The More You Give, The More You Get
Carly R, a Doctoral Candidate and USC Volunteer, shares how GlamourGals has shaped her career and research.
As the saying goes, the paradox of generosity-- is the more you give, the more you get. This is true of GlamourGals, in every respect. For a 15-year-old girl, the opportunity to help start a club and make visits to a senior living home, is both exciting and nerve-wracking. This was me in 2010, when a friend one year older asked me to help establish a GlamourGals chapter at my high school. I enticed some friends to join, and soon, every month carloads of teenage girls were caravanning to Maple Pointe Assisted Living in our town. We did makeovers, decorated and hosted parties, and brought a spark of life to what could be a lonely experience—old age.
Other than my grandparents, I had never spent much time around older adults, and I admit to feeling a little anxious at first. The hook for me was the extreme joy and delight our visits brought about to the residents we visited and the genuine fun I had as well. While painting nails and massaging cream into hands, real conversations broke out. And over time, real relationships were borne. For me, it was a deep friendship with a 97-year-old lady named Gloria DeLeon. She had no family, and mine became hers. My visits with her continued even after I went to college, and until her death in 2013. It was also a true loving relationship with Ruth Klein, who spent Thanksgiving with my family in 2018, and loved to give me advice on boys and careers, up until her passing a year ago. Forming these relationships was a highlight of my high school experience and gave me direction and purpose in life. I knew that I would work with older adults in some way and give GlamourGals full credit for providing me with the opportunity to learn this through the meaningful relationships I made at Maple Pointe.
After high school, I founded the Gloria DeLeon chapter of GlamourGals at the University of Pennsylvania, where my passion for spending time with older adults continued to grow. GlamourGals gave me an opportunity to be a leader, an organizer, a community-minded citizen, and a caregiver. It gave me so many chances to enhance the lives of older adults that eventually, I decided to make it my life’s work. I incorporated GlamourGals into my schoolwork and extracurriculars as much as possible. In high school whenever I had a day off from after-school sports or activities, I would stop by Maple Pointe to say hi to my friends. I’m sure my neighbor was confused the first time that I was supposed to drive him home and instead insisted we stop by Maple Pointe, but soon enough, he was asking me if we had time to visit our friends there. When my high school science research class required a project, I ran a psychology experiment with participants from Maple Pointe. It was through this project that I met Ruth – she started off as a participant who completed surveys on optimism and hopefulness before and after a one-week experiment to see if a positive psychology exercise could positively benefit older adults. In this experiment, half of the older adult participants were randomly assigned to write three good things that happened to them each day for one week, while the other half simply filled out surveys. Compared to those who did not participate in this activity, those who reflected positively had improved optimism and hopefulness. This simple activity created by positive psychologists inspired me to create my own activity that could benefit older adults.
When I thought about the best parts of GlamourGals, and talked to Ruth and other residents, like my friend Anna, their pleasure in sharing their life experiences and hearing about our lives kept coming up. Not only were the older residents able and willing to give advice to their younger visitors, but they also enjoyed doing so. My senior thesis showed that older adults can benefit from giving advice to younger individuals even through an anonymous “Dear Abby”-style advice column. They felt better about themselves and derived purpose from contributing positively to younger people’s lives. I have to imagine that inspiring me to create and do research on the “Dear Anna and Al” advice column also provided Ruth and Anna with some extra meaning and satisfaction in their lives as well.
GlamourGals has consistently supported my pursuit to make a positive impact in the lives of older adults. I received the Glammy Scholarship Award for Chapter President in 2012 and the College Chapter Glammy Scholarship Award in 2015. The latter award was used to fund a senior prom at the Penn Center for Rehabilitation and Care, where we had catered food, live musical performances, a photo booth, and of course, manicures. Now, as a PhD candidate at the Leonard B. Davis School of Gerontology of the University of Southern California, where I started my third GlamourGals chapter, my work involves developing a deeper understanding of how intergenerational programming can improve well-being of older adults. By developing protocols and measures to assess the best practices of intergenerational programs, like GlamourGals, I can show that the positive impact GlamourGals has had on my life and the lives of so many other younger volunteers, is incredibly beneficial to older adults’ mental and physical well-being as well. It is crucial to have scientific evidence of the benefits of intergenerational programming and I am so grateful that GlamourGals has given me firsthand evidence of how important intergenerational programs are. Bringing young and old together for the betterment of both—literally the GlamourGals mission—has become my career. I have always loved the saying by Pablo Picasso—“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” When I think of this saying, I know it perfectly captures what GlamourGals has given to me and what I, in turn, am giving to others.