Carolines Achievement Motivation Caroline’s Motivation as a Foster Mother in Taking Care of Down Syndrome Girl
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Being a nurse does not mean that she will stop dreaming. She dreams to have her own clinic, live peacefully in jungle or sea, the place which is far from the crowd.
She really wants to go out from her life. She is too bored living in a little apartment by herself, being old without having any experiences in adventure.
She read, too, Pearl Buck’s novels first and then everything she could find about life in China and Burma and Laos. Sometimes she let the books slip
from her hands and gazed dreamily out the window of her plain little apartment on the edge of town. She saw herself moving through another
life, an exotic, difficult, satisfying life. Her clinic would be simple, set in a lush jungle, perhaps near the sea. It would have white walls; it would
gleam like a pearl. People would line up outside, squatting beneath coconut trees as they waited. She, Caroline, would tend to them all; she
would heal them. She would transform their lives and hers. 32
After all of Caroline’s dreams which never come true, she wants to leave them and find another thing to catch. The life struggle of Caroline toward Phoebe is
started after she comes to the funeral of Phoebe. Before she brings Phoebe to Pittsburgh, she wants to attend the funeral because she needs to ensure herself that
in the eyes of the world, Phoebe is dead. She wants to make sure that she does not have to concern their past life.
All that sunny afternoon, traveling north and east, Caroline believed absolutely in the future. And why not? For if the worst had already
happened to them in the eyes of the world, then surely, surely, it was the worst that they left behind them now. 88
It is not easy for Caroline who just has the experience as a nurse to look for a job in a new place that she never visited before. Everything is started from the
beginning. Caroline does not know anyone in Pittsburgh. With the money she has, she lives in a cheap hotel and searches for a job in many places. A dozen different
interviews have made her come into a panic because no one can give her
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something to do. This last interview means a lot for her because with the limitation of her saving, she cannot bear to this condition. This interview involves
“competition with a standard of excellence Heckhausen, p. 137 because Caroline needs to compete with the condition which forces her to get the job as fast as she
can. For one long month she had lived in a cheap motel on the edge of town,
circling want ads and watching her saving dwindle. By the time she’d come to this interview, her euphoria had turned into dull panic. She rang
the bell and stood on the porch, waiting. 116
The job offered is to be a companion to an old man. The daughter, Dorothy March cannot assure that Caroline can handle her father. Besides, she has a baby to take
care of. Dorothy is not sure that Caroline can manage all at once. Caroline should defend her statement and convince Dorothy that she can do it. The only way is to
make an agreement. What Caroline shown indicates that she is a high-achiever who pursues achievement goals on their own initiative McClelland, p. 137.
“But how would you manage?” she mused. “And with the baby too? My father is not a patient patient, I assure you. “
“A week,” Caroline had replied. “if you don’t like me in a week, I’ll go.” 117
A week has passed. Now, it is nearly a year for Caroline to work with Dorothy March. To be honest, sometimes she feels so tired to be a companion for Leo
March, a mother for Phoebe and a friend for Dorothy March. Nevertheless, Caroline considers this situation to be a responsibility to fulfill. The individual
responsibility that Caroline has indicates that she is a high-achiever Murray, p. 100.
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For a moment Caroline didn’t answer. She was so tired and she had traveled so far in this past year, one moment to the next, and her careful
solitary life had been utterly transformed. Somehow she had come to be here in this tiny purple bathroom, a mother to Phoebe, a companion to a
brilliant man with a failing mind an unlikely but certain friend to this woman Doro March: the two of them strangers a year ago, women who
might have passed each other on the street without a second glance or a glimmer of connection, their lives now woven together by the demands of
their days and a cautious, sure respect. 118
Caroline knows that Phoebe, a girl with down syndrome must be treated in a different way. This is the first time for Caroline to raise a down syndrome girl.
She does not have a clue how to raise her in a proper way. To get to know this, Caroline comes to a library to find the answers that she has in mind. In the library,
she meets someone who has the same experience with Caroline.. She is high- achiever. Even though Sandra is an unlikely friend, Caroline wants to be with her
to share about down syndrome. She chooses expert rather than friends as a working partner Murray, p.100.
Caroline sat down on the floor too. Like Doro, Sandra was an unlikely friend, someone Caroline would never have known in her old life. They’d
met in the library one bleak January day when Caroline, overwhelmed by experts and grim statistics, had slammed a book shut in despair. Sandra,
two tables over amid her own stack of books, the spines and covers terribly familiar to Caroline, looked up. Oh, I know just how you feel. I’m so angry
I could break a window. 124
To be a down syndrome means to be ