Education and Corruption

Jeffrey Wang
Lei Lani Michel
LSU English 1001-109 interview
10/15/07
As I drive toward the destination to fulfill the appointment, the home of my father’s friend, I can not help to feel excited about what’s going to happen, since it will be the first time that I actually get to ask and understand his contributions on his occupation and his views on Louisiana. But then, I still have to focus on the road rather than starring into the empty space and crash into the trees or mail boxes on the side.
After several times of passing by his house not knowing it and turning around and around trying to find it, I finally realized it is on the other side. And so I drive into his parking lot, feeling a bit embarrassed, since I know that they probably saw me passing by a few times. The man opens the door and welcomed me warmly with a smile, as they do not see me as often now as before the summer, when my father or my mother was here with me. I am considered as a rare guest, I guess, since I do not get around much to their gathering of friends and families.
I entered two wooden doors, one after another: one with the color of vermillion with four covered windows, another with milky white, both simply crafted. Then, I am inside their dining room, which I remembered as the main chatting place of his house, rather than the living room. The room has a white ceiling – much like that of the door, with the kitchen by the side, which have sinks, wooden drawers, a refrigerator, an oven, stoves, microwaves… etc, like one that a middle income family would have in their kitchen. The Dining room consists of not much, but a wooden table and chairs, an unused lamp, a fan, and a large window that can be seen through to watch if anyone is entering the parking lot. And it can also see a little part of the children’s playing room and a part of the living room, since these rooms are not isolated by doors.
It was planned that after this, his family and I would have lunch together, since they insisted. After some chats about what is going on recently, and the many worries of my parents about my brother and me, we were ready for the interview. Like I expected, we would have the conversation over the dining room table. He cleared off the table and sited on a chair in a pretty relaxed position as he probably has plenty of experience regarding interviews and is ready at any place, any moment.
“What do you do in your job?” A simple question starts the conversation. “I am a research person in an industry focused on health care.” He then explains how his industry has six main branches, and he being in the part of Home Health. “The six branches consist of Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech Aid Therapy, Nursing, Medical Social Worker, and Home Health.” Since I do not know what Occupational Therapy, Medical Social Worker, and home health do, I raised my curiosity and asked him to tell more about them. He then explains with the hand motions – both hands waving in the air having almost the same motion as another like mirror image of one another. I remembered that I have read something about hand motions during talks a couple years ago, that they help the speaker to think. “Occupational Therapy helps people to get occupational trainings and let them get a satisfying job, so they can get a healthy life.” And then he talks on. It reminds me how whenever I try to ask a question, he still continue on to speak. As if he doesn’t want me to ask about the details on most of the topics. “Medical Social Worker is mostly for family consulting, either psychological or social.” Then he started to organize his thoughts to speak. “The most important mission of home health is to bring care into the patients’ house.” “They would come from the base to the customer on certain times with the medicines and tools needed to take care of the customer,” with his hand with the claw shape and fingers pointing towards table, the home health people, moving up from one place to his other hand, the customer. He uses this motion a lot when he talks about two subjects that are related. “It is important to know what the customer wants and what the hospital provides.” “So we can give them what the hospitals would provide and the business would not be snatched away.”
And after the understanding on what his job is about on the surface, I changed the topic so I can keep asking questions. “How has Katrina affected the business of your industry?” “Not much,” he said. “Since our branches are spread all over the state, the damage is minimal when compared with other industries.” With the confidence in his mind that the new job he got. He was a teacher with a PhD in Human Resource at Louisiana State University, and has taught for a long time. But then recently he found a better paying job at the industry he is in now. What he does mainly in Home Health is research – outcome management, market analysis and financial projection. And he jokes: “I’m not attending my proper duties.” Since his knowledge in human resource does not have much to do with his job. He explains that outcome management is making certain decisions based on financial projection – the financial history in the past. By making the optimal decision or as they thought it would be, they can expect a rise in the business.
Then we talked about education, and how corruption has caused our state’s educational quality to stagger. He suggested that since the state does not change its budget to fund the educational system more money, the teachers do not get more pay, which cause an overall drop on the rank in the nation by its standards. And he talks about how the Texas’s educational quality is a lot better than Louisiana, even though one of its main money maker, oil, is making it the money that is comparable our state. That Louisiana should be richer than what it seems now overall, but it is not. He argued that the fourteen families who control the oil production are corrupted, and that they stole a lot of money from it, saying they are main cause behind the corruption. He said that the only way he can think of to improve the educational quality of the state is to raise the teacher’s pay higher, so it can attract more people with good values to teach.
Then we ate lunch together after this interview, it was quite hard to try to stay on topic when one does not want to talk about it.