Today was my orientation for Graduate school. As my information states, I had applied to graduate school in social welfare about the same time that I started this blog and luckily I got in at a local school! I am so excited about the prospect of starting my graduate education and a future job in the social welfare field. A major goal of social welfare as well as my program is to work on an individuals self awareness, assertiveness and self empowerment and today I took the opportunity to practice that myself. The orientation today was from 830am-4pm and I packed food to bring with me assuming lunch would not be served and knowing that the only option at the hospital cafe would be a small GF Noodle item or salad bar (courtesy of my Nutritionist). Today I packed Luna bars, yogurt, rice, a corn tortilla pizza and a bag of Trader Joe’s ‘fruit leather ends a pieces’ (ps: it’s good to see a company that doesn’t waste the cast off parts of their products.) I am going to have to get used to no fridge on my class days (7 hours of class straight) and will need to work on my non-spoiling food choices, more on that later I’m sure. definitely
When lunch came around it turned out that the Student Government had sponsored lunch for us first years. I was going to opt to eat my food and keep my mouth shut rather than chance their options, however after being inspired by the reminder to ‘be your own change’ over the past 5 hours and noticing that lunch consisted only of sandwiches, wraps and chips I decided to speak my mind. I approached a student government official and asked if there were any gluten free options. He looked rather confused so I had to explain further and received a heart felt apology that no there were no options such as that other than the chips. After taking a few bags of chips I was approached by the President of the Student Government who out of no where apologized and offered to purchase me something from upstairs. I thanked her and let her know that I had assumed my options would be limited and had brought my own food. She asked for more details about the disease and pleasantly surprised me by thanking me for approaching someone rather than staying silent. She said that this was the first year they had ever done lunch at orientation and while they did consider the needs of vegetarian students they had not thought about those with other food restrictions. She also let me know that they will definitely do so in the future and she was happy to know about such restrictions, a very positive remark!
It was nice to get such a positive response from speaking my mind and disappointment. By doing so I also may have helped any Celiacs that follow in my foot steps, which is a great feeling, and made myself feel useful and assertive! Maybe next I’ll tackle the hospital cafe and press for more GF options, what hospital couldn’t improve it’s cafe by including more of those! I mean come on, it’s a hospital!
Until next time remember this: Act on what you think and fight for social change, even if it’s a small step for Celiac Awareness or anything what so ever!