As a student at Penn State I am sure that you have probably heard of the CAPS resource for mental health. I’m not sure how many of you have actually tried to use it but I have just to see how accessible it really is. I found it extremely difficult to actually use and scheduling an appointment with CAPS is confusing to the point where I just gave up. I think for many student though, this is detrimental. Imagine a student who is genuinely struggling with their mental health who is already kind of nervous about reaching out to anyone trying to see how CAPS is. If it is so complicated or confusing no one is going to want to schedule any appointments. I have also heard from other students that they do not always have enough spots for students to be seen. This is a big deal and is very alarming that there are so many students that need to be seen but not all of them are getting the attention that they deserve. I hope that at some point they decide to expand the CAPS program so that it is more easily accessible and also everyone can get an appointment because everyone should be a priority. I have struggled with my mental health in the past and I think that is part of why I am so passionate about helping others and why I chose psychology as my major. I think that college has many stressors on its students and it can also be a confusing time in people’s lives due to being away from home so much, constant social stimulation, and constant work loads. There is barely enough time for students to even be able to reach out but when they make the decision to get help they shouldn’t have to work for it. Penn State along with other college campuses need to do more to make their student’s mental health a top priority because it does more damage than anyone is capable of seeing.
Civic Issues: Women in healthcare
There are many groups of people who don’t receive the type of care that they should due to prejudice or just because they are not the main focus of the studies. Many of the medical studies that are done are first done on men and always have the promise of doing a study on women as well. The problem with this is that men and women are not biologically the same and the symptoms and the way they express them will not appear the same. Many illnesses both mental and physically go unnoticed in women solely because they do not express them the same way as their male counterparts do. This is popularly seen in women being under diagnosed widely with autism and ADHD. Women are far more likely to start masking their autistic behavior. They are able to adapt to their environment more than most men can but their other tendencies go unnoticed because of the social aspect is what is one of the main symptoms in the men who are studied and diagnosed. ADHD is also an example of this because one of the biggest indicators in men with ADHD is that they are more hyperactive but when it comes to women they are more inattentive. When it comes to women with undiagnosed ADHD they are typically seen as lazy or unaware of what is going on without any effort of digging deeper into what is actually happening.
Personal is Political: Caitlin Clark
This woman is number 22 on Iowa State University’s women’s basketball team. Any time I open up Instagram or Tik Tok I always see something about Caitlin Clark. She is now becoming known as one of the greatest of all time among women’s college basketball. She at this point has a good chance of making it to the WNBA. She is even arguably doing better in the game of basketball than many male athletes in college basketball. Although she is undeniably great and is getting a lot of good attention she is getting loads of negative attention. It is clearly based in misogynistic views by men and women that I am sure would not be able to even put up a single point against her. This also didn’t just start when she went to the collegiate level, this was happening even back in high school when she would play a crowd of guys from the opposing team would chant, “overrated” at her every time she had the ball. She responded to this with pulling up a deep three that would silence the boys. After she did this she would often use one of Kobe’s old moves by shushing the crowd with one finger over her mouth. Caitlin has fought to get to this point in her career and people are always degrading how good she is at the sport mostly because she is a woman. Many of the comments on the videos that I see of her are very derogatory, for example people will say that she is transgender because she is so skilled at the sport or they will say that she would get demolished in the men’s bracket. As you can tell many people who have misogynistic points of view tend to comment these types of things. Clark is putting more focus on women’s basketball and making people watch more to see her play. I know that I will be watching the game of PSU against ISU on February 8th. There are videos of kids going to see her play to het their jerseys signed by her. She has become a role model for women in sports. I know that growing up playing basketball there weren’t too many women role models and my team would always end up watching the NBA or men’s college basketball teams for examples of how we should play. I hope that in the future girls who are interested in the sport of basketball will continue to have role models who are getting the recognition that they deserve.
This I Believe Reflection.
The writing process came easily to me because I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. It took me probably 30 minutes to write and then another 30 minutes to workshop. My only problem was that some of the wording was confusing so I had to switch some of it around more to make the story flow easier. I also had to make some adjustment since some people got the man that was going up the mountain that I was upset about confused with my dad. Overall though I really enjoyed this assignment and being able to write about something that I am passionate about in detail.
Personal is Political.
