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The Goose Egg, the Advocate, and a Good Pillow · Ryan's Journal

• 0:15
  Zero.
• 0:16
  A goose egg.
• 0:17
  That's the line from Ryan's entry that stuck with me.
• 0:20
  He says he busted his ass to get to school, made attendance because he thought it
• 0:25
  was the law, spoke English for four years of high school, and the credit he got for
• 0:29
  all of it was none.
• 0:31
  Not half credit.
• 0:32
  Not a single point.
• 0:33
  Nothing!
• 0:34
  Years of showing up, nothing!
• 0:36
  And look at what he was carrying.
• 0:38
  A lazy eye, a crossed eye, all the way through senior year,
• 0:43
  and he finishes.
• 0:44
  He graduates early.
• 0:45
  Ryan says it's a total fucking miracle, and you know what?
• 0:50
  He's right.
• 0:51
  That's a winner.
• 0:53
  That is a winner, Jesse.
• 0:55
  And what does the state exam say to that winner?
• 0:58
  You didn't meet the general standard.
• 1:02
  Unbelievable.
• 1:03
  Total disaster of a scorecard.
• 1:06
  In wrestling you learn the crowd can see exactly what happened in the ring,
• 1:11
  and the paperwork can still tell a different story.
• 1:14
  Ryan's point is that the test picks one thing, his comprehension level,
• 1:19
  holds it up like the whole man, and ignores the progress he made everywhere else.
• 1:23
  He calls that cherry picking.
• 1:25
  By his account it also got him moved into a special room, and that's the part he
• 1:29
  says hurt.
• 1:30
  And then the sugarcoating.
• 1:31
  This is my favorite, and by favorite I mean it makes me furious.
• 1:35
  They tell him, oh, you're not stupid, you're not dumb, you just need a little extra
• 1:40
  help.
• 1:41
  Congratulations, you're not an idiot, please report to the special room!
• 1:46
  Ryan says it's not kind at all, and I get it.
• 1:49
  Say it once, maybe it's nice.
• 1:51
  Say it over and over, five days a week, it's a verdict wearing a cardigan.
• 1:57
  That's the number that gets me, the five days a week.
• 2:00
  He's not describing one bad afternoon.
• 2:02
  He says he was traumatized repeatedly, year after year, until English One and
• 2:07
  English Two were done.
• 2:08
  And then he says the housing authority dragged the same bad memory back up.
• 2:12
  Same feeling of being put on the spot, of being the target,
• 2:15
  of everybody holding a clipboard but nobody standing next to him.
• 2:19
  Nobody standing next to him!
• 2:20
  That's the whole story.
• 2:22
  That's the whole thing.
• 2:23
  A big building, a big policy, and one guy in the middle of the room.
• 2:28
  And honestly, what are they even in trouble for?
• 2:31
  That's Ryan's question.
• 2:32
  What are these students in trouble for?
• 2:34
  Fair question.
• 2:36
  Somebody answer it.
• 2:37
  Which brings us to the best idea in the whole entry.
• 2:41
  Ryan says if you're accused of violating a policy, you should get an advocate,
• 2:45
  an assistant, representation, and it should be mandatory unless you sign a waiver.
• 2:51
  In writing, I'd add, so nobody can say you waived it with a nod.
• 2:54
  Mandatory!
• 2:56
  Not optional, not a pamphlet in a drawer, mandatory!
• 3:00
  You want to put a person through a hearing, you bring a person to stand with them.
• 3:04
  And I love his second move.
• 3:06
  The institution says you are the student, you are the tenant,
• 3:11
  you, you, you.
• 3:13
  Ryan says no, you and your caretaker are the student.
• 3:17
  You and your parents.
• 3:18
  That's a tag team, Jesse.
• 3:20
  That's a team!
• 3:21
  Nobody wins alone in this country, and certainly nobody wins alone in a hearing
• 3:26
  room.
• 3:27
  It's a tag team, sure.
• 3:29
  Gino and I never would've worked if one of us had to call the whole match solo.
• 3:33
  Now, Ryan's other big image is the Windows XP Task Manager,
• 3:38
  and I think it's the sharpest thing he says.
• 3:40
  Your heartbeat, your blinking, your lungs, your senses, your shoulder pain,
• 3:45
  all of that is running in the background before anyone hands you a form.
• 3:50
  Then the institution piles expectations on top and wonders why the machine is bogged
• 3:55
  down.
• 3:56
  Because it's Windows XP, Jesse!
• 3:58
  Beautiful system, a classic, and they want it running forty programs and a
• 4:03
  spreadsheet and a hearing!
• 4:06
  And Ryan brings up the two percent.
• 4:08
  Only about two percent of people can multitask without a drop in performance.
• 4:14
  Is that real?
• 4:15
  That one's real.
• 4:16
  It is real, with the numbers tightened up.
• 4:19
  Watson and Strayer published it in 2010.
