who's 9 years old. He likes to act like he's a tough kid who can do whatever he wants just because his mom works at YMCA. He holds a great influence on some of the younger boys, & when he's not there, the other boys won't be as rambunctious. When he is there, they all misbehave. Volunteering here allows me to see how impressionable younger kids can be & it reminds me of what I learned in Developmental Psychology. 

I'm not done with my hours yet, so far I only have, I think, 21-24 hours. But the connection that I've made with this & my senior project is that I've expanded on my ability to observe behavior more closely & I've trained myself to be a little more patient than I was before with children. To have patience is an essential thing in clinical social work & I feel that it's really important that I'm attacking this problem now instead of much later.

This is a portrait one of the regular kids at the daycare did of me.