LO2: First physical Meeting with the Apex harmony lodge residents

LO 2 CHALLENGE 

Undertaken new challenges & developing new skills

This Monday, we had our first physical meeting with the Apex harmony lodge residents, previously we had done this meeting digitally.  The physical meeting was a challenge for me, especially because it has been 1 year since I have done service face to face.  In our activity, we talked and conversed with the residents of the lodge, and because it was our first time there, the supervisor didn’t get us to do any certain games with the residents and the focus was to get to know each other.

This was challenging because most of the residents were quite old and unfocused. The resident that I worked with was Mark, who was quite passive and unengaged in the beginning.  I approached this issue by trying to put in all my energy to make Mark engaged, using hand gestures, and speaking slowly while articulating clearly so he could follow.  Over time, I realized that it was not that he was unfocused, rather his illness made him that way, which he thoroughly explained to me.   A challenge that I could not overcome was getting Mark to be more specific about his memories with me, this was expected as he suffered from dementia.  This sometimes affected the quality of the conversations because I could not delve deeper into his certain hobbies because he would repeat what he said.

From this experience, a crucial skill I developed was being adaptive.  Because the conversation was very free-flow, there was a lot of room for me to improvise in the conversation.  Many times, the conversation about an experience, for example, a hobby like “Fishing” would lead to a dead-end, but I would improvise and either push Mark to talk even more or engage him by talking about my own experience with Fishing.

Ultimately, because of my ability to improve and adapt to the conversation, my discussion with the resident was very fruitful, and towards the end, I felt that there was genuine engagement.  The skill that I developed here will be important both at school and in the future, I can use it when I do presentations, or talk to a large audience.

Evidence: