Early Morning Hustling

The Poverty Simulator: where your morals become questioned and everyone becomes a criminal so they don't get a little read card from the grocery store telling them their family is going to starve.

Before this madness started, Wanya came to review our bibliotherapy experience with us. With him we also filled out a sheet detailing who we are (ethnicity, nationality, sex, etc...) and how those details define us, how society defines us by those details, and how the people around us may see us because of them. One of the columns on the sheet was about how we think we benefit from those given things about ourselves... and it made me feel bad. A lot of the things I've taken for granted probably have benefited me in a lot of ways such as my race and religion and social economic class.

The Olson's, a proud and struggling family of four trying to make it without our incarcerated father!

Doing the poverty simulation right after filling out that form made me feel bad. Again, there's just so much I don't have to think about that I take for granted: groceries are always in the fridge, my dad has always had a good job with a consistent income and is present at home, my mom worked hard to make sure my sister and I stayed in school, I never had to care for a younger sibling... Its a lot. Aside from the imminent poverty and dropping out of school my twin, older brother and baby brother somehow managed to survive the month. I was pretty proud of the hustle we put on to do it. We didn't resort to stealing but I did see a guy buy a gun to rob people. I also took pride in the fact that I kept taking my baby brother (aka the stuffed bear) to day care, against the wishes of my two siblings ("We should sell him AND his social security for money"). At one point though my twin and I did try to distract the prison officer to steal from others but we were unsuccesfull in the end. I guess we weren't cut out for that life. But I was constantly frustrated over never not having enough money and as frustrating as the simulation was we still had fun doing it too.

Kaplan in the afternoon wasn't as exciting.

- Morning Drive-In Jam -

Gasoline - Halsey

Hold Up - Beyonce

Blue - Marina and the Diamonds

#MedExTierIII