After a lot of paperwork miscommunications, I finally started my internship last week! I’m working with ASDRA (Asociación Síndrome de Down de la República Argentina – Down’s Syndrome Association of the Argentine Republic), a non-profit that strives to holistically address the challenges of inclusion faced by people with Down’s Syndrome (DS) and their families across the country. They provide several education, support, and programming opportunities for these groups, while advocating for inclusion policy at the national level as well. I’ll be using my public health background to help ASDRA do some research behind an upcoming programming/policy recommendation.
While there are myriad programming opportunities and well-informed pediatricians who serve DS kids, ASDRA and its peer institutions have started to see that comparable resources are not as readily available to DS adults. In an effort to address the lack of programming opportunities, ASDRA and its peer institutions have developed life-skills training workshops and other DS adult-oriented programs. However, many medical professionals still don’t know best practices for communicating with DS adults.
This is where I come in: my job is to help develop a survey that will be distributed nationally to survey 1) DS adults and their families, and 2) adult medical providers regarding medical treatment of DS adults. I’m very excited about this project because 1) I get to use Google Forms (I LOVE Google Drive), and 2) I miss public health stuff. I feel very much more in my element doing this, not just because most of the literature and resources available are in English, but also because I love public health work that ultimately involves developing solutions to disparities in care at the systems-level. It’s also a nice break from my intense liberal arts experience at UBA.
Before I delve into my observations of the work environment (since that’s my class assignment), it’s important to note that my observations are extremely biased because I am American and have only been exposed to work environments in the United States. In an effort to reconcile this bias, this week’s reading advocates for the use of an “analytical notebook.” The “analytical notebook” encourages periodic self-reflection to examine why and how I react to new experiences while abroad. I’ve tried to incorporate this approach in previous posts and I definitely think it’s helped me get more out of my experiences, since it goes more in-depth than the off-hand, ethnocentric “this is weird” observation. Splitting these self-reflections between this blog and my journal has definitely been key for me maintaining my sanity this semester as I adapt to a new culture and learn to express myself in another language. Anyways, let us begin with my initial internship observations:
ASDRA is housed in a modest, mural-covered building on a street corner in Palermo, which initially surprised me because ASDRA is the most prominent Argentine voice on all things DS, so I thought they might be in a fancier space like the big medical interest groups in the USA. Anyways, the first floor features a big community gathering space and a small reception area that has a friendly-looking couch covered in handmade emoji pillows. I spend most of my time upstairs in the relatively modern office space, which is mostly full of collaborative spaces. I share an office with the group’s administrator/office manager, where we enjoy lots of natural light and have music streaming constantly.
The atmosphere is overall pretty casual. Everybody uses laptops, wears jeans, and eats leisurely lunches together in the conference room. As soon as we get into the office and right before we leave, we do a round of cheek kisses with everyone in the office (including cleaning lady, receptionist, volunteers). People take the time to share YouTube videos and coffee with coworkers, without the sense of urgency that one might find in an American office space. (My shock to all of this is clearly influenced by my upbringing in suit-clad, power-driven Washington DC). In my writing class this week, we were talking about what the concept of productivity means in different cultures, and I’ve definitely been able to see that working at ASDRA. I always feel bad when I leave my internship because I feel like I haven’t made much progress, but my coworkers always reassure me that I shouldn’t worry or scramble to finish tasks at home because there will always be time to work on them next week (Tranqui, Emma, no pasa nada…). There isn’t the same pressure to overexert myself all of the time, which is kinda nice. I get the impression that this kind of work environment is pretty normal here.
My coworkers have been super welcoming and understanding, especially on the days where I can’t seem to speak Spanish at all (the language-learning curve comes and goes in waves). Most of them assume that I’m Argentinean until I’m introduced because I’ve got the accent and the face (but not quite the vocabulary) to fit in pretty well. Once they find out I’m American, they ask lots of questions about life in the USA. Most media productions depicting life in the United States fail to admit that our country is less than perfect, so it always takes a bit of explaining to more holistically address the American experience (from my point of view as a pretty privileged white girl). Yes, we have: violence, homelessness, corruption. No, we don’t have: free healthcare, free university education, telos (see side note from previous post). It’s a conversation that I’ve had quite a bit since living here, which makes me wonder: is it a good thing that people in Argentina (and other countries) think that our country is perfect, without any kind of social-political-economic turmoil? This is something I’ve thought about a lot recently, but since it’s more of a holistic observation (rather than strictly about the internship) I’ll be posting more about this at a later date.
Anyways, these are just my first impressions from my internship experience – I’ll be sharing a more in-depth analysis later this week!
La gringa porteña 