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After completing my freshman year at Columbia University, I finally had some time on my hands to think about what experiences have changed my life. Half-way through my sophomore year of high school, I began working with Ken Steele. Before actually meeting him, I had hesitations. I was afraid. The only thing I knew was that I was going to begin working with someone who was, and is, schizophrenic. As a lay person, the extent of my knowledge stemmed from movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. As I took the subway to meet Ken, I did not know what to expect. I went with a teacher of mine to act as a buffer. The first few meetings were strictly business. I was there to aid in the publication and layout of a mental health newsletter. Those meetings took no longer than an hour. Ken would hand me the articles, give me a rough estimate as to where he would want them placed, and I would be on my way. A week later, I would fax him a rough draft, make the corrections, and out would come the newsletter.

At first, I was reluctant to talk to Ken on the phone without a third party present to mediate or monitor the conversation. Then, I realized what was happening. I was acting contrary to the mission statement of the newsletter, which is to remove the stigma of having a mental illness. I was, in fact, placing a stigma on Ken. I began to laugh at myself. Since that realization over three years ago, I have talked to Ken several times a week. Sometimes we talk about newsletter business, but most of the time we talk about personal things. He has opened up to me, telling me what it was like to grow up as a teenager before being diagnosed with schizophrenia and about his life prior to the availability of his current medication. I frequently call him to discuss issues that are of concern to me. We are now able to have phone conversations lasting well over an hour.

As part of my work on the newsletter, I became a board member of the organization and attended numerous board meetings. The board was comprised of people from a variety of backgrounds, including doctors and mental health consumers, some of whom were professionals dealing with their own history of mental illness. I began to realize that mental illness does not discriminate. It does not matter where one comes from, how people are raided or their financial status. Mental illness can strike anyone.

Having come from a private high school where the children were from upper-middle class backgrounds and there was not much diversity, working with the newsletter and its board, including Ken, enabled me to see a whole other side of life. It taught me how to relate to other people with different backgrounds and needs and to listen to people with experiences alien to my own. It helped to prepare me in many ways for my college life at Columbia where I would encounter students and teachers from all over the country and globe, with a vast collection of backgrounds. My experience with Ken Steele and other mental health consumers has helped open my mind to new views and experiences, and I see it as a valuable skill I can use throughout my life.