A Thank You

It has been a week since my last night as Enterprise Editor at The Independent Florida Alligator. And it has finally hit me that my time there and my time as a student at the University of Florida is ending.

I woke up at about 4:45 a.m. from a barely remembered dream of editing my reporters’ stories at the Alligator last week. And I then realized I’m probably not going to have the chance to do that again for a long time.

I’m not going to be calling my reporters at 10 or 11 at night to make sure they checked their facts. I’m not going to feel the temptation to bang my head against the wall when my writers didn’t file their stories fast enough or had holes in their articles.

I’m not going to feel the pride of editing a reporter’s well-written story or of knowing that the reporters put all their effort into their work.

I’m going to miss competing against a co-worker in a game of who can answer the office phones faster, which ended in a score of 12 to 7 in her favor. And I’m going to miss talking with her about what counts as good journalism when we should be working, instead.

I’m going to miss joking with the University editor about which of our classmates we hate more and worrying about whether we will be able to find jobs and internships.

The paper helped me grow. I wrote articles that I am proud to show off. I realized that this is what I want to do with my life and understand that the autism was not as much of an obstacle for me as I thought it would be. I learned to accept the sacrifices that come with the job, such as giving up a normal sleep cycle. And the ordeals of hunting for a story or stalking elusive sources became fun for me.

But, just as importantly, I learned that a paper is only as good as the people work to put it out, as my friend once told me. If it weren’t for the other editors and writers who put all their effort into making the paper successful, my time there would not have been anywhere as fulfilling.

And I wouldn't have been able to survive college if it weren't for the friends, both at the Alligator and at UF, who helped make life enjoyable.

Consider this my way of saying thank you to the friends who treated me like I was one of them.

This is a thank you to the friends who assured me my writing was good when I doubted myself. And it’s a thank you to the editors who yelled at me when it was not.

This is a thank you to the friends who invited me to parties and talked to me about their lives and helped me feel human.

No, this is not the end of my blog. I hope to maintain it while I search for a job in journalism. Hopefully, I will come back soon with good news.

The Invisible Wounds of War

As someone interested in international journalism, I was excited to find this article linked to on a favorite website. The story is about how citizens of Mogadishu, Somalia, are succumbing to mental illness as a result of civil strife that has wracked the country for more than16 years. It also brings up the broader issue of treatment of mental conditions in countries wracked by war.

This is the type of in-depth, humanizing story that we rarely see when reading about war, international affairs or disability. It’s neither over-exaggerated nor over-simplified. It’s a compelling mix of straight and feature reporting that ties into a larger issue. It also makes good use of a narrated photo slideshow.

Reporting on how residents of countries plagued by conflict develop mental health problems is interesting to me, especially since I want to be a foreign correspondent.

Reporters tend to get caught up in writing about the straight losses and victories of war. And the already marginalized members of society are forgotten in favor of the bigger picture.

This article paints a realistic picture of the “invisible wounds” created during war and the stereotypes of people with mental disorders in Somalia. It is especially relevant in light of news that Somalia is receiving less aid.

It’s the type of story David Finkel, who wrote the article I linked to in my previous post, is best known for. It’s also characteristic of articles by Ian Johnson, a former editor of The Independent Florida Alligator. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for a series about oppressed practitioners of Falun Gong in China.

These are the types of stories there should be more of. But they have to be told quickly or they will disappear.

Acceptance

I know I complain about my Asperger’s Syndrome often. But the truth is I wouldn’t choose to have the condition cured even if some miraculous medicine could make it disappear. My condition not only made me unique; it gave me a purpose.

Since childhood, I’ve felt compelled to seek out people who don’t blend into their surroundings or feel like they can’t fit in with the rest of the people in their community. The intense sense of isolation made me feel like I didn’t belong with my friends.

Even when I joined them in pretending to be Star Wars characters on the playground, I felt like they enjoyed being with each in a way I could not.

It made me seek out others who felt like me or were just different. And I found them in books about people who faced discrimination or who came from other countries.

I felt connected to characters in books like “Native Son,” the classic novel about a black man living in the segregated Chicago of the 1930s, and “When the Elephants Dance,” a novel about a family hiding from Japanese soldiers in the Philippines during the occupation of the country in World War II. I was inspired by the story of Nelson Mandela’s fight against apartheid in South Africa.

