Over this first half of the course, I realized I have learned so much and have been enlightened into a world that I have had the privilege not to experience. However, I think it is a world everyone needs to know about because; the world of homelessness comes with many different covers. I see those on the streets and realize it exists however, I also know friends at this small, private, liberal college who are also homeless. There is no poster example of homeless except the one that the social stigmas have created. Homelessness comes in all different grades of extremes and in completely different situations. An article that caught my attention this week was on the way Disneyland employees have been living. “According to a survey of thousands of low-wage employees at the park, nearly three-quarters of workers who responded said they do not earn enough money to pay for their basic monthly expenses, and one in 10 said they had been homeless in the past two years.”

When I think of Disneyland, I picture happily ever after’s, fireworks, laughing kids, because that is what they advertise, and yes it is true people have amazing memories from the park, including me. But what you don’t see is the behind the scenes that a lot of resorts and parks tend to have. Although, Disneyland offers so many job opportunities their employees still don’t make enough to live at the needed budget for the state of California not to mention Orange County. ““Every time we get to the end of the month, I have to choose what bills to pay,” she said. “We want kids, but there’s no way we’re going to do that when we can barely afford to feed ourselves.””- Grace Torres. Employee’s sleep in cars, shower at work, and brush their teeth at the nearest Starbucks. Employees want a family, or to grant their current families a good and happy life, but to the extent that they must fake to the world their true struggles to keep out of the stigmatized homeless representation. “I do my job with a smile on my face,” she said. “Most people don’t know what I’m doing. It’s not exactly the most lovely thing to hear about, that I can’t even take care of myself.”- Rebekah Pederson. For me this semester I am learning to look beyond the first face of a person I see, to not judge a book by its cover, if you might say. Someone can be happy yet they have their struggles, and someone can be at their all time low and still have hope. Homeless to me is no longer something I simply see it is not an identity I give to someone it is a situation I look into.

Medina, Jennifer. “By Day, a Sunny Smile for Disney Visitors. By Night, an Uneasy Sleep in a Car.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Feb. 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/us/disneyland-employees-wages.html?smid=pl-share.