* Exciting Opportunities for the Profession: As our nation steadily implements President Obama's landmark Affordable Care Act (ACA), visionary early career psychologists will appreciate the importance of positioning themselves within expanding and challenging niches. The FY'2013 HRSA budget highlights the Institute of Medicine report that there are three shortfalls in our current health care system: 1.) Health care needs of older adults will be difficult to meet by the current health care workforce. 2.) There will be severe shortages of geriatric specialists and other providers with geriatric skills. And, 3.) There will be increased demand for chronic care management skills. Thanks to the continuing efforts of APA's
It is affirming that support for psychology's programs has been expressly included in the HHS budget. HRSA also requested $10 million for the
** A Personal View: Having retired from the U.S. Senate staff after 38+ years, I have become particularly interested in the experiences and stories of senior colleagues who have embarked upon similar journeys or transitions. Many of us have never really thought about this next phase of our lives until the time, seemingly suddenly, arrives. Ellen Cole and Mary Gergen have recently editedRetiring But Not Shy: Feminist Psychologists Create Their Post-Careers, a moving compilation of the stories of pioneering feminist psychologists who, during their illustrative careers, have revolutionized the field, if not society. The timely thoughts of a long time friend and colleague,
Reflections On a (so far) Short Retirement: "I have found retirement to be a state with many experiences and challenges, some consciously expected, others vaguely familiar from different times in my life. So far I have experienced nothing that flatly surprised me, but I am not so sure that is necessarily a good thing. Like many other females of my age (a war baby), I helped care for my younger brothers earlier than I can remember and began paid work for neighbors as mother's helper when I was 10. Each year I expanded my scope of work and increased my hourly pay, finally running a baton lesson business the last three years of high school. By the time I entered college I had saved enough for spending money to accompany my scholarship and NDEA loan funds. When my savings were exhausted I secured several part time on-campus jobs using federal work-study allocations. Coming from a blue collar immigrant family background, and a girl besides, there was no possibility of financial support for college from my family. I did not consider this a problem, although I recognize that current high school graduates coming from families like mine are seldom able to attend or complete a baccalaureate degree because of financial constraints. Times were different then.
"The pace and nature of work continued throughout my life in the same way that it began in my youth – there were always jobs, I loved what I did, I enjoyed going to work, and I was one of those people who generally say 'yes' to requests. Typically, I juggled many projects, worked on time-lines of from 4 months to 6-8 years, and seldom was limited by borders, at least not consciously. One of the most difficult aspects of retirement is that I am seldom asked to do something for others, and I must create structure for myself. Since, for the most part, I defined my own work roles and tasks throughout my work life I have been surprised to find it quite challenging to define my retirement roles and tasks. Even writing 'roles and tasks' makes me wonder if I am missing something – do some people have pleasurable days and weeks without defined 'roles and tasks'?
"During weeks that I am working on professional tasks (research and writing projects mostly) I am happily busy and oblivious to feelings of 'drift' – that is, What to do next? Who cares about this? What did I do today? However, I really don't want to continue AS IF I am still at work. I do believe I need to develop more ways to live in the non-professional world. I have started this self-development project by doing some of the activities I have always loved, but which fell by the wayside over the years or simply timed-out (e.g., raising children).
"I am doing a lot more non-psychology reading. I finished a history of World War II, focusing most heavily on areas my father and uncles were involved in, and am now readingCarthage Must be Destroyed. I read some fiction (Saramago, Russo, Rushdie, and others), and am reading magazines and books about heritage plants that we might include in our garden this coming Spring and Summer. My mother died a year ago, and I have been slowly going through her possessions, hastily boxed up last Winter and Spring to empty her house for sale. This has been both difficult and, in some cases, quite surprising. I can only do it for a few days at a time before I must drift off to another project for awhile.
"It has occurred to me that my retirement has taken on a similar structure to my professional activity of many long years – blocks of time focused on a project, followed by another block of time on another project – but without the external impetuous of multiple ongoing projects each with their own deadlines. The difference is that now there are no natural deadlines to prompt me to shift from one project to another, hence a sense of drifting when I become aware of myself. I am now thinking I should enlist the help of others (my husband, my friends, my family) to create some regular place-keepers in my day and week (a group exercise class, a theatre night, etc.) to both improve my health (I am a natural couch potato) and inject some expected/planned social activities in what are becoming fairly solitary days. I am hoping that committing to participate with others in an activity will make it more likely that I will do it. When I was working my colleagues were always around, offering regular interaction with others and issuing many invitations to get involved; now I must find ways to do this myself.
"This last Fall I traveled to
"My family is large and very spread out, so connecting with them in my new mode will hopefully increase the attention we give to each other. I am now (January-March, 2012) in the midst of a 2 ½ month auto caravan with my husband to spend concentrated time with our 3 sons and their families (2 in
"A major thought project I am in the midst of is making sense of the drastic changes in the
"Now I see a nation that seems to be forsaking the majority of its citizens. I see an ever widening income gap between the extremely wealthy and the middle and working classes. I see massive de-investment in public education that still is responsible for the overwhelming majority of children and youth. I see basic health outcomes in communities I have worked in getting worse, while as a nation we spend more and more money to no good effect. I see basic freedoms that drew my grandparents to this nation – predominately our then secular civil state – being eroded to the point where religious beliefs of some are being forced upon all through the power of the law. All this makes me feel old, tired, and very sad. A lifetime of work that has apparently resulted in a nation with reduced opportunity and freedom for the majority of its citizens.
"On some days I am greatly depressed (with the accompanying sense of helplessness and hopelessness) that I am leaving a dysfunctional country to my grandchildren. This is my definition of failure, since family is at the center of my world. On better days I talk with like-minded folks in my small rural home town about how we can affect the coming state and national elections; how we can maintain and advance a health system that provides universal access; how we can support our local school as it struggles with an ever shrinking state-allocated budget and increasing student numbers; and how we can influence our tiny village council and county supervisors to seriously consider the environmental dangers of 'fracking' for gas that they approved several years ago without making clear to any of us the dangers of the method for our formerly pristine northern Lake Michigan shore side community. So, I am trying to use my energy to preserve a secular political system, good health care, schools for the future leaders of this nation, and a home that is not the twenty-first century equivalent of a garbage dump. I don't know if I have enough energy." Aloha,