Though I had not faced the severe discrimination that confronted these people, I could at least empathize with their feelings of alienation.

These people felt more isolated and ostracized than I could ever imagine was and were, in most cases, fighting for the right to belong. I felt compelled to seek out people like these and learn more about them.

Journalism gave me the chance to do that. My autism made me sensitive to people who were fighting for the right to belong or be different. It helped me find stories and sources that other people might overlook.

As a student journalist, I’ve met and written about the man who led the college student movement to protest segregation in the civil rights era. I ate pizza with a Sudanese refugee and investigated the struggle to diversify the university’s faculty.

With every story I write about a subject like the ones above, I feel like I become more human. I’m forced to confront my fear of the unknown to find the people who make articles interesting.

And I hope that my stories help others understand what it’s like to be different or encourage them to care about something they might not normally think about. That’s the secret to the best articles. They make people care about something that might otherwise be alien to them.

Not Alone

Since I started this blog, I've been researching ways people with autism and their advocates use the internet to communicate. As someone who knows how empowering it can be to find a medium that allows you to communicate, I'm comforted that sites like Youtube and Blogger have provided autistic people with a forum where they can interact with others on their own terms.

The following video was made by Amanda Baggs, an autistic woman and self-advocate. The first part shows how she communicates, and the second part explains her behavior.



I think videos like Baggs' can get people talking about a condition that has largely been misunderstood. With the rise in autism diagnoses, it's becoming more and more important to have better conversations about the subject.

Resources for parents and other family members of people with autism are growing. A blogging community has popped up to help the people affected by autism. For parents who struggle with the stress of raising an autistic child, blogs like Autism Vox, which is maintained by the mother of an autistic child, are a valuable resource.

Of Palm Baskets and Legacies

We're going to take a break from the drama and temporarily return to the more relaxing environment of Andros.

To broaden our article, Jeremiah and I sought out the basket weavers of Red Bays. Using primarily Silver Top Palm and cloth made at the island's Androsia batik factory, the weavers sew elaborate baskets and hangings. The pictures in this post were shot by Jeremiah Wilson.

Here, a steady rhythm builds as Peggy Colebrooke weaves her bread and butter. You can almost count how many times it takes to unite each piece of silver top palm with those already woven into the bottom of a basket-in-progress. A soft "thtumph!" sound, which echoes the twang made when pulling a taut rubber band, eases into the air as she slides the needle strung with the palm piece into a coil of leaves started that day.

By the time she has woven a dirty-yellow palm piece into the coil 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 times, it will have almost melted into design. The basket will join many others woven by Colebrooke, her aunt, Vangie, and others in the settlement as they wait for passing customers. Some baskets sit on a table outside Vangie's house, others hang from the porch ceiling and wooden supports.

Like many of the other artists in the settlement, Colebrooke will sometimes have to wait for weeks for the scarce customer to purchase her goods. When we were there, she hadn't sold a basket in two weeks.

A woven basket that stands almost as tall as a man's waist sits unbought in the corner of William "Scrap Iron" Colebrooke's navy blue house. Colebrooke is famous for weaving baskets so large that person can fit in them. But nobody has bought one of his pieces for at least six months. He says a man who commissioned the basket agreed to pay $800 for it, but he never coame to pick it up. Colebrooke says people complain that his baskets are too large to carry on the small charter planes most visitors use. He said he has stopped weaving. He feeds himself by hunting iguana and other animals. Along with woodcarver Henry Wallace, Scrap Iron has taught weaving at the The Maritime Arts and Inspiration Center founded by Peter Davidson, a guide on our trip.

Both Peggy and Scrap Iron were taught by Omelia Marshall, the mother of the basket weaving. An inoperable goiter hangs from her neck like a fleshy melon. The almost 90-year-old sits in her black house and weaves the art that made her famous. A woven hat decorated with a plastic gold tiara sits atop her head. She is the community of Red Bays personified; old, clever and strong.

I'm going to return to my normal blogging topics after this post. But I'll probably continue to post photos once in a while. On that subject: Here is a picture of the man behind the camera, Jeremiah Wilson. I call it "Tired."

