Rosie Guzman
Special to Mustang News
Editor’s note: This article opens with the author’s personal experience while completing the ‘week in a life’ assignment in Sociology 111, “Social Problems,” in Spring 2014.
One reporters experience
The bathroom was squeaky clean; I made sure of it. Next to the toilet was my pillow and two blankets for dark nights, and I reassured myself I had all my textbooks and notes to keep myself busy. I circled around looking at the blank four walls, white toilet and not-so-white bathtub knowing it was going to keep me company for the next five days.
I always read about solitary confinement, but experiencing it is different than just reading about it. When the opportunity arose to see through the eyes of those isolated, I took it.
I had camped only once in my life, and the first few days in my bathroom were like that. I slept on a hard floor and had no technology in my life, but after the third day, I started to get restless. I didn’t want to waste electricity and I doubted those in solitary confinement got the pleasure of light, so I slept. A lot.
While I didn’t turn crazy, like most expected, it was strange coming out of my “isolation” for work and school. My eyes watered and burned when the sun’s rays touched me and sometimes I would feel strange being around so many people.
I longed for true human interaction. Being stuck in a room for days creates nothing but frustration and anxiety. It can increase anger and other negative emotions, which cannot rehabilitate those incarcerated. I’m glad I isolated myself from the world for five days because I can understand solitary confinement and its effects just a teeny bit more.
A week in a life
Cal Poly students who have taken classes by Ryan Alaniz, an assistant professor of sociology, are given a chance to experience what the marginalized feel by participating in an assignment called “week in a life.” The students choose a “life” of people who don’t have everything in the world, and for five days, get to experience how that person makes it day by day.
Alaniz recalls his first quarter at Cal Poly teaching his SOC 110 “Comparative Societies” course, and realizing it would be interesting to have his students empathize with another group that is foreign to them. He offered his students the project in place of the midterm.
“I really believe that the experiential learning is critically important to having a really powerful educational experience,” he said. “But there is something fundamental that can change you through the experience of living like a marginalized person.”
By the end of this project after his first quarter, Alaniz saw how well the students responded.
One student was on the swim team and decided to be in a wheelchair, he said. The student was stunned and humbled, as he had no idea how difficult it was for those confined in a wheelchair.
“It changes somebody, to be more aware about people that don’t look or act just like them,” he said.
Some “week in a life” projects vary between having a physical disability (blindness or bound to a wheelchair) to food insecurity (fasting), gender inequality (cross-dressing) or working in agricultural fields.
The idea of working in the fields came from Alaniz himself, as he worked on a farm for four summers.
“That was a very humbling experience,” he said. “It was foundational into who I became as a person.”
We are surrounded by so much agriculture, but the people who feed us are often invisible and their work is invisible, he said.
“And I wanted to make that visible to students,” Alaniz said.
Alaniz asked his father, who still works at a farm in Nipomo, if he could bring students in. The farm work started with strawberry picking for a day but soon expanded to a day and a half of labor so the students know what it feels like to have to come back the next morning despite having back pains and almost no sleep.
Work in the fields
Maya Fernandez, a psychology freshman, worked in the fields on Valentine’s Day.
“I expected it to be really hard”, she said. “And it was really hard! It made me appreciate where my food comes from and the life these people live.”
She met up with the students and her professor at 5:45 a.m. to drive over to Nipomo before starting the long day.
“First we met some of the higher ups and saw the work being done and what needs to be done. Then we piled into a car and went on this dirt road and stopped at a cabbage field,” she said. “And we de-weeded the cabbage field. Like a whole field with these women.”
Fernandez kept thinking about how hot it was, when they were going to stop, when the water break was going to be. But then she would hear the women singing and talking and laughing.
“It’s their life and they’re okay with it. They’ve coped with it and they find the beauty in it,” she said.
In a wheelchair
Patrick Kunkel, a sociology junior, took Sociology 111 last spring quarter and remembers his “Week in a Life” assignment like it was yesterday.
“Once I heard that the wheelchair ‘week in a life’ was an option, that’s what really sold it on me,” he said. “Just because working here at the DRC (Disability Resource Center) we deal with wheelchair passengers.”
Kunkel wanted to feel the service from the rider’s point of view and also see how the DRC is doing to make improvements.
Kunkel spent five days in a wheelchair and recalls how he planned on not using the DRC for his first day, just to know how it would be like not to have a service available.
Day one was where he had to get from his apartment on California Boulevard to the top of campus.
“Everything was difficult, every little crack in the sidewalk,” he said. “Getting to campus was way harder than I had expected it to be.”
