Falling Apart

This is Chapter 11 in my history... others can be found by clicking the history tab at the right

After my stain in the hospital, I returned to Western Oregon University to start the education program. I was excited that after years of school I was finally about to dive into the core of what I was there for.

Every student in the WOU education program is placed in a group with about 15 other students and one advisor. I ended up being placed under a man who was acting as his first term as an advisor. I will call him D, only to protect his privacy, but after this story, it's hard for me to do because I want to scream to the world about what he did.

I was familiar with D. Only a few terms before he was a fellow student with me in Teaching Writing. This was the class that I often butted heads with the professor in. I didn't think anything of D carrying over experiences from the class to being my advisor, but it happened.

At first I didn't really notice any problems. Going to class, working on projects, networking with fellow students was my concern. I think that entire first term I had a few weird feelings after things that D said to me, but nothing that really triggered much. The entire first term of the Ed program was devoted to starting work on our professional portfolio. We had to take pieces that we worked on through the term and show how they fit into to competencies that were required by the state. It was a time intensive project, something that I worked several hours on, and turned in with a sense of accomplishment.

The rug was torn out from under me when I met with D to discuss my portfolio. He berated my work the entire time. My work was filled with red marks, several per page, and paragraphs of angry words about my lack of competence as a student and a writer. I always struggled with grammar and spelling and having it all laid out in red screaming words hit my panic button and a deep seeded hurt. He picked apart every page, every thought. Even passages that were grammatically correct and spelled right were ripped apart because he did not agree with my style. I was devastated to say the least. Insult to injury was added when he picked apart how I acted in our previous class when we were both students. He told me that if I couldn't shut up and listen to a professor then I was giving myself a disservice to my education and I could never be viewed as a professional. That if a professor says it, I should automatically believe it as the only truth because they are the professional.

I came away from the meeting deeply hurt. I had an entire summer to lick my wounds. I considered several times contacting the university and being switched advisers, but I didn't know if I had just reason, and I believe in giving everyone a fair chance.

Fall started exactly where I left the situation the previous Spring in D's office. He continued to try to break me down as a person and as an academic. The volleys of insult increased in frequency and intensity as the weeks ticked by. I took solace in the fact that there were a few other students also being attacked by D, but I also received the brunt of it. D started to use my name in class to speak poorly about my work. Comments like "Well quite frankly what happened to you this week because your work was more terrible than normal" were said in front of the entire class. The irony of being taught that naming students by name and their performance was illegal in other classes that term was not lost on me.

I continued to take the abuse. I figured I'd show him that I could listen... but the pain, the shame, the desperation was building with each comment. We started out in the schools that term. My mentor teacher and I had a good working relationship and I was excited to be in the classroom. D frequently came to observe, and I know from asking other students that he came to observe me more frequently, waiting for me to slip up. He wrote me a vaguely worded email that I was not dressing professionally. That he had been approached by multiple people about this. While I doubted this claim, I knew that I did not dress as preppy as other kids in the program, mostly due to a lack of funds. My clothes were threadbare at times, and I didn't have time to iron everything as I was still working about 30 hours a week on top of my school work. At the end of the email he put that I "needed to watch myself". This single line pushed me over the edge. I took everything that I had documented about D, the occurrences that I have mentioned and many more similar ones, and I emailed them to the professor that I trusted most in the program. I also sent a copy to D. I felt that I should give him the chance to change, a last chance rope to appeal to his humanity.

I realized that I was being harassed. It may not be sexual harassment as so many young women experience in college, but it was pure harassment. Sending that email was difficult, but I couldn't stand to be his victim any longer.

My email was forwarded around the education program, but before any action could happen, I found myself in my final evaluation with my mentor teacher and D. A week before my mentor teacher had given me glowing reviews. After a closed door meeting with D, where he shared my email to him with my mentor teacher, which included nothing about her, my mentor teacher gave me a harsh review of my time. My scores on professionalism went way down based on my email and relationship with D. I was highly upset by this as nothing that happened between D and I effected my time in the classroom. Sharing that email was a huge slap in the face.

After this meeting I was called to the university to meet with D and the supervisor of teacher placement at WOU. What I was told was a mediation session turned into an assault on every thing that I did the entire time I was in the program. I was accused of doing things that never happened, I was told that I wasn't going to make it through the program, and that D had never done anything unprofessionally. When I gave examples like him sharing comments about my work, I was told that it was his right and that he was only doing what he could to teach me. I went from being deeply hurt to feeling my entire world fall apart. They cooked up a contract with a number of terms that were unfair to me as a student and told me that I had to sign it or I would be kicked out of the program. While I did not agree, I also felt I had to sign it as my dream was to become a teacher. I made sure that my disagreements with the contract were noted on it before I signed. They also refused to change me out of D's group, one of my main demands. I knew that no amount of "mediation" would make the situation better. I was tempted to quit there, because I was not sure how I could make it another two terms with D, after how badly he had broken me after the two previous. Before I left the mediation I also made sure that D and the other advisor knew that I was going to contact a lawyer about the harassment that I had received at the hands of the university.