Come So Far, and Yet.....

While we wait for more FlyIns photos, I thought I’d dig deep into how the trip affected me on a personal level.

The past few weeks have made me realize how far I’ve come in dealing with my autism and how far I still have to go.

On Andros, I pushed myself further than I’ve ever gone. I spent almost a week with sources and pestered and hounded them, like a journalist should. I convinced sources to give me meaningful answers during interviews and came back to the States with what could be a meaty story, instead of a shallow one. I walked right into the homes of sources without really being invited, which would have been far more daunting to me a couple years ago. I talked to sources about watching their children take their last breaths on the island and how they put their art on hold to pay the bills.

I joked with other students on the trip and played ping-pong with them in my spare time, even though it was my inclination to stay quiet and just fade into the background.

As Enterprise editor at the Alligator, I’ve learnt how to manage my writers and help bring them to their full potential. I’ve eaten Krishna lunch with my fellow editors and learnt how to relax with them after work.

But here’s the catch: I still don’t really feel connected to anyone. I hoped that would change when I was forced to spend a week with the same people while on FlyIns or when I got to know my coworkers better at the Alligator. But that human bond I was hoping to find just isn’t there. And that’s frustrating.

When I went to a birthday party partially planned for me a couple weeks ago, I was unable to remove my self from the wall of the host’s apartment and join the other guests as they started dancing. I wanted to. I just couldn’t.

When I was invited to a party on the beach on Andros, I declined the offer and told the students, half-jokingly, “I don’t like people!” At a party at a bar on one of the last nights there, I declined some students’ offer to buy me a drink for reasons I still don’t understand. I sat on the railing of the patio of the bar for the rest of the night and just watched everyone inside dance. Half of me wanted to go inside and party. The other half didn’t see any reason to. A friend of mine told me it’s because I took the trip more seriously than the other participants. She meant that as a compliment. But I don’t think it’s that simple.

From what I’ve read by other college students and adults with Asperger’s, it’s not uncommon to feel this way. But it’s still frustrating to know you’ve done so much to break out of the autistic bubble only to realize you haven’t come close to popping it

I don’t want to be like the people who wrote those essays. My Asperger’s might make me different, but I won’t let it define me and beat me. It all comes down to attitude.

I’ve resolved to find a way to combat the autism and work on socializing with people on a deeper level or larger scale, even if it’s just dancing at a party, before I graduate. Working harder at it hasn’t worked. So I’ll have to work smarter. I just have to figure out how to do so.

Alex Went to the Bahamas and All He Brought Back Were These Damn Pictures

I'm going to go a little off-topic with this post to show you some of the pictures and tell you a little about my trip to the Bahamas.

When we left for Andros Island, sometimes known as "The Sleeping Giant," with the Florida FlyIns class, me and UF photojournalism student Jeremiah Wilson, who took all the photos in this post, we planned to focus on a story about famous woodcarver Henry Wallace , pictured above. But when we arrived in the isolated community of Red Bays on the northwest coast of the island, we decided to broaden the story to encompass the lives of several artists who live in the little community. This is a sampling of the people we met and traveled with.

On September 29, the class left the U.S. in a small, Lynx Air International
dual-propeller plane. Here's a picture of some of the students preparing for the flight. (Left to right: Front row, Marvin Halelamien and Jessica McHugh. Second row, Kristin Nichols and Tracy Cassagnol. Third row, Jessica Fisch and Dominick Tao. )
This was the lowest-flying plane I've ever ridden. The clouds outside looked like a field of icebergs surrounding us.


The picture to the right is of Tim Hussin, one of the photojournalism students on the trip, on the beach at Forfar Field Station, where we stayed for the week. This where we ate, planned our articles and stumbled home to when we came back from a night of drinking at Sheila's, a nearby bar.

Henry Wallace gives birth to a woman of wood. The carving’s red flesh is uneven and broken by sharp ridges rising from the fine grain of her belly. Her wooden nose is a nub protruding beneath two shallow eye sockets. Her mouth is a rounded rectangle. Her breasts are mismatched, one sharper than the other.