I made it to the bottom of the UU hill and I was exhausted, Kunkel said. I couldn’t have made it up, so I ended up calling the DRC.
“People were very friendly, really eager to help,” Kunkel recalls. “But at the same time I felt weird asking people for help because I technically didn’t need it.”
The biggest thing he noticed throughout the five days was people would make eye contact and then quickly look away, like he made them uncomfortable, he said.
Lost voice
When someone is disabled and limited, there is no way to feel “normal.” Language is one of the disabilities in this world that can make someone feel different.
Brooke Matson, a communication studies senior, who is currently enrolled in Alaniz’s honor program, experienced this firsthand when she decided to go mute.
Matson was already sick and couldn’t speak and so decided to go with the idea of speech loss when she realized how difficult it could be.
“On the first day I kinda thought of it as fun in a way, thought it was a new challenge,” she said. “But as time went on and I really needed to use my voice, I was frustrated.”
Matson wasn’t able to go to office hours to speak to her professors, talk on the phone or even order tea from a store. I couldn’t so many things, she said.
“(But) it really opened my eyes to how other people operate,” she said.
On a dollar a day of food
Caitlin Lyle, a liberal studies freshman, is also a part of Alaniz’s honors program and grew to appreciate food through her “week in a life” assigment.
Lyle chose to only eat a dollar’s worth of food every day, for three and a half days.
“I maybe didn’t eat my first meal until two in the afternoon,” she said. “But other than that the first day went pretty smooth.”
The weekend before Lyle started, she bought some bananas, bell peppers and a bagel and cut everything and portioned everything, making sure every meal was a dollar’s worth.
For my first day I had half a red bell pepper and half a bagel, she said. The remaining two days had similar meals.
“I felt really tired and sluggish. One time, I even took a four-hour nap,” Lyle said. “I was even mad at myself for slacking because there are people in worse situations and they can pull through.”
Honor system
Aside from doing the assignments, all students must meet with Alaniz personally to discuss their chosen project and sign a contract.
Students agree to rules that state the importance of respect to the marginalized community they are representing and making sure their health is the highest priority.
The project is a trust exercise; Alaniz does not keep track of students as they complete the assignment.
Another requirement of the “week in a life” project is writing a five page paper about the experience. Through reading each paper, it is clear to Alaniz that his students aren’t backing out of the assignment and completing it as required.
Looking for trends
Alaniz is also doing research on “week in a life.” Along with a student assistant, he has read every paper written and has looked for quotes and themes that come up over and over again.
“The big thing I want to do is ask the question: This transformative experience, how does it impact the student’s learning; what do they get out of it?” said Alaniz. “And what we found is empathy.”
Now the students are looking at the world and its people differently, said Alaniz. He wants students to know what it is like for the people who are marginalized; if you are going to work in agriculture, it should be important to shake hands with all those workers.
“We stereotype and we create the ‘other,’ and when we do have these experiences we break down these stereotypes,” Alaniz said. “We create human relationships and understand each other better.”
He compares the idea of “otherness” to the Nazis and the Jews. If a Nazi officer was treated like a Jew in those times, I don’t think they would have treated other people like they were treating the Jews, Alaniz said.
THE TAKEAWAY
His students who complete the “week in a life” project feel that same kind of empathy.
Two quarters after completing the project, Kunkel is glad he spent five days in a wheelchair. He is more understanding of riders who use the DRC and respects those in a different situation more, knowing the difficulty of being limited.
“I think it’s really beneficial. You see a whole other point of view that I would have never seen before,” Kunkel said. “It’s interesting to see how you’re treated in that position and reflect on how you treat other people.”
Despite only eating a dollar’s worth of food for three and a half days, Lyle still can’t eat as much as before. The project wasn’t a piece of cake, she said. But she’s still glad to have done it.
“I work at Ciaos, and it’s upsetting to see how much food is wasted and thrown away,” she said. “It definitely made me more aware of food and how many people are starving these days.”
After working in the fields for a day, Fernandez agrees that a project like this “really built up my character,” while also feeling empathy for those who work in laborious jobs.
All students agree that while the project was difficult, they would do “week in a life” again given the opportunity.
“It can seem intimidating,” said Matson after experiencing speech loss. “But it teaches us how to connect, relate and empathize with people we sometimes see as ‘others.’”
Alaniz tells his students that it’s hard to make a social change if you don’t understand what the people are going through, and the best way to understand is by going through it yourself.
I’m really grateful to have this opportunity to offer this experience to the students, he said.
“I wish I had this opportunity as a student,” Alaniz said. “I want to expand this because it’s so powerful. If you are homeless for a week, you’ll never forget it.”