Jon Law: Student, Adventurer, Fan of Colons

The punctuation kind, that is.

I am a social work and sociology student, with an alleged minor in writing. I am not sure at which point I decided I wanted to enter child welfare, but I believe Mrs. Solomon was cooing over how perfect I was for social work in my last year in high school.

I was a part of the IB Program at Richard Montgomery in Rockville, Maryland. Social work felt like a strange deviation from my friends and classmates. They were going to expensive schools to be journalists and screenwriters and violinists. At the time, it felt inadequate.

I am now done with my second year of college and nothing feels more important than, if not social work, then social action. Community service. Whether this is a reprioritization in my life or a psychological defense against the idea that I am a failure, I have embraced this chosen career new vigor. Or, at least, I am strolling towards it with purpose, instead of sauntering vaguely towards it or meandering around it.

When I am not very serious about heteronormativity, I am a terrible socialist and enjoy consuming corporate products like horror films titled The Substantive Adjective and jeans on sale for ten dollars at the back of stores. I spend a lot of time watching both excellently written comedramas and children's shows that star cute guys. I am eagerly waiting for the next season of Project Runway to finally start this August.

I devoutly read The Washington Post Magazine and fiction about zombies, old gods, and/or Irish people. I buy mom magazines from grocery stores and enjoy looking at the pictures as I rarely find the time or ingredients to make the things inside. And I enjoy reading star charts and the Major Arcana, even if I say I don't believe in it. I'm an existentialist, you know.

But I still believe in dragons and big fish.

One of my mom magazine creations: Oreo dragons.

Academics

Fall 2007

SOCY 101 - Basic Concepts in Sociology

This was my first sociology course, which is significant as sociology was going to be my second major. The course was interesting and the material clicked for me. That feeling when material just clicks and you just know you were meant to do this, that sealed it for me. I enjoyed Dr. Zeynep Tufekciololgi. She taught the material succinctly and made it easy to do well in the course while still expecting us to know our material. When I look back, I can see how her lectures would somtimes by subtly colored by what I presume are her feminist or liberal leanings, contrasting with some of the more overt, overbearing sociology professors. This course made me certain about going into sociology as a second major.

SOWK 260 - Intro to Social Work I

Dr. Tiffany Burgess taught my first social work course and this also clicked for me. It was my introduction to the strengths perspective, which will become the recurring theme throughout my social work courses. I also began to integrate this strengths approach into my life, and I feel like I matured and grew to be more accepting.

ENGL 100 - Composition

There was a certain sense of déjà vu in this course. In high school too, I was uncertain about my skills in the visual arts, and it was a basic arts course that led me to be more confident and eventually moving into the visual arts as my elective Sixth Subject in the IB Program. I was uncertain about pursuing writing in college and it was receiving the strong feedback from my professor, Philip Macek, that I felt more certain about moving into acquring a writing minor.

Spring 2008

SOCY 204 - Diversity and Pluralism

My Spring 2008 semester involved a much deeper learning in sociology and these issues I am concerned with. Although in some ways, I was already aware of much of what Dr. Fred Pincus was teaching, the material was incredibly educational. The classes themselves were questionable as his lectures simply reviewed our readings and for whatever reason, despite this being a discussion-based course, there was very little discussion. There just happened to be a collection of students that were not as responsive. The readings themselves were amazing and I kept the texts. They provided me with a deeper understanding of these class, race, gender, sexuality issues, at least from an oppression perspective. And although I felt like I was stereotypically delving into more radical liberalism as a college student, I think I kept my voice, disagreeing with the material as appropriate. I didn't feel obligated to conform to what Dr. Pincus was saying or what the readings or videos were expressing.

I am not always the best scientist, totally grounded in rationality and empiricism. There are things I feel are right or intuitively understand, and one thing this course gave me was the ability to ground myself further into empirical support. I reject essentialist ideas and I do not always have the strongest reasonings, but I repeatedly felt vindicated as I learned the material.

ENGL 291 - Intro to Writing Creative Essays

Like the Composition course I took, this course again solidified writing as a pursuit for me. Not to be egotistical, but in a sense, the course was easier for me, because I think I had already developed a sense of my own voice and style. Sally Shivnan gave me lots of positive feedback, even putting me up for a fine arts scholarship, and it spurred me on. She also gave me a list of professors to take classes with and professors to not take classes with, which served me well.

