Alex - ODYS - Blog 2

It was 3 hours to Indian River, and it was 3 hours back. It was a long day, mostly spent in the car, but a good 5 hours plus some at Indian River Correctional Facility.  This facility was different from Scioto. Everything but the school was housed in the same building. It was a maze of locked doors, and it was extremely confusing. Today we got split up shadowing different job positions at the facility. I got to shadow an occupational therapist. It was interesting, but the state can’t make the guys go to therapy, they have to decide whether or not they wanted to go, even if they were in need of it. I also got to meet and talk with a Speech Therapist; it was cool to see that my major could actually be used at a correctional facility. Something unique to Indian River is the fact that it has a mental health unit. They are the only facility that takes on youth with mental disabilities. It was a fascinating experience, and it was different from the girls we saw yesterday. I got to meet some pretty normal guys, but you could tell that they had a disability. I met one young guy who had schizophrenia that was pretty drugged up. It was sad, he could not tell the different monopoly properties apart. The occupational therapist told me that his IQ was not matching how he was acting; she was going to look into his medications. It was nice seeing someone take an interest in the youth. She did not have to spend time on the mental health units, she could easily spend her time with any of the other units, but she has a passion for mental health, and it was nice seeing someone watch out for the youth. There is an obvious distinction in the staff that we met. There were those who were passionate about their jobs, and those who just see it as a job. I am anticipating a change once we go to Circleville Correctional Facility. The day was peaceful at Indian River, but we kept hearing how crazy it was going to be, and it wasn’t. Now all we keep hearing about is how Circleville is the worst of the worst. Most of the group is pretty apprehensive, if not just a bit nervous for what we have in store. Each place is nowhere near what we expect, and there really is no way of knowing until we actually get there. Thankfully all of our traveling from here on out will be 5 minutes down the road. It was an interesting day and I wish we could have spent more time at the facilities; we seem to make friends as we go. There are just some people you interact with that you will always remember.