old friends

9/10/07

i arrived an entire hour early for the training session. james was waiting in the rain, i invited him into the car and we chatted a bit about the program. everyone is pretty comfortable with each other now. it's interesting to see the intrinsic relationships, the way that people are leaning towards each other in these new friendships.

for the first session, we talked about the 4 basic requirements of graduation: 1.)presentation of learning, or POL 2.)Portfolios, professional and personal 3.)360 evaluation/IDP and 4.) personal inventory service document, or PISD. aren't acronyms the cutest?

we had a panel discussion from former allies dave and susan.


we took a break and re-convened at the friend's meeting house (ironically) to talk about diversity. these are going to be big fights, close to personal parts of our hearts. everyone is still walking on eggshells and trying not to offend each other; perhaps this is everyone's way of trying to use the appropriate language and thereby learn about diversity through sympathetic eyes. i can't say just yet.

i know one of my goals is to be a better listener, but these topics set me aflame. round two is a bit more truthful, people are beginning to reveal their "personal prejudices" as well as fears of being discriminated against. this is a learning experience for me; the conflict of interests makes for learning experiences.

the topic of self-hatred has been brought up. that is the root of so many of these problems. if we could see beyond our own issues and insecurities, problems would dissipate.