The carving started as a piece of dead mahogany tree that Wallace, whose art has been displayed internationally, found three to four miles from the isolated community of Red Bays, on the northwest coast of Andros Island. On his shoulder, a dark oval marks where the tree scraped against him as he navigated treacherous rocks and holes on the walk home about a week earlier.

In a few days, the carving is coming to life. The Rasta woodcarver only works with dead wood. He has chipped away at her nose until it has shrunk into a delicate bridge with shallow nostrils. A smile parts her full lips. Oval eyes without pupils have formed in the once empty sockets. Once-flat fruit sitting atop a plate on her head have gained definition and become three-dimensional. Her breasts are round, and her skin has been sanded smoother

Wallace, who has been carving professionally for 39 years, said he will receive $2,500 for the finished statue from a fellow Bahamian artist in Nassau. The statue is a gift for the art lover's sister, who lives in Gainesville. Wallace works six days a week and rests and meditates on Saturday, the Rastafarian Sabbath. He makes money from big commissions and smaller carvings, such as wooden bonefish, sold to passing visitors.

Art has to take a backseat sometimes for Wilton Russell. The musician divides his time between woodcarving, crabbing and performing odd jobs to pay the bills. The 51-year-old, who has a reputation for telling stories, took Jeremiah and me out to one of the crabbing sites. It's a patch of swash, saltwater marsh, near Old Red Bays, where the Black Seminoles who settled the present-day Red Bays lived before a hurricane struck the settlement. Russell talks to the crabs as he pulls off their legs. He apologizes to them and throws their still-living bodies into a cloth sack. He says he does this because he knows what it's like to struggle. Russell wants to leave the island and pursue his art. He, Wallace and Otis Marshall, who plays the electronic keyboard , played "rake and scrape" music for the class on one of our last nights on the island. On the island, Russell is called the Suicide Bomber (Musical Suicide!, he clarifies) and Rubber, short for Rubber Man, for his Junkanoo dancing.

That's all for now. I'll be back soon with pictures of weavers and how my FlyIns experience affected me.

The Island is Waiting

As someone who has wanted to experience the thrill of international journalism since I was in high school, I was excited to join the Florida FlyIns program at the UF College of Journalism and Communications.

But as the day we fly to Andros Island in the Bahamas approaches, my excitement is mixing with anxiety.

It's not because I'm afraid I will be mangled by a monster that prowls the jungle of a mysterious island in one of my favorite TV shows, Lost. Nor am I afraid of Andros' own version of the Loch Ness Monster, the Lusca.

What frightens me is the prospect that I will have to spend almost a week with a source and really delve into their humanity. I've never had to build and sustain a human connection with a source as long as I will for this trip. I grew familiar with many of the contacts I made as Multicultural reporter at the Alligator, but I never spent days following them around.

My best stories are complex and driven by strong characters, but I usually have many different sources and can choose which will provide the most powerful story for the article. But the island's population is so small and spread out, it will be difficult to do that again.

I like making an article have emotional depth, but, as a person with autism, it's hard to bond on that level or even stay in a source's presence for more than an hour.

But this story is different. I won't say what the story is, but it's much softer than what I'm used to writing. Prof. Mike Foley, who teaches reporting and other classes at the college, calls it an "extra credit story" that some people might not care about. I'm going to have to show the source's humanity by getting every little detail and exploring every niche of his personality to make people read the story.

And that terrifies me.

But then I realize that all those challenges are part of the art of the storytelling. And the task then don't seem as stressful. It turns into something more fun.

This blog will probably be on vacation until I get back to the United States. Have fun, everyone.

Look me in the eyes

Interviewing can be awkward for many journalists. It's downright frightening for someone who is autistic.

If you're calling a source over the phone, you half-heartedly hope he or she won't pick up so you don't have to stutter your name and the reason you're calling. When you're about to interview someone in person and notice him or her waiting for you, you creep toward the nearest wall and feel like you need to escape the area before you're noticed.

You can feel a source's eyes on you as you stare at your notes. You watch the source smile as you fumble to ask questions and feel like you're being an inconvenience.

When I first started covering stories as a stringer for The Independent Florida Alligator at the University of Florida, I would do anything possible to avoid speaking to sources, even though I needed and wanted to. I would sit at the back of the room during events I was reporting on so I could blend in with the audience and be unobtrusive.

