In the weekly virtual conversations involving a group of UC Irvine students and people who are members of local senior centers, no technology gap or generational divide gets in the way of discussing some key, pandemic-influenced topics — gratitude, self-care, positivity, patience, healthy relationships.
There’s no gender gap either — the participants, students and seniors alike, are all women. (That’s not by design; men in both age groups have a standing invitation to join in.)
And while it’s only small groups of seniors, only from the Costa Mesa and Lake Forest centers, the “Caring Convos” sessions on Zoom have turned out to be more rewarding than any of them had expected.
Joy Faigen, who lives in Newport Beach but has been involved with the Costa Mesa Senior Center since about 2015, logged into the virtual sessions when they started in October. Since then, she’s recruited others to join.
“When other seniors share, it’s like, golden,” she said. “Even on a Zoom format.”
Genuine connections in the space of about 60 minutes are being made — both inter-generational and within peer groups.
“We just set aside this time where we can learn from each other,” said Karishma Muthukumar, 20, who is in her third year as a cognitive science major at UCI. She laid the groundwork for the student-run program called The Patient Project that hosts the virtual gatherings.
For every meet-up there’s a theme and structure — usually reflective exercises, such as studying a photograph or considering a question that relates to the topic at hand. The students, most of whom are interested in medical careers, are gaining personal and professional insights that they say will serve them some day in their chosen professions.
But the bigger goal is to build community.
For some of the senior citizens, Muthukumar said, those Zoom sessions might be the only item on that day’s calendar.
“If that’s the case, we want to bring everything we can … unpack all these emotions.”
Switching gears
Patient Project began as an initiative to send student volunteers into hospital waiting rooms to sit and talk with people to help ease their anxieties, and, in the case of children, bring games and other activities. But the coronavirus closed off access to hospitals.
Students, no longer able to remain on campus in their dorms and apartments, returned home. Muthukumar, who lives in Cerritos, and a dozen undergrads who remained involved in Patient Project, looked for different ways to promote what she calls “compassion in action.”
Last summer, that meant some younger generation self-care.
Patient Project published a journal called “Patience and Pandemic” for UCI students. They asked students who were unable to physically attend classes or continue other in-person activities to express their thoughts and feelings on the pandemic in poetry, prose, artwork and photography. The journal is now available on Amazon.
Shortly after the student journal was published, the Patient Project group reached out to senior centers.
Giselle Garcia, a first-year bio-science student from Ontario who contributed a painting to the publication, hopes to be a doctor someday. When she heard about the Zoom chats with older people, she could see the benefit.
Garcia said she’s learning from the older people in the group sessions, about how they cope and handle their emotional well being, and about experiences that might help her someday.
“When the seniors talk, they often bring up situations that I haven’t been through yet.”
Most instructive to her: How to really listen to other people and respond accordingly.
“We have to listen to what the seniors are saying and give meaningful responses,” she sad. “Sometimes, you have to think a little bit.”
Give and take
The Clubhouse, as the new senior center in Lake Forest is known, had been open three months before COVID-19 shut down operations. Like many of the seniors she works with, Courtney Wysocki, the center’s senior recreation supervisor, had never used Zoom before the pandemic.
There was a learning curve — even for Wysocki, who is 33. But she’s put the conversations and other activities on Zoom and, once people got the hang of it the transition was smooth. “As long as I provide them the link, they’re good to go,” Wysocki said.
Some virtual classes and activities are as small as four people, which is the case with Patient Project. But the intimacy of the group makes it easier to open up, said Wysocki, who sits in on the sessions with the seniors, who range in age from 60 to 73.
“It’s given them an opportunity to tell us more about their life when, maybe, they’re not given that opportunity in other situations,” she said.
The five or so others who join the Costa Mesa Zoom sessions that Faigen attends are people she knew from a greeting card class she once taught. But, with the exception of close friend Patty Royce, who now teaches that craft class, Faigen only knew bits and pieces about them.
Faigen was the only one among the seniors at the center who had signed up for the Zoom session to actually attend the first meeting.
“It was just magical to me, what they had,” she said. “I said we have to get more people in here.”
Faigen, 57, lives with her husband. She said they’ve had socially-distanced backyard visits with their grown children. And, while she’s not alone, she found herself struggling with being stuck at home. She would search for ways to find gratitude — the topic of that first Zoom session.
“It was a different perspective than I had before,” she said of the detailed discussion with the six Patient Project students. “They were prompting me, but anything they had to ask, they talked about themselves.”
Royce, 72, joined the group at Faigen’s suggestion. She also is married. Retired, she stays busy assisting a financial planner and maintains regular contact with friends via Skype, Zoom and the telephone. She’s OK with being a homebody. But the introspection prompted by the Zoom sessions has been a revelation for someone with a habit of neglecting her inner peace.
“It’s only an hour, but one little bit of introspection can last you a long time,” Royce said. “That’s the richest part of it.”
Like Faigen, Royce is impressed by the attentiveness of the UCI students conducting the sessions.
“Wow! They are so much deeper than I ever would have thought young women could be,” she said. “They find a place inside themselves to reflect back, and validate us and make us feel heard.”
For both age groups the Zoom sessions have created a safe space to express deep feelings that might otherwise stay buried.
“It’s OK to talk about whatever you’re feeling and thinking, and explore how to navigate through your thoughts,” said Nare Boghokian, 21, lives in La Crescenta and is in her fourth year studying psychology. She describes herself as a shy person with a calming demeanor.
Making those connections can lead to something valuable — for both sides of the conversation.
“We don’t feel alone,” she said. “And we feel like we’ve gained some perspective.”
Find out more at patientproject.org.
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