Last night was the third speaker in this years Distinguished Speaker Series lineup and UB welcomed the author of the award winning novel “The Soloist”, Steve Lopez. Now to be completely honest with you, I was not the biggest fan of the book when I read it. However, I was really impressed with his message to the audience.

Mr. Lopez started off his talk recounting the awesome experience that he had and has continued to have after he met a homeless musician named Nathaniel Ayers. I won’t divulge too far into the story line because not only is there a book out there but there is also a movie starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr, which I hear is pretty good. But the message that Mr. Lopez kept pushing was one of awareness for the mentally ill. Now I have a special place in my heart for metal illnesses just because I’m around it a lot in the work that I do and in the field of social work that I want to go into so for me this was an awesome thing to be hearing. You do not hear very often of people advocating for people with mental illnesses and I think that not as many people are informed as they should be about it, especially considering the growing number of our population who is struggling with one mental illness or another. It was just great to see someone taking a stance and getting the word out there.

I’m really enjoying the downtime that I seem to be collecting. My schedule lately has been VERY different than what I was juggling in the beginning of the semester. I actually have the next couple of nights off and although I have to work on Halloween, am looking to be catching a few extra hours of shut-eye this weekend.