Missing the Big Picture by Donovan, Luke (great book club books txt) 📕

frequently would have to write research papers about music and how it defines sexuality in society. A large majority of the students chose to write about Christina Aguilera. Ms. Featherman joked that the students in the class loved her. She even suggested that in order to fix our grammar mistakes, we should print out our papers and read them to our Christina Aguilera posters that she assumed everybody had on his or her wall. One day as I was waiting for class to begin, a girl asked me if I had finished my upcoming research paper. I said, “Yup, I just have to read it to my Christina Aguilera poster now.” She looked at me very odd, as she was absent the day Ms. Featherman talked about the students reading their papers to Christina Aguilera posters.

As 2003 came to a close, I started to spend more time with my friends from work, and my high school and Geneseo friends became more of a memory. During the middle of my junior year, I began volunteering at the Crime Victim and Sexual Violence Center. I wanted to learn more about sexual abuse, domestic violence, and domineering relationships.

The more time I spent at the Sexual Violence Center, the more I enjoyed it. I learned that there were so many misconceptions about rape. I heard some stories that were truly shocking. One female babysitter molested two boys she was watching. Another one-yearold child was sold for sexual acts so that the baby’s mother could get crack. A man who came in for counseling had been raped in 1962 as an eight-year-old and still experienced trauma from the incident. Another male client came in for therapy because he was gang raped in prison. A freshman in college called the twenty-four-hour rape crisis hotline and said she needed to talk to somebody because her older brother used to molest her and she was afraid to return home for the summer.

The scariest part of my volunteering was that one day when I was entering client information into the computer, I actually recognized two names; they were two women I had previously worked with at other jobs. I never thought I knew any victims of rape, but given all of the people the average person works with in a lifetime, he or she is likely to know at least one.

In September 2004, I started my final semester of college. I was able to graduate a semester early because I had started with twenty-eight college credits. During my last semester, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I hadn’t spoken to Randy in over a year, and Carmine had graduated college in three years and moved to California. Randy was now engaged to an older woman. I had known a lot of college seniors who were still working at Home Depot because they couldn’t find jobs in their fields. I didn’t like working retail and the thought of working full time there just scared me. Jeremy my mother’s boyfriend, told me that his sister worked at the Center for Quality Living, (a pseudonym), an organization that provided an array of residential and day services to the developmentally disabled. I decided to apply there.

I started my new job as a residence counselor for a group home in the fall of 2004. At first I was apprehensive about working in a home with ten developmentally disabled adults. I didn’t want to wash anybody, tell somebody to wipe, or work with individuals who were violent. Thankfully, most of the residents were independent, and we had very few behavior problems. Within weeks, I loved my new job; it was the first job to which I actually didn’t mind showing up. I soon learned that the stereotypes about developmentally disabled individuals were mostly false. Most of the residents I encountered were witty and able to go out in the community; some even worked at the local grocery store.

I was excited that for the first time in years, I didn’t have any friends who knew Carmine or Eric or knew about the lies that they had told about me. On the first day of my job, I did notice that one resident, Anthony, had the same last name as Carmine. Anthony was very friendly and told me that his chore was to set the table. When I asked him if he was any relation to Carmine, he smiled and said, “So how do you know Carmine?” Turns out, Anthony was Carmine’s uncle. Apparently, Carmine wasn’t totally out of my life yet.

There were ten people living in the group home at which I worked. Most of them were developmentally disabled and suffered from mental illnesses. The staff was paid slightly above minimum wage, and we were expected to give medications, learn crisis intervention techniques, cook, drive, and take care of ten disabled individuals. Due to the gap between pay and job responsibilities, the house was short-staffed and included some irresponsible and untrustworthy employees.

One college student spent spend most of her shift talking on the phone or listening to music in the room of a resident who was on a home visit. Another time I saw the same employee just dancing by herself outside. Many staff members were found sleeping on the job, and not even during the overnight shift. One time a family member of a resident was picking up her son for a home visit and found an employee sleeping on the couch. Another staff member was known for giving tarot card readings to the other staff members during work hours. One employee actually had a hit-and-run accident at the home. As she was pulling out, she hit another car and left, not even telling anyone that she’d hit her co-worker’s vehicle. I kept the job at the Center until June 2007, working part-time after I graduated college. When I left I had three years of experience; and I was the staff member with the most seniority. The high turnover