I would resist asking sources how much an event cost because it seemed rude and embarassing. And the last thing a person with autism wants is to appear rude or stupid.

But I later learned that you have to give up all your preconceptions to tell someone's story right. After being reprimanded by the managing editor of the Alligator at the time, I realized that an article I wrote on an annual conference for Asian Americans resembled little more than a press release. I had failed to ask tough questions because I was afraid of invading their privacy.

I stuck to "safe" questions like why they had come to the conference and how thy hoped to benefit from it. I only conducted five-to-10 minute interviews.

The next semester, I knew I had to better. After teenagers were accused of killing a homeless man and seriously injuring two others in separate attacks in South Florida in early 2006, I decided to write an article about whether Gainesville's homeless had ever been attacked by college students or younger people.

I knew I had to talk to homeless living on the street to get a full story, but failed to work up the nerve on my first trips. As my self-appointed deadline approached, I realized I couldn't put the interviews off anymore and started a conversation with a couple homeless men sitting at the intersection of Southwest 13th Street and West University Avenue.

After I got past the awkward introductions, the interviews were surprisingly easy. And I realized the anxiety I felt before an interview almost disappeared when I just bucked up and did my job. The article also helped me realize how much I enjoyed in-depth reporting.

I'm writing this to prove that if I could face my fears of asking tough questions, almost anyone can. You just have to take a deep breath, meet a source's gaze and jump into the conversation.

Wow. This is another long and heavy post. I promise I'm going to work a more fun one in here later.

Meet Hans and the autistic bubble- The BBI Post (That's Boring But Important information for you non-journalism majors)

Before we go on, I thought I should give more information on the information on the condition that helped shape my personality.

Asperger's Syndrome was first diagnosed in the 1940s by Hans Asperger, an Austrian pediatrician who referred to children with the disorder as"little professors." And with their formal way of speaking and social awkwardness, the description couldn't be more appropriate.
Asperger's findings did not attract attention in the U.S. until the 1990s, which means many patients tended to be misdiagnosed with more severe disorders.

Symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome can include an inability to appropriately use and understand nonverbal communication, a failure to socially and emotionally bond with others and a reluctance to socialize.

The disorder is included in the autistic spectrum and can develop to varying degrees of severity.

Everyone has different symptoms. It took me until high school to learn how to properly maintain eye contact with others, but I usually didn't have a problem with comprehending what I read like others might.

I compare having Asperger's to being trapped in a mobile plastic bubble. You can have fun partying or talking with your friends, but you often feel like there's a transparent barrier separating you from the people you care about. You never truly feel like one of them. And you don't really know how you or anyone else can break that barrier.

Sometimes you just stop trying to break the bubble and resign yourself to retreating into a fantasy world of books and video games, like I used to do. But if you're persistent or can find someone who can help you, you can find the barrier's weak point and break out of the bubble.

Journalism was the way I felt I could pop the bubble. And it seems like the mainstream and informal media's potential to help people communicate is attractive to others with the condition, as well as their supporters. While writing this post, I've found two interesting Youtube videos. One was produced by a teenager with Asperger's.

The other is made by the father of an autistic boy.

Hope you enjoy them. I'm going to make the next post more fun and lighter since I'm realizing this is pretty heavy.

Blogging at last

Journalism should be my last choice for a career. As a college student with high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome, a disorder on the autistic spectrum, conversation is awkward at the best of times and terrifying at the worst of times. The very thought of interviewing someone should force me to drop from my seat and curl into a fetal position.

But the intrigue and excitement of journalism lured me into choosing it as a profession and way of life. And it changed me from a scared student into someone with the confidence to write compelling stories. Forcing myself to talk to people and form human connections with my sources helped me learn to socialize with other students and gave me courage.

I think blogging will help me communicate what it's like for an autistic person to deal with the same issues other reporters, such as convincing reluctant sources to talk, asking hard questions, ethical issues and so on. It's also a way to discuss how I cope with college life differently from other college students.

One caveat: If this blog stops being fun and starts being mopey and too focused on how awesome I am, you readers -all two of you- have to let me know so we can make it enjoyable again. All right. Hope you have fun reading this blog.