SOCY 333 - Human Sexuality in a Cross-Cultural Perspective

My first upper-level course was absolutely fascinating. Ignoring Dr. Ilsa Lottes' anti-Bush rants, I felt like I really learned, and this was maybe my first course in college where I really had to read extensively. I had moved beyond material that I simply understood already. The course also helped broaden my base of knowledge, as I learned about sex and sexuality as it appears in different cultures and nations. I grew away from ethnocentrism, developing my understanding of concepts from a, well, cross-cultural perspective.

Fall 2008

SOWK 360 - Social Welfare, Social Policy, and Social Work II

In this course, Dr. Carol Tice introduced us to public policy. It wa

BIOL 106 - The Human Organism

SOCY 300 - Methodology of Social Research

Spring 2009

PUB 150H - Public Affairs Scholars Seminar

My SOWK 360 course set up the background for me in this course, having introduced me to some

SOWK 387 - Policies, Programs, and Services for Children

SOWK 388 - Human Behavior and the Social Environment

Fall 2009
SOCY 298 - Social Entrepreneurship and Civic Imagination

SOWK 397 - Social Work Methods

Spring 2010
Sociological Theory

Sociology of Racism

The Scottish Enlightenment

Fall 2010
GWST 327 - African-American Women's History

GWST 490 - Critical Studies of Pornography

Experential Learning

Project HEALTH, BMS at St. Agnes

Fall 2008 - Summer 2009

When people ask me what Project HEALTH is or what it is about, I always struggle to really condense it. But here we go: Project HEALTH works at clinic settings in order to help address the social factors in the lives of patients that impact their health.

As a caseworker, I specifically volunteer for two-hour shifts at the St. Agnes Clinic where I take in patients as clients. I connect them to resources, both public and otherwise, that can help address various needs, such referring clients that struggle with hunger to food pantries and helping them apply to food stamps. I help clients apply for government utility assistance and refer them to the Eutaw Street One-Stop Career Center.

I chose this service-learning site because it was something different and it seemed important. It was about really working with people and affecting their lives for the better. It appealed to me as from the moment I heard what it was about, I realized that Project HEALTH was very much case management, it was social work in a sense, albeit for mostly bio students aiming for med school. I saw Project HEALTH as a good way to get experience in case management. It also appealed to my sense of holism. I am very much into the interaction of biopsychosocial factors and contextualization. (The prefix play is an added bonus for a word dork like me.)

...I learned that life cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations; that wisdom to deal with a man's difficulties comes only through some knowledge of his life and habits as a whole; and that to treat an isolated episode is almost sure to invite blundering.

Jane Addams said this. She is not very famous, and she is the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She is one of the mothers of modern social work. This excerpt from her book, Twenty Years at Hull-House, describes an incident where she told an unemployed man to look for work down at the drainage canal. He tried to explain that he could not work outdoors in the winter, but she said that he should exhaust every possibility before asking for help. He worked at the canal for two days, then died a week later of pneumonia. He left behind two children.

The necessity of careful examination, of active listening, of profound understanding of the complexities of human situations has become almost routine to me. At this point, I honestly believe that if every person is able to adopt what I perceive to be this ideal social worker's perspective, there would be so much less work to be done in the world.

I think the greatest impact Project HEALTH had on me over the past year is that it has guided me to realization that this service is what I want to do. I jokingly accuse high school friends or their new university peers of being members of the "intelligentsia" but beneath that is a true vein of rejection of purely theoretical pursuits. Art no longer seems to be enough. I had considered abandoning social work to do pure sociological research or returning to my writerly base, even maybe trying out the visual arts again, but I have shed those urges and anxieties.

I was never the kid that knew what he wanted, just that he loved dinosaurs. I was an atypical magnet program student, wholly lacking in ambition. With the greatest amount of certainty that I have ever had about anything in terms of my future goals (besides naming my first daughter Persephone), I have a direction I am walking in. The shapes may be vague, but I'm walking.