In the fifteen minutes that it took me to get home, the university started singing another tune. They were more than willing to change my advisor, but I had to stay with the contract. This was something that I was willing to do, as long as I was freed of the toxic environment of D. I had to move to a new school to do my student teaching, but I was now under that trusted professor that I had sent the original email to. I didn't have the easiest time, but my new mentor teachers loved my work and crowed about my talents. They also realized that having a chronic illness, working 30 hours a week, the amount of commuting I was doing, and being a full-time student teacher was a lot to handle. They didn't require perfection from me and I flourished in their classrooms. My new advisor, while at times harsh, was far better than D.

I wish I could say that D was fired over the incident, but he wasn't. He continued to advise the other students, but I heard from them that he was less harsh on them after me. He disappeared from WOU that Spring. I soon found out that he was teaching at a local middle school. The thought of him working with students who were younger and weaker than I was at 21 broke my heart. However, D was found a few years later engaging in inappropriate conduct in a local park with several other men. I take solace in the fact that this got him removed from the classroom. He should never be allowed to break people like he broke me.

I am still recovering from D. I still feel very anxious when my spelling and grammar are corrected. I didn't write much for an entire year after college, even though I had so many other people tell me that I was talented. I always felt less capable in professional situations. I'm slowly getting my confidence back, but it has taken far longer to return then it left me. I also learned in the passing years that I was saved from D being my advisor by threatening that lawsuit. Unknown to me at the time, a top professor in the Ed school was under investigation for sexual harassment. While mine was not sexual in nature, the school did not need two harassment suits at the same time and went to all lengths to prevent it. State laws passed because of the other case setting up clearer pathways for students who feel harassed. I am happy those rules are in place, but they are mostly focused on sexual harassment. I hope the colleges realize that all forms of harassment exist and they are all devastating.

Being Eight

This is chapter 3 in my history.

The eigth year of my life had was a major turning point. In the few summers prior I had went to CF camp. A week up in the mountains with kids like me. Kids who took pills with every meal, kids who got thumps, kids who were thin as rails. I was one of the healthiest there. I had a window on what my future may be. I saw kids who took more pills, had CF Related Diabetes (CFRD), and the most fascinating to me, kids on nebulizers. I remember in my childhood naiivete, telling my parents that I would never need them, that I was going to stay healthy forever.
My parents never sugar coated what CF meant. Unlike so many others that I know, my parents never hid any facts from me about CF, not even the mortality factor. I knew CF was deadly. I knew I would have it for life. I knew that I wouldn't get old. But I was also eight... and things like that were beyond my level of true comprehension. Even though I knew, but didn't understand, I am forever thankful that my parents didn't hide anything from me. There are too many that found out CF is fatal from a teasing kid, an encyclopedia, or some news article. I got it from the people I love and trusted the most. But even that didn't make the blow of understanding come easily.
I don't even remember when it happened. Only that I was eight and that I was in third grade. A young girl that I had met at camp that summer, Amanda, was very sick, along with her sister. Amanda was my age, but her and her sisters time on earth was short. I don't know which one died first, or how close together that they both died, but I know one died closely after camp that summer. I think it may have been Amanda. Being so incredibly close in age, the same illness... it hit me. It took awhile... I'm not even sure how much longer after I found out... but I broke down. I remember very little about this time of my life. When I try to remember all I see is blankness and feel fear, panic, and sadness fill my chest. So I will recount some of what my mother told me about what happened.
I was at school, when suddenly I broke down crying. My teacher figured out that it was something unrelated to school and called my mother. I was scared out of my mind. The reality of "fatal" had hit me. I may have even went home from school that day. For about three weeks the usual bubbly, happy, loud Talana was gone. She was weepy, sad, despondent. I cried a lot, I needed a lot of hugs and quiet time. I was a shell of myself. School was hard, home life was hard, I stopped both inside and out. I now understood phrases like "average life expectancy of 25", "progressive", and "incurable". Before I knew them... then I understood. It was a lot for an eight-year-old.
The last part though, I remember. It was a sunny day. The sun was setting between the trees over the creek. I was standing in our driveway looking at it. I looked up at the sky. I turned and watched my father work in the garden, heard my mother in the kitchen. And suddenly it was okay. I couldn't change any of those phrases that made my heart so heavy. I couldn't bring back any of the children that had died of CF. But I could live. I could run, play, laugh, smile, and love. I would be okay... I was alive, so I may as well live. I walked up to my dad in the garden and gave him a hug, full of life. It was my way of telling him that I was okay.
Morbidity is a concept that shouldn't be so profoundly understood by an eight-year-old child, but that is the reality of CF. I also remember not being able to remember the past few weeks right after I "woke" up. My mind blocked it from me almost immediately. A blessing, maybe. I'm not sure.
I can't say that I've always had a rosy attitude since then... but in moments that profoundly changed my life, that ranks high. It's a part of me, something that CF caused that made me different than everyone else. As traumatic as it was, in some ways it was also a gift. I understood how precious life was. It changed how I approached so many things. It made me a smarter person.