OPUS.

Yesterday I went to what very well might be my last OPUS. For those of you scratching your heads and wondering what I'm talking about, I shall tell you. OPUS is Trinity's celebration of scholarship that takes place once every spring. This is the time for students to present anything they've been working on during the semester, whether it's research, a work of art, a poem...you get the idea. Students submit their work and compete for prizes. Many interim groups will also give presentations on what they did in January. Afternoon classes are cancelled and night classes are pushed back to seven, so everybody's free (except those of us who work). We get tickets to enter in a drawing for presenting or going to presentations, and the prizes include everything from free parking permits to a $500 tuition remission. It's cool stuff. Kinda like a big party centered around school.


This year I actually presented for the first time. I've been doing some independent research this semester for the honors program. I got to choose any topic I wanted as long as it had to do with my major, and I decided on social work with suicide survivors. Meaning, people who have lost a close loved one to suicide. This is a very personal topic for me, because I am a suicide survivor multiple times over. My first experience of death when I was six years old was the suicide of my grandfather, and my parents told my brother and I the truth about how he died. It's a lot for a six year old brain to handle, and unfortunately suicide has remained in my life since. I could say a whole lot more about what that experience has been like for me, but this is the Internet and that's besides the point of this post. Anyway, I've been working hard on this research for months, and according to the honors program I must present it. So I did.

Never in a million years would I have anticipated the number of people who came to hear me speak. The room was standing room only--people were standing along the walls, sitting in the aisle...It was crazy. I knew some people would come because we're friends (or friendly), but I didn't know many people in the audience. Hardly anyone came from social work. I was blown away and humbled by their interest in such a tough topic. At the beginning of my presentation, I self-disclosed a bit and said that I was one of the people I was about to talk about. The reactions I got were interesting--I saw several eyebrows go up. It's a scary thing to admit something so personal to so many people in the community where you live and study, but I'm glad I did. For the first time, I felt like I got to stand up and reveal a tiny piece of my story while trying to improve the world and how we relate to each other as Christians. 


Later that afternoon, I had a couple strangers thank me for my presentation while I was at work. To my shock, I was voted the best presentation out of psychology, social work, sociology...I forget what else. But wow. I was nervous about speaking on such a tough subject and revealing my personal experience with it, and wasn't sure if I would be well received. But I was. Again, so humbled by how supportive my peers were and so grateful for their willingness to show that they care by at least sitting through my speech. Little did they know, they were a part of a tremendous healing experience for me. We truly are wounded healers in social work, and when we get to use our pain to create change...that's truly something.