Being a part of Project HEALTH is also fascinating because it is so young at UMBC. It has changed significantly with each semester, and it just feels completely different this summer of 2009 than it did in fall of 2008. I really feel hands-on and in the midst of this growing grassroots organization. This experience will serve me, I believe, if I ever move from government child welfare agencies into work with non-profits and advocacy groups. Just watching the internal pull and struggle for stabilization is enlightening.

Future Plans

I am currently working on developing a research project on the availability of services for queer youth and the ability of existing services to address specifically queer issues. I have acquired a mentor, the astonishing Dr. Lottes, and am thinking about if I can make my study abroad experience in the spring relevant.

I am also in talks with a gentleman about an internship (at an LGBT youth organization in Baltimore) in the fall. Everyone is telling me doing one with my fall courseload will not work. At times, above all things, I am a contrarian.

Involvement

Bartleby

Fall 2008 - Spring 2009

I was a poetry editor at Bartleby, UMBC's creative arts magazine, for the past 08-09 school year. This organization appealed to me because I had such a good experience with the creative arts magazine at my high school. It was a focal point of my life. I also really enjoy critiquing people's writing, I don't know, it's the terrible mean person inside of me. Of course, I try to be constructive in my criticism, although I am not if the submitters received that feedback. I also had the magazine's faculty sponsor, Sally Shivnan, as my professor for a course and she highly praised my writing and suggested to everyone that we look into Bartleby. Although I enjoyed reading all the poetry submissions and discussing them with the other editors, I am not going to be returning to this position in the coming year.

Regardless of the quality of the magazine, I had some issues with Bartleby as an organization. I was never really sure of my position at the organization. It was just poorly run at times, culminating in me running around with a cart full of books, several plates of brownies and cookies I had baked, and no book/bake sale. I was stuck in the University Center courtyard until someone could show up and relieve me. Members of my own Sondheim cohort may remember me coming to class late one day with brownies and cookies that I bitterly gave away. The organization seemed to have this preoccupation with dividing everyone into their various genres even in the running of Bartleby events, which had terrible results.

The Editor-in-Chief and many of the senior editors graduated this past year, and I joked with my friend about staging a coup and whipping Bartleby into shape. Alas, this is not happening, but I still think Bartleby could still be amazing.

Major Inspiration

Spring 2009 - Ongoing

Disclaimer: I may gush a little here.

Originally the Major Fair Project, Major Inspiration is a new project, started up just this past year by a student, Richard Blissett. The original idea was to actually put on Major Fairs, where college students will set up displays and posters and high school students would be able to walk around and discuss different opportunities in college. Richard Blissett wanted to give high school students an opportunity to see all the different kinds of majors out there and maybe find possible future majors that interest them that they may not have heard of before.

Currently, Major Inspiration has a more encompassing role, where college students participate in outreach programs of different kinds to talk to youth of all ages from local schools and communities about college. For the most part, I have participated in panel discussions where I answer questions with other volunteers in front of audience. I have honestly loved every one of these opportunities, from just having lunch with youth from Walden Community Circle to going to speak with a small group of elementary school kids after school. It just feels really good to try to connect with the kids and to just talk with other panelists. I suppose I partially enjoy the break from the pressure of Project HEALTH. And, of course, I got to make two gorgeous and excellent posters for my two majors.

The Major Inspiration also just makes me happy because I was able to be there when Richard Blissett first talked to me about the idea in the fall. I explained how my high school had excellent counseling services, and we discussed how not many high schools are so lucky. Watching this idea come alive over the months is frankly inspiring, even as I watched the struggles, where even getting people to respond to an e-mail was an ordeal.

I am of course still a part of the Major Fair Project, participating in the occassional outreach opportunity over the summer.

Queers United, Mobilized, and Bringing Change

Fall 2010 - ongoing


Student Government Association, Health & Wellness
Fall 2010 - ongoing

Career

My current plan for after graduation is to go to graduate school for my Masters of Social Work, and then to enter the field of child welfare, Child Protective Services to be specific, for some time. My ultimate career goals are more vague beyond this, although I do know I want to work for queer youth, whether it is in an advocacy capacity or at a queer youth service agency.

My current focuses in my academic career reflect these desires, as I orient my social work classes towards child welfare and my sociology courses to diversity and sexuality topics.

Here is a generic version of my résumé.