For this topic I want to talk about a recent ban that happened in the United Kingdom. Recently the UK has placed a ban on XL Pit Bulls. This strikes a chord with me due to the fact that I myself have a pit bull. She is not extra large but that was only due to the fact that she was born with complications and was the runt of the litter. In the UK anyone who owns a XL bully, must leash their dog and muzzle them. If the owner fails to do so people are able to “destroy” their dog. I did not use the term destroy the United Kingdom decided to use this term. You must also register your dog and failure to do so will result in jail time or unlimited fines. I know that I do not live in the UK but this still concerns me. What if this ban crosses over into the United States. Pit Bulls despite their reputation are some of the sweetest and best family dogs to have. The people that do not agree with this have either met some of the very few aggressive pitties or have never met one in general.
My dog is a 55 pound pit bull mix with the sweetest temperament. Her favorite activities include: fetching her ball, going for walks, being pet, taking naps, getting treats, and most of all playing in the snow. My family and I will leash her in public but in our own yard she gets free reign because she has never shown us that we cannot trust her by doing so. Her name is Stella and we got her during covid. The entire pandemic I spent raising the sweetest puppy. My family and I bought her from some of our family friends. When she was born she was not breathing and her legs would not work properly for months after her birth. She is a miracle dog, but she is definitely tiny for her breed.
She is a loving dog and I have never once seen her be aggressive towards anyone. I get that pit bulls are more dangerous if they bite someone than say a chihuahua but tinier dogs are so much more prone to being aggressive. Pit bulls were originally bred to bull bait and fight other dogs until this was banned. Unfortunately though many of those dogs were already taught their aggressive ways and were known for that behavior.
Because of the recent ban on these dogs there has been a rise of pit bulls being put into shelters and eventually euthanized. There are approximately over one million pit bulls put down each year. To me this is devastating when pit bulls are mostly known for the awful things that people bred them for many years ago. They cannot escape a stigma that they did not create. ASPCA.org even states, “Other pit bulls were specifically bred for work and companionship. These dogs have long been popular family pets, noted for their gentleness, affection and loyalty. And even those pit bulls bred to fight other animals were not prone to aggressiveness toward people.” These dogs do not want to be aggressive, that is what humans did to them.
I hope that one day we can free these sweet animals from the stigma that they are chained to.
Below are some pictures of my sweet Stella girl and why this political situation is personal to me.
Civic Issues; Systemic Racism in Health Care.
Racism can have profound and detrimental effects on patients within the healthcare system. The racism that occurs in healthcare has a long history and is still affecting people today. 1875-1968 was the Jim Crow Era of Medicine in which freed slaves and the descendents of said free slaves were prohibited from receiving the same high-quality health care as white people at the time. With that being said people of color were dying at double the rate of any of the white people back then. Anti-racism Commitment Coalition states, “Hospitals were not legally required to integrate until the 1960s, and many doctors and hospitals found ways to refuse care to patients of color long after the civil rights movement ended.”
Here are just some of the few barriers for people of color in the medical world today: access to health coverage, access to medical centers, distrust in the healthcare systems, access to same race physicians, and implicit racial bias in care providers.
Accessing health coverage in the U.S. has been a challenge for individuals, particularly people of color. Many find themselves in low-income jobs that lack comprehensive health insurance. Consequently, the absence of adequate coverage results in high out-of-pocket healthcare expenses, leading to a significant number of individuals foregoing essential preventive or interventional care. While the 2010 Affordable Care Act aimed to enhance the affordability of health insurance, the lower-tier plans it introduced had limitations in terms of quality and value.
Getting health care in the U.S. can be tough, especially for people of color. Those who work jobs that don’t offer health insurance when they need medical help, they have to pay a lot from their own pocket. Even though they tried to make insurance cheaper with the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the plans that didn’t cost much didn’t really cover everything people needed.
Distrust in the healthcare system has deep roots due to structural racism, which has led to medical failures and deliberate abuses, like forced sterilization, against people of color. As a result, many non-white communities harbor a strong mistrust of U.S. healthcare systems. This lack of trust contributed to lower vaccination rates among Black Americans and people of color during the COVID-19 pandemic, creating obstacles for those who wanted to get vaccinated. The resulting under vaccination has sadly led to thousands of unnecessary hospitalizations and deaths.
Having access to doctors of the same race is a challenge because there aren’t enough doctors of color in the medical field. This means many patients of color don’t have the option to choose a doctor who shares their race. This lack of choice can affect patient care because some patients feel more comfortable and trusting with doctors of the same race. Also, doctors of color might understand and support patients better when it comes to health issues related to race.