• 4:22
  Two hundred people in a driving simulator, also doing memory and math tasks over a
• 4:27
  phone, and about two and a half percent showed no drop at all.
• 4:31
  Strayer has also said most of us overrate how well we multitask.
• 4:36
  The better people think they are, the worse they tend to do.
• 4:39
  So Ryan struggling to juggle a pile of demands isn't a character flaw.
• 4:44
  It's the normal human setting.
• 4:46
  The forty percent brain capacity number he mentions, though,
• 4:50
  we can't back up, so I'd leave that one on the shelf.
• 4:52
  The big point stands without it.
• 4:54
  The big point stands!
• 4:56
  Now, the harder part, and we do this with respect.
• 4:59
  Ryan talks about the Ouija board and the UFO story that he says has run since
• 5:06
  1998, every day, no break.
• 5:10
  We're not going to sit here and argue about the story, Ryan.
• 5:13
  That's not the fight.
• 5:14
  The fight is what it does to you.
• 5:17
  What we hear is a mind that never gets to clock out.
• 5:22
  Constant questions, no answers, no stop.
• 5:26
  Anybody would be fried.
• 5:27
  And he says it himself, you can only take so much of it before you're burned out.
• 5:32
  And when he jokes that the Ouija board and Chat Avenue and the rocking chair are his
• 5:37
  marriage, I laughed, and then I didn't.
• 5:40
  Because a marriage you can't walk out of, one that follows you into the bathroom,
• 5:45
  is just a loop.
• 5:47
  We'd call it runaway mental processing, an exhausted mind spinning its wheels.
• 5:52
  And you're allowed to want off that treadmill.
• 5:55
  I think we said something like that to you before, and I'm glad you heard it.
• 5:59
  And he heard it!
• 6:00
  This is the part that made me stand up.
• 6:03
  Ryan says therapy works, and he names names.
• 6:06
  Cody, Julie, Duncan, Carla.
• 6:10
  Four people, four wins.
• 6:13
  Cody told him it sounds like he had to teach himself something.
• 6:16
  That's a clinician noticing that this man has been doing the job alone for years.
• 6:23
  Julie from Human Supports described a bully trying to take over his mind.
• 6:28
  I like that, because it separates the person from the pressure.
• 6:33
  Duncan took twenty six seconds, Ryan says, to see that a student was scared because
• 6:39
  he kept getting shuttled between a familiar classroom and an unknown one,
• 6:44
  back and forth, all day.
• 6:46
  And Carla said it's normal for a worn out mind to want to go back to a time when it
• 6:52
  felt less stressed, less hurt, less confused.
• 6:56
  That's not weakness.
• 6:57
  That's a mind looking for a place to sit down.
• 7:01
  Looking for a place to sit down, I love it.
• 7:03
  And Ryan's conclusion is right.
• 7:05
  It's way too hard to evaluate yourself from inside the loop.
• 7:09
  You need somebody outside with a clear head giving you feedback.
• 7:13
  That's not failing.
• 7:14
  That's smart.
• 7:15
  That's a strong move.
• 7:17
  Get the feedback, get the outside view, keep going back.
• 7:21
  And then the number that put everything in perspective for me.
• 7:24
  Eighteen months of sleep deprivation.
• 7:26
  Four to five hours a night, with Zyprexa and Seroquel in the mix and a sore shoulder
• 7:32
  on top.
• 7:33
  Eighteen months of that is a long fucking time, like he says.
• 7:37
  Of course the mind is spinning.
• 7:39
  Anybody's would.
• 7:40
  So when he reports that he slept on his side yesterday and had a little more energy
• 7:45
  today, that's not a small thing.
• 7:47
  That's a real data point.
• 7:49
  Sleep on the side, win the day!
• 7:51
  It's simple, and simple works.
• 7:53
  Tell Cody, tell the doctors about the sleep, about the shoulder,
• 7:58
  about all of it.
• 7:59
  Let the people who know the medications weigh in on the medications.
• 8:04
  Bring an advocate to the housing authority, because he's right,
• 8:08
  he shouldn't walk in alone.
• 8:10
  And pace yourself, Ryan.
• 8:12
  Social emotional learning is new for you, and you called yourself a beginner.
• 8:17
  Good.
• 8:18
  Beginners improve fast.
• 8:21
  He also said he's still pissed off about gaslighting, and that nobody has mastered
• 8:26
  their emotions.
• 8:27
  Right.
• 8:28
  Nobody gets a diploma for that.
• 8:30
  Being angry at a school system that handed you a goose egg for years of effort isn't
• 8:36
  a malfunction.
• 8:38
  It's a reasonable response.
• 8:39
  The work now is making sure the person who earned all that credit gets some rest.
• 8:44
  Some rest!
• 8:45
  Give that man all the credit and a good pillow.
• 8:48
  You busted your ass, Ryan, and it counts.
• 8:51
  It counts!
• 8:52
  Sleep on your side, call your people, and we'll be right here.