I GIVE UP!!!!!

[image description: woman sitting in front of a computer about to tear her hair out]

I have to do this assignment for Senior Seminar in Family Studies based around one of the family life education content areas. I was assigned family life and public policy and am trying to design a research paper and 75 minute presentation around what I decided to term Nothing About Us Without Us: How to Empower Your Clientele. I am shaping the whole presentation around Bob Kafka's Pitchfork Approach to Social Change. [see picture left. It's a hand, but same deal]

It could turn out really cool. But could and trying are the words of the day. I could scream right now if I wasn't right in the middle of the library. There's just this one big hitch--this 8-10pg research paper that has to go with it. We have to have 4 articles from peer reviewed journal articles that support our topic of choice. Fine. Not a problem. What is a problem is that they have to be actual research studies done on our topic. Not literature reviews, not conference papers, and certainly not newspaper articles/ADAPT press releases. Well let me correct myself a bit. We can have those things included as long as they're secondary to the damn research articles that I can't find. I've sat here for 3hrs searching databases. I can find things that have been published in peer reviewed scholarly journals but not research studies.

My professor did find me an article that has to do with Olmstead. It was written by some very cool people. Carol Gill from University of Illinois at Chicago and Diane Coleman of Not Dead Yet, among others. Someone from Access Living is even listed as an author. Anyone from Chicago is A OK in my book. Chicago seems to be the Mecca of disability rights. The problem, I gave up with the community organizing thing and went to Olmstead instead and couldn't find anything else to use either. I can't go off of the reference list from the article I have because most of their articles are Chicago Tribune articles. Can't use those...

I could do a really cool awesome fantastical presentation if only I could FIND SOMETHING!!!!! So I give up. I surrender. I am officially done for the day.

On another note a bill addressing disability awareness in educational settings (all public elementary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions) has been introduced into the Maryland legislature. The Maryland Disability Law Center has decided to support it of course and I have personally been asked to be the lead point person on all efforts surrounding this bill, even though I don't work for them. Stressful, but AWESOME!