Sometimes, healthcare providers have biases they might not even be aware of, and this can really impact non-white patients. Studies have found that Black patients often get under-diagnosed or misdiagnosed, leading to worse health and shorter lives compared to white patients. Even when you consider things like insurance, income, age, and how severe the condition is, Black individuals still face a higher risk of dying from diseases like cancer, heart issues, and diabetes. It’s all because of these biases that affect the quality of care.
The effects of racism in the health care field are vast and need more attention to find solutions to help everyone in need of medical help. Everyone deserves the right to equal and adequate healthcare no matter their race nor their gender.
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Personal is Political Women in Sports.
When I was a child my mother did not really want me to join any sports, probably due to the fact that her and my dad were divorced and she did not want to split the time with me even more. I understand this now but at the time it infuriated me and I joined softball anyways. Then I would go on to join basketball, then travel basketball, then swimming, volleyball, track, and soccer. I played just about every sport there was to offer at my school. I was always oblivious to the treatment that the girls team would get in contrast to all the boy counterpart teams. It did not really phase me until it did in high school. I started to notice as I would put on the perfect outfit to match the theme flawlessly for a boys basketball game or even football game, that no one was doing this for the women’s games. At that point that wasn’t a big deal to me, so what people from my school were not dressing up to watch me play a game. I did not need them to anyways. Then, I started to see they had a larger coaching staff. The boys team would receive FIVE paid coaches for high school basketball and potentially more for football. The girls though, one head coach for varsity and one for junior varsity. How could this happen? I would attend all of the boys games with the stands full of people I did not know. All of the girls games would be everyone’s parents and a couple friends brave enough to support us. To me this was not adding up. Our record for girls basketball was far better than the boys. We had made it to play offs every single year. The boys you ask? Well they had to have the school pay to get them there always to lose in the first round. They always nicer equipment paid for by the school and all the sponsors they would get each season while my teammates and I spent large sums of money on all of our equipment with little fundraising. These examples do not just apply to my particular high school though. Lets take a look at the women’s basketball of Penn State. The current record for the lady lions is 13-5 and the men’s 9-10. The lady lions are also sitting currently 6th in the big 12 while the men’s is currently 12th. It also costs money as a student to attend the mens basketball games while at the women’s for students is completely free. Regular admissions is also average 18-20 for men and around 10 dollars for women’s. Although I did not find any information about the funding towards both of the programs I estimate just by the cost of the tickets that the men’s team is receive a larger sum of funding. It is not only basketball there is a history of women’s sports winning far more than the men’s teams at Penn State and still not receiving the recognition or the funding that they deserve. From a young age my school never failed to show me that I was lesser than any of the guys that would play a sport. Even when sometimes just for fun the girls and guys teams would play to see who would win and the girls came out on top most times. Will there ever be more funding, and more recognition for women’s sports? Especially the ones who spend all of their childhood perfecting a sport in order to play at a division 1 school. More needs to be done to show the women that they matter in their sports.
Ideas for Personal is Political(PP) and Civic Issues(CI)
For my Personal is Political I want to start off with an array of challenges that women face in our societies. I think that I can talk about a lot of my own personal experiences with struggles that I have faced due to my gender. I think I can also talk about the struggles that other female family members of mine have had to endure in the past decades. Some of my own personal struggles I would be able to talk about are how my gender affected me in my workplaces, in sports, in school, and medically. For my civic issues I am going to talk about healthcare in America and how people of color and women face so many obstacles in obtaining affordable healthcare and insurance. I would also want to talk about how doctors treat people of color and women when caring for them and how it impacts people. I want to talk about why minorities are receiving poorer quality of medical care than white people are. Why women are underdiagnosed with mental and physical health disabilities. Why when studies are being done how most of them are only being done on men. The healthcare systems are set up for white males and any symptoms that are displayed in different ways by different people will go unnoticed and undiagnosed causing people harm for things that they should have had cured or diagnosed from the start. I would also talk about how male OB GYN are underdiagnosing women with conditions such as endometriosis and ovarian cysts because they deem women’s painful cramps as “normal.” I think that I would have a lot to talk about with those two topics to start with and can always branch out from there.
“This I Believe” Rough Draft
I believe in persevering
I can barely catch my breath. The Colorado air makes me feel like my lungs are being compressed and my head is slowly being tightened in an unforgiving vise. It is seven in the morning and we have been slowly trudging up this mountain since five. In the past two hours we have made it less than a mile up the daunting mount Sneffels. I am sitting at about 12,000 feet trying not to pay much attention to the 2,157 more feet that I have left to conquer. The morning air is still crisp and the remainder of the sunrise has faded away and all of the pikas and marmots are chirping more insistently. I take another deep breath. My brother and father are eager to continue on our way.
