u/AngelClearance

I'm an incoming MSW student in the fall. On my statement, I said I hoped to work with lonely/isolated people and Mandarin speakers. However, I'm interested in working with a third group - men. There is definitely a lot of news about the struggles men face and there definitely is not an equal gender ratio of new social work/counseling grads.

I think there's definitely challenges with working with this population. On the other hand, there's a shortage of male practitioners.

I'm not opposed to working with female clients at all. I just feel like I could provide relatively stronger support to men.

I signed up for a volunteering program similar to the Peace Corps, but it is quite shorter. In total, the program is 1 month for orientation/language training and 9 months at site. However, with the amount of time spent away from my site, I spent more like 7 months. I was also forced to leave my site with one month remaining and was introduced to a new site at the last minute.

With the other volunteers, they got a lot out of the program. While their language skills weren't super strong, they had coworkers who spoke English and taught them a lot about HCN culture.

On the other hand, I had a very different experience. I lived with a host family and a coworker that didn't seem to want to do anything with me. I had a really weird feeling when I got there, and it never really went away no matter how hard I tried. My host father and coworker spoke English but refused to explain anything about the culture to me. They would also refuse to speak the national language or help me improve at all. I started getting the impression that the HCNs were all awful people. Luckily, I started meeting other nicer people in my community.

With a month left, I was forced to switch sites after some incidents at my site that left me feeling harassed. After I switched sites, the people I lived and worked with were a lot nicer, but since it was only a month, I didn't get a chance to know everyone very well.

Also, I feel conflicted about my host mom, who doesn't speak English. I think she did a lot of things to help me at my site that she didn't have to do. However, she also did some hurtful things that contributed to me leaving. After I left, another volunteer from my program (who knows someone who knows her) told me that my host mom was sad that I had left and had really loved me. I believe the volunteer but I just had to deal with a level of cultural differences and language barriers that the other volunteers did not.

Since I wanted to try to improve at the language, I paid for tutoring out of pocket. Now I feel really confident and the locals are delighted when I speak it and I get so many compliments. However, I feel a little bad that I won't really get a chance to use the language again. (Luckily there is a big diaspora community about 40 minutes away from where I will be living in the States)

I feel like I'm just hitting my stride and feel sad I have to leave the country so soon. I know there are PCVs who have had to leave the country early due to being separated or due to personal issues. I'm wondering how you all have coped with such a situation?

I recently reconnected with a former classmate. For what it's worth, she has autism. She expressed repeatedly during our conversation that she was feeling lonely and has very few friends, while multiple people cut off things with her. She seemed to attributed her friendships failing to other people being unintelligent and not mature like her. I feel bad for her because she lives at home with a controlling mother, and her disability hinders her from being able to connect with normal people, especially since it's hard for her to live a "normal" life. However, there doesn't see to be a lot of reflection involved in her end.

When you have a client like this who doesn't reflect a lot or show a lot of accountability, how do you have success showing they're the problem? Do these people often quit therapy before you have time to work on addressing things? Does treatment depend on the condition that's causing them to have interpersonal problems?

Recently I've been feeling in a funk. I've struggled with feeling like my career isn't good enough and my friendships aren't good enough. Maybe I'm spending too much time on social media but I've just been feeling inadequate. I also live abroad and struggle to communicate with the people around me so it's contributed to my feeling of isolation.

I was friends with this girl with autism in elementary school. I feel like we were pretty close but mostly because we had the same interest in video games (Pokemon and Sonic). I loved going to her house because they had a ton of consoles (Gamecube, N64, PS2, and PS1), while my parents were more conservative with buying me video games. My parents thought it was a waste of time but her parents embraced her video game hobby.

We went to the same middle school but fell out of touch. However, after high school graduation, I did visit her one more time. She spent the entire time talking about herself and seemed completely uninterested about me, so I made an excuse to leave early.

Recently I was curious what this former friend was up to, so I looked her up. I was actually able to find her reddit profile. I think it was kind of shocking that she hadn't changed in the 10+ years since I had last seen them. She portrays themselves as an edgy intellectual but live at their mom's house and I don't think they have a job.

They call themselves "unhinged" and "opinionated" on their reddit description but then she also complains that her mom won't let her get her clothes dry cleaned (because her mom is a hippie) even though it stinks. They say they like to interrupt college lectures because they know they're smarter than their professors. They're also an anti vax conspiracy theorist so that's fun.

It's bizarre that we had so much in common growing up but our lives are so different now. Even though I've been feeling sorry for myself it reminds me that my life could be so much worse. I feel more proud of my accomplishments and my relationships, as limited as they could be. It's twisted that I have to compare myself to others but it is what it is.

I think her life has been hard and there's a lot of things she can't control, namely autism. (Though I know autistic people who've managed to work and even live independently) However, I do feel like some of her outcome might be due to bad choices and not taking accountability. Who knows? I'm curious if she can make a change in her life or she will be stuck with her mom forever while resenting her mom's controlling nature.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYS0bs5yIWu/

This guy is doing a series on famous male abusers who haven't been cancelled. He says that Britney Spears was unfairly cancelled for shaving her head while these male abusers have gotten away with much worse. What are your thoughts?

My boyfriend frequently gets mistaken for gay. I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this and why people think it happens? I think my boyfriend gets mistaken for gay because he's stylish, has cute mannerisms, and a higher pitched voice.

I heard about making a commonplace book and thought about starting. However, I found that I don't have great handwriting and I don't have a lot of artistic talent. This seems more like a hobby for people who took elaborate and beautiful notes in school. Is there anyone who's started a commonplace book and they're not artistic at all?