Robot and Heroes

Sometimes I think I'm just a robot in my professional life.
Write code. Crunch numbers. Analyze data. Think about survey methodolgy. Get down with statistical theory. Stare at computer until I have a headache. The most exciting it gets sometimes is when I get to go to the mainland for math camp (i.e. next week in Chicago).

That's just when I separate myself from the reason I'm doing what I'm doing, I guess. I calculate confidence intervals and p-values without remembering why I'm doing it.

Maybe it's necessary to detach, or I'd spend every day like I did yesterday: staring at a grant application, trying to not to cry in my office. The National Institute of Justice has an RFP for research aimed at better understanding health behaviors amongst children exposed to violence. So I'm applying for this grant with some colleagues, and in the course of doing the research for the application, I came across this great measurement tool to assess lethality and duration of violence that kids experience in the home.

Yeah, blah, blah. It's a quantitative scale, that I'll get data from that I can plug into my fancy statistical programming software, that will then spit out results and I'll publish a paper. I mean, that's how I usually conceptualize my work.

But yesterday, it was different. Yesterday, I felt like I'd been hit in the stomach with a twenty-pound bag of rice. Thud! "Ah, I can't breathe."

I mean, what the fuck is wrong with us - as a society - that academics and researchers have to ask kids things like "How often has your mom's partner threatened to use a knife, gun, or other object to hurt her?" Or how about this one "How often has someone in your family forced you to have sex?". Seriously, what have we become? It kills me to think that a grant I'm applying for will ultimately turn out to have some kid sitting with a counselor answering "Almost always". But we have to do this work. We have to. Because if we don't then the chance of us ever not needing to ask these questions is very low.

I just have to become a robot though, or else I'd probably have my head on my desk, my eyes full of tears, everyday. And I'm five steps removed of working directly with these kids...what about the counselors?! These people never get any of the credit, but they're the real heroes.