“Abbie c’mon we have like three and a half more miles to go. We need to finish before it gets dark out.”
All I could think about was wanting to crawl back into a bed, any bed. To close my eyes and end the pain that I am burdened with currently. As my 14 year old self is about to look at my dad with tear stained eyes, this man in his mid to late 70’s is basically jogging up the same mountain that is leaving me so discouraged. How could an older man be in better shape than me, a girl who has done nothing but play sports and be active as a child? It offended me and my ability to do what I set my mind to. At that moment, I decided that I would reach the top of the mountain. As I started my trek to the summit again, I started to feel uncomfortable with the fact that it was taking me longer than other people who were surrounding us on the mountain. I felt like the slowest person there, that I was climbing up sand instead of large boulders.
Ian, my brother says to me, “I understand if you want to turn back, if it is becoming too much for you. It is hard for me too but,” I will never forget what he said next though, he quotes Peter McWilliams in saying, “sometimes, Abbie, you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.”
Again I found the fire within myself and this time, I was flying up the mountain. I think back to these moments throughout my life when I am faced with a decision of persevering or knowing when to quit. I think back to the last half mile before I summitted my first 14,000 foot mountain. I had not even reached the top yet and all I could see were the incredible mountains that I was surrounded by. The way the tops of the clear-cut ranges were beautifully iced with the perfect amount of snow even in mid August, how perfectly clear it is outside and how far up I am that I can see mountains for miles and miles. It is times like these I am reminded that it is not a coincidence that these mountains are here or that I am climbing them. At the time I was never really a religious person but I reached a spot where I sat down, admired the view and talked to God.
Then within the next ten minutes I reached the summit.
The sky was the most precious color of blue with small wispy cotton candy clouds. I was surrounded by so many people just admiring this masterpiece that we tirelessly worked hours to reach. After about an hour we decided it was time to descend.
Although it was not as difficult to go down the mountain as it was to climb it was crucial for us to be careful of each step due to the loose large rocks. After another three to four hours we are near the bottom. My brother and I, exhaustedly take a seat on the ground and gaze at our latest accomplishment. I felt so proud of us for not giving up.
We got back to the car and I took a well deserved nap and later that day we went to dinner. At dinner we talked with waiters about our accomplishment as we devoured food like never before.
I will never forget what one of the locals turns around and says to us, “ I cannot believe you guys chose mount Sneffels as your first 14er to climb. It is probably one of the most difficult to summit.” I make eye contact with my dad, his eyes are big with surprise, then I look at my brother and we burst out laughing with absolutely no regret of our adventures together.
“This I believe” Topic and Civic Issues topic
I have been struggling with what I should write because I have not felt as though any of my stories have been important enough to speak about. One story that does stick out to me is the difference in which women’s and men’s sports are treated in not only high school but also in college and professional leagues. I grew up playing a plethora of sports in high school and I loved it, but sometimes I seemed to be the only one. I took a particular liking to the sport basketball. There was a lack of funding, attendance, support, and staffing. Girls sports at my school were not nurtured in the same manor that they were for the boys at my school. They never were short on their funding, staffing or their attendance. They always had the stands full of people yearning to cheer them on. The girls though were always told that us playing the sport was a joke and that people would only come to watch it because they thought it was funny. Yet, every year somehow our girl’s basketball team would make it to the playoffs year after year based off our record alone. The boys on the other hand, had to buy their way in. Another story that I was considering was when I used to work as a hostess in a restaurant in my home town. I was the one to greet and seat every customer that walked in the door. I enjoyed the job until I was forced to quit. I started to receive some odd compliments from some of our kitchen staff that turned into that person somehow getting my number our of our books and starting to text me relentlessly. I went to my management about the situation and was just told that there was nothing that they could do about it since I was 18 years old. There was no protection for me. I later found out that other girls were also being affected by the same person and nothing was being done to protect any of them either. I think that there needs to be more done in the work place to preserve people’s privacy and to protect them regardless of age. In that story the girls that were affected were not the ones that should have been leaving their workplace it should have been the employee that could not control his behavior.
Then for my civic issues topic I plan on talking about how drinking and vaping have become normalize and the effects that they can have on not only college students but families and individuals when used in excess. I would also like to talk about how other countries with lower drinking ages do not experience as many drinking related crimes or issues in their societies and how early exposure can play a role in how alcohol affects societies.