Coming into gerontology, to be honest, I wasn’t too excited. Growing up you hear about how awful it is to get older and it made me decided early on that older adults aren’t the population I wanted to be working with. I didn’t really have a big change in heart regarding this population until we had our two guest speakers come to class and talk with us. That day was a major turning point for me and made me more open to work with older populations. It also made me reflect on how I react, behave, and interact with older adults. They gave me the insight I needed to change my views and to not look at older individuals as weak or fragile. 

After that once class, on my drive home, I reflected on how I thought of my grandparents. It made me realize how much more capable they were than I thought. I was always so quick to open something or grab something off the floor for them because I thought I was helping them. Little did I know I was actually hurting them by not allowing their body to move in such a way.  Since then, I’ve allowed the older adults to attempt first, then ask for help. Rather than assuming they need my help.

Another major turning point for me was the LifeBook project. I was fortunate enough to interview one of my grandmothers. A year ago, my other grandmother passed and after her passing I realized how little I knew about her outside of her being a mother and memere. The LifeBook gave me an opportunity to learn things about my gram that I didn’t know or even know how to ask. I was grateful for the opportunity to learn more about my grandmother because without this project, both her and I, probably would have never found the time to sit down and talk the way we did during that interview. Even though it was my grandmother, I felt I was learning just as many new things about her as my partner. The project gave me tools to help better work with the populations of older adults.