Fellowship Reception Speech

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Good evening, my name is Alejandra Acuña.  I’m a PhD candidate in the social welfare doctoral program.  

I’d like to share a few words about my personal background, professional journey and the impact that receiving a fellowship has had on my future goals.

My parents were immigrants from Northern Mexico. I was born and raised in East Los Angeles, the fourth child of five - and the first (and only) in my family to graduate from college. 

After several years of working in public health programs, I went back to school to earn a Master’s Degree in Social Welfare from UC Berkeley in 1996.  Since then, I have been a professional social worker practicing in child welfare, mental health, and public schools.  I have also done a lot of teaching as a Field Instructor for MSW interns and as a Lecturer at Cal State LA.

In the fall of 2009, at age 41 and the mother of an 8 year-old daughter, I began the PhD program at UCLA.  With the assistance of various fellowships, including the Meyer and Rene Luskin fellowship, I was able to pay for tuition and fees.  This meant I had library privileges for my research and health insurance.

It is said that in the Spring we reap what we sow.  I am scheduled to defend my dissertation in a few weeks (May 23).  It is entitled: Family Storytelling and Adolescent Post-Traumatic Resilience.

My research examines the relationship between open family communication and post-traumatic resilience among adolescents, primarily low-income urban youth.  I found a positive relationship between open family communication and post-traumatic resilience, however a high number of lifetime stressful events and a high degree of problem family communication overpowers the positive effects of open family communication. 

Developing interventions to improve the mental health of urban families through social marketing campaigns that promote the benefits and skills of storytelling, as well as reduce the prevalence of problem family communication, is my next professional and research task.

I came back to school because I wanted to learn how to do research.  Growing up and working in urban communities inspires my research questions, particularly about interventions that improve the mental health and well being of urban youth and their families. 

I am the wildflower that broke through the concrete jungle of East Los Angeles and for the rest of my life I wanna take a jackhammer to the cement so that other wildflowers can bloom.

La Frida

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She literally broke open her chest cavity to reveal her innermost innermosts.  That’s why we relate. That’s why we feel so connected to her heart.  She looked trauma in the eye and wept, laughed, fucked, journaled and painted herself into wholeness and came out the other side – an icon, a role model, a cautionary tale, a mujer muy chingona.

I am the wildflower that broke through the concrete jungle and for the rest of my life I wanna take a jackhammer to the cement so that other wildflowers can bloom.

Spring

and in the Spring, we reap what we sow

May 1996, I graduated from the MSW program at UC Berkeley.

May 2001, I gave birth to my daughter - one of the most important people and experiences of my life.

May 2005, I visited Paris for the first time.  A dream of mine since the day my mother enrolled me in French class at my East Los Angeles Junior High School in 1979.

May 2014, I will defend my dissertation. Finally.

May is the month of mother's day.

I am juggling four part-time jobs to pay mortgage, bills and my health insurance. I am co-parenting an amazing girl, as a single mom.  I am spent.  I am happy.  It is happening - the impossible is possible. An at-risk low-income ethnic minority urban girl is coming full circle -from East LA to Westwood and back.  My mom would be so proud - is proud.

My sister, Carol, asked me:  Do you ever thank God for your brain?  Yes, sister.  Thank you, Yesus, for my brain, my mom, my daughter, my family, my friends, my mentors, my teachers, my inner voice, my healers, my readers, my books, my 2000 Toyota Echo, my jobs, my home, my life, my mistakes, my lessons learned, my opportunities, my faith, my hope, my persistence and presumptuousness in the face of sure defeat, and a reader miles away who sent me a note saying "keep writing."   

Happy Spring :)

The. Final. Stretch.

I have written to keep track of ideas, articles and references over the last 5 (!) years.

I have written to help me make sense of what I got myself into.

When I meet or get an email from someone about the blog, I realize this experience serves others too.

I got a request to write about the time commitment of a PhD program.  Here's the quick and dirty, Alison:

1st year: 2009-2010

• 2-3 hours of daily carpool commute with a lovely classmate
• Three 3-hour courses per quarter:  Epistemology, Research Methods, Statistics, Policy, etc.
• Lots of reading and writing.  I remember sitting for 6-12 hours a day to read articles and write papers. Seminars for doctoral students are small, which means you gotta do the reading and present or get called on to summarize the thesis of a book.
• Working a part-time job 10 to 20 hours a week.
• A 6-hour comprehensive examination (four essays) at the end of the first year (brutal).
• No time for friends, exercise, movies or reading the Sunday paper, etc.
• Gained 10-15 lbs. (sitting and stress eating during study times).

2nd year: 2010-2011

• 2-3 hour commute, two days a week, but this time without my lovely carpool partner.  We took different courses based on our research interests.
• Two or three 3-hour courses per quarter.  Cool courses in other departments:  Latin American Medicine, Shamanism and Folk Illness (Community Health Sciences), Family Therapy (Psychology), Stress & Disease (Psychology), Community Partnered Participatory Research (Health Services), Social Marketing (Community Health Sciences).
• Research internship.
• Working a part-time job 20 hours a week.
• Lots of reading and writing.  
• Began writing publishable paper (second comprehensive written examination required by the doctoral program)
• Exercise, nutritional cleanse, dancing, lost 20 lbs.

3rd year: 2011-2012

• Done with coursework, so now I am writing at home (publishable paper).
• Exhausted.
• Publishable paper approved.
• Teaching and working a part-time job about 20 hours/week.

4th year:  2012-2013

• Awarded fellowship to work on dissertation proposal.  
• Teaching and working a part-time job about 10-30 hours/week.
• Successfully defended dissertation proposal.

5th year: 2013-2014

• Working full-time (several part-time jobs).
• Submitted manuscript for publication.
• Requested IRB approvals from University and school districts for dissertation study.
• Data collection and analysis.
• Drafting results and discussion chapters of dissertation.
• Schedule defense for May.
• File dissertation by June.
• Graduate on June 13 :)

Structural Family Therapy Tenet

"One of the central tenets of family systems theory is that the child, the identified patient, is serving an active role in holding the family together by helping the family avoid other problems...the structural family therapy assumption [is] that treating the whole family is important because it improves the symptoms and protects the family, whereas treating only the child may result in deteriorated family functioning."
Szapocznik et al., 1989

Lovable

"We go back...and back...and back...through the layers of fear, shame, rage, hurt and negative incantations until we discover the exuberant, unencumbered, delightful, and lovable child that was, and still is, in us."

melody beattie