My alternate NSERC application

I know it's just how the system works. I have a small space on my NSERC application forms to list the experiences which have developed my communication and interpersonal skills. The reviewers are looking for conference presentations, positions chairing committees, classroom teaching experiences, etc. for a good funding application. And no doubt, those sorts of things are important. What is distressing me is not that these things are valued, but what they are valued above.

Where have I learned the most about communication? In communicating with people who are non-verbal, in the complex process of enabling independence with people with disabilities, and most of all, in listening to those who have so much to say of great importance, but don't talk the way I do - those who persevere in communicating despite day after day, sometimes year after year of being unheard. Where have I learned the most about interpersonal skills? In working through tensions among people living in community, in revealing to another person, who feels useless and unwanted, their incredible value and beauty, and in receiving unconditional trust and love from people with disabilities.

Imagine what our world could be if we all learned from some of the greatest teachers of trust, love, forgiveness and acceptance! What an incredible gift we have in knowing these people with intellectual disabilities - I wish that I was more worthy of that honour.

So here is my alternate "Applicants Statement" of my NSERC application. The good one. The one that most accurately answers NSERC's question to describe the experiences that have formed my communication and interpersonal skills.

I'd like to share with you about Audrey (not her real name). Audrey is an incredible teacher of what it means to love, to trust, and to forgive. During the time I've spent with Audrey, she never missed an opportunity to teach me something new and reveal something beautiful about our world. In terms of how we typically assess people, Audrey is unable to speak verbally, she cannot feed herself, she requires assistance to walk and to do most things, and she is blind. Here I will describe just a few experiences with Audrey which highlight how she taught me so much about interpersonal and communication skills. 

Interpersonal skills cannot be just a set of well-timed head nods, "thank you for sharing your concerns" comments, and fake smiles. Interpersonal skills require a genuine love for another person. I'm referring to love, not in a romantic sense of course, but in the sense that the welfare of others must truly and deeply matter to me. This kind of love can only be unconditional - it needs to wrapped in forgiveness in order to mean anything. 

Audrey spent most of her life in an institution. I'm not aware of all of the details of this experience, but from my knowledge of Audrey and of many institutions, it is not unlikely that Audrey spent perhaps 20 years sitting alone. Try to imagine 20 years of isolation. On a tight schedule, an overworked nurse would have probably come by, quickly put food or medications in her mouth, and then would have had to move on, leaving Audrey alone in her dark world of blindness. Her lack of speech would have made it impossible for her to express the pain this must have caused. I cannot even imagine a single day living in such isolation, with no way to make it better.

Audrey has every right to be bitter and angry against the world. And yet, she has chosen to love others, and she is one of the most loving women I have ever met. As an aside, it makes me wonder what our world could look like if nations could forgive other nations with the kind of unconditional love that Audrey can give. But in this alternate application, I'll just describe a bit of the interpersonal skills that Audrey taught me personally. One key aspect of Audrey's ability to love is that it is two-way: she is both strong enough to give unconditional love regardless of past hurts and humble enough to receive it. In knowing Audrey, I discovered the importance of not only my caring for others, but also my accepting love from others, which can sometimes be hard on my pride. Audrey also taught me a great deal about the importance of focused time - of sitting with another person, and being fully focused on relating to them. When I'm sitting with someone who is non-verbal, it is tempting to just start thinking ahead to tasks that I need to do, rather than focusing on them. Audrey could sense if I was not 100% connecting with her, and she kept me accountable. This is of course very important for interpersonal skills - that I take the time to fully focus on the student who I am talking to, so that they know they are valued and their learning as well as they themselves matter to me.

Audrey also shared with me much about communication. Typically, when I sing and play guitar, it's just about enjoying a nice song. Audrey taught me that music is all about connecting with people. I would sit down beside her, and she would hear me opening my guitar case. Her head would tilt a bit to the side as if to ask, "is that the sound I think it is?" And from the first chord, her face would light up in the most beautiful smile. She'd lean in towards me so her ears could be as close to the sound as possible. But it wasn't just about hearing the sound for her; if we played her music on a CD, she didn't experience the same joy (though the music itself sounded much better than what I could sing). Singing with Audrey was to communicate with her, so I sang with her all the time - outside on walks, during personal care, and of course during our evening guitar time. And I am intentionally using the phrase "I sang with her"; Audrey may not have been able to verbally sing along, but she participated in the music much more fully than most people who can hum along. She taught me by example, how to communicate enormous gratitude, to share a joy for the beauty of the world, and to connect with another person - all without using words.

Audrey's lack of verbal language encouraged me to pay closer attention to her sometimes subtle communications, which is a highly transferable skill particularly for teaching. Only the bravest students will tell the teacher how they are feeling in a course verbally, but all of the students will share their concerns and fears non-verbally - all the teacher needs to do is know how to listen. I have much more to learn about listening, but I am very grateful to Audrey for the lessons she taught me on communication so far. 

Giving and receiving trust is essential to both good communication and interpersonal skills. To assist Audrey in transferring to her wheel chair, I would start by explaining where we were going and then say something like, "Audrey, will you stand up with me?" And she would reach out her hands - these beautiful weathered wrinkled hands with her palms up and open. In those hands was her trust, freely given to me. She trusted that when I lifted her, I would not drop her fragile frame. She also knew that I was trusting her not to lunge to the side which could seriously hurt me as well. She trusted that wherever I was taking her, it would be good, even though I don't know how much she could understand of my description of where we were going. It is a huge honour and responsibility to be given someone's complete trust - particularly from someone who is vulnerable. For me, this is one of my greatest motivators - to know that someone trusts me; it would break my heart to let them down. For successful communication and interpersonal connection with students, trust is essential. Like Audrey, my students need to know that I will do everything I can to not let them fall. Also, just as I trusted Audrey to stand up with care, my students need to know that I am trusting them to put their best effort into learning physics. And like Audrey, my students need to know that in this course or tutorial, I am taking them somewhere worthwhile. 

There is so much more to write about on this topic. I could describe what I have learned about genuine and continual encouragement and thankfulness from a beautiful woman, who is the only person to never miss a chance to excitedly tell me that she liked my leading worship in church and has thanked me at least once or twice a week for the last year for a painting that I gave her and her sister last summer. I could write about the lessons in patience and perseverance even in the seemingly unimportant things from a man who could only communicate by blinking because he was paralyzed except for his eyes. I could write about what I have learned from a good friend of mine with aspergers, who has many gifts, one being that she has a remarkable ability to accept herself and others simply for who they are. I could share what I've learned about truly listening and valuing what others say from a woman who seems to string non-nonsensical words together, but then suddenly out of this string of words, she speaks something profound. This is truly just scratching the surface. If I began to describe what I have learned from the many people with disabilities who I have had the great honour to know, I would be writing a novel.

So why is it that titles, such as "support worker", don't look well on most resumes or NSERC applications requiring interpersonal and communication skills? I think this is because readers, who haven't had the opportunity to experience the field, see support work as simply cleaning and feeding people. But just to write that makes me cringe. To be a good support worker requires continual learning and growth in interpersonal, communication and many other skills - it was inspiring to see the ability and commitment of my co-workers who have made this challenging work their career. Of course, the adjective "good" is necessary in that sentence - technically, it is possible for a support worker to completely blind themselves to the value of the people with disabilities they see everyday, and simply perform routine tasks without thought of the person in front of them, but this was certainly not the norm among my co-workers.

So truth be told, this post isn't really about my less than impressive NSERC application. It's about what our lack of valuing work done with people with disabilities represents. It reflects a society which far too often views people with intellectual or other disabilities as a group to pity or avoid. It represents our tragic failure to learn from people who could change the world with their ability to love. Gosh, that makes me so so sad.

In the end, I couldn't help myself - I just couldn't leave all this out of my real NSERC application. So my "support worker experiences" did make it squeezed into at least one tiny line on the real application. I hope that the reviewers have also known a person with a disability, partly so that when they read that short line they understand that really, what I am describing is the paragraphs above. But mostly, I hope the reviewers have known a person with a disability, so that they can be as fortunate and blessed as I've been.