Adolfo Tamayo, Out of the Box Presentation

everybody gets Adolfo and this is my out of the

box presentation.

As far as my comfort zone goes, there's two things

that really shaped my comfort zone.

That would have to be Ah, those two things would

have to be my personal identities and my upbringing.

Ah, my personal identities.

Amongst those I am of Mexican descent.

I'm a first generation American.

Actually. I am LGBT part of the LGBT Q plus

community. I am, ah, working class, and I also dealt

with generalized anxiety and depression.

So I'm part of the mental health, just community as

well as for my upbringing.

A group around a lot.

So I grew up in a lower class family, lower

working class.

I have a very large extended family, so I've seen

a lot.

Um, I've had a lot of family members with different,

um, documented status for their citizens.

Green cardholders, undocumented.

All of that.

My sister was born deaf and went to a school

that was for the deaf, blind and multi handicapped.

So I grew up a lot of around a lot

of people with disabilities as well.

I grew up gay in a small conservative town, also

a very, um, semi poor conservative town as well.

So, um, I also witnessed a lot of, uh, group

around a lot of people with mental health issues.

I have seen some substance abuse disorders, and I've also

had relatives that were incarcerated.

So when it came time to choose a population giving

my life experience, I have I feel an experienced world

view, and I've seen a lot.

So it was kind of come tough to think about

population that I didn't feel comfortable around.

I ultimately decided to kind of tie in, like my

own personal anxiety and mixed in with the population that

I wasn't really comfortable with.

So then I choose, um, chose the homeless population.

Um, the reason I chose this.

So I say that I'm not as comfortable with people

experiencing homelessness because I am not completely rude.

I have.

I'm not completely in experience.

I've worked in ah, primary.

My primary source of income for the last five years

or so has been food.

And Bev, um, industry jobs and a lot of those

jobs employed people that were experiencing homelessness.

But on their side of that, like I was, I'm

not very experienced with it.

I've worked alongside of them, but I don't really know

their, you know, everyday life and don't really know much

about the extent of their homelessness.

Um, and also, like I said, my own personal anxiety

that can be a little bit confounded with other reservations

that come from stereotypes about the homeless population.

Kind of those two things kind of come together.

So I figured it would be a good chance to

kind of explore that, um, for the experience.

So I chose transitions.

I volunteered serving lunch on Sunday afternoon with a group

that miss Ah, Professor Trowbridge is a part of.

So it was a very short experience, but I instead

of, um, focusing on how good the experience made me

feel. I am said I I focused on those feelings

that we try not to really focus on those kind

of subconscious thoughts.

For example, up, I remember walking up to transitions.

There was a lot of people kind of just, you

know, hanging out around and I was kind of on

edge. Um, you know, that, like I said, comes from

like personal anxiety, like social anxiety, that I already have

that kind of confounded with, um, the reservoir.

The kind of like generalizations you have, like people tend

to have about people experiencing homelessness.

You know, they're gonna ask me for money.

They're gonna come up and talk to me.

So I kind of focused on that kind of focused

on some, like feelings of unease and like some presumptuous

generalizations I had about some of these people.

Um, And like I said, I've worked alongside them before,

but this kind of gave me a glimpse of like,

um what?

The experience.

Every day they kind of give us a small tour

of, um transitions and showed us like how they lived

and what they did there.

So that was really interesting.

And also, there was a quite, like, a little bit

of intersection only I kind of focused on that, too,

as well.

Um, I've worked with people who have experienced homelessness is

as I've said and I've had family members.

You're incarcerated.

I've also worked alongside people who are incarcerated, but this

kind of brought those two populations together.

There's a good bit of the population at transitions that

involves people who have just been released from incarceration and

are looking for are transitioning, so to speak.

A thio long torrente long term housing transition sort of

gives them that in between place for them to stay

and get, you know, meals and have Reese access to

resources where they can find jobs and create an income

to where they can kind of become self dependent.

Um so it kind of made me also think about

how that kind of segment of life might be for

someone to go from having recently been incarcerated Thio transiting

to life outside of especially if they don't have a

strong support system.

That's what kind of transitions comes in tow, kind of

bridge the gap there.

So tying it all together.

So, like I said, like, I've experienced a lot in

my life and light upbringing.

So I consider myself to be pretty, you know, have

a pretty extensive worldview and pretty experienced empathetic.

But, um, like I said, I focused on internal thoughts

and kind of like my own anxiety and working through

that through all this experience.

So it kind of made me realize that even though

I might have this kind of idea of myself as

being looking super empathetic and understanding.

It's also important to like, check myself and realized that

I don't know everything.

And there's always room to grow and to learn and

to also not let that, um, that empathetic side turned

into, like, a patronizing sort of empathy, whereas I'm kind

of, you know, now let it be so patronizing.

And then, um So I was tying it all to

social work.

So in the code of N S.

A. N s a w code of ethics, one of

the principles that every person you know has inherent worth

and dignity And, um, as humans, Or at least I

know speaking for myself, you know, I contend to be

conditional with that.

So I was thinking about, you know, like those does

subconscious thoughts and feelings I was having throughout the short

experience that I, um, had and um also checking myself

in that that, you know, regardless of what you know

people have done or where they're coming from, they have

inherent worth and dignity and to kind of check that

conditional subconscious thought, thought they thought trained, that might come

up on dhe Then we also are expected, you know,

have established be able to establish healthy relationships with clients

and be professional.

And I was bringing up, you know, my own personal

anxiety because this was like a learning experience, because it's

if I'm going to be a savage ling healthy relationship

with relationships with clients and being professional, I'm going to

have to learn to work through that kind of personal

anxiety social anxiety so that I can help my client

or help people in general to the best of my

ability. So this kind of exists experience kind of, you

know, shed some light on some things that I hadn't

really paid attention to.

So even though it was sure it was definitely a

learning experience, and ah, very appreciative of it.

The only regret I have is that it wasn't a

little bit longer.

But I can always, you know, volunteer again.

Thank you guys.

Adolfo Tamayo, Out of the Box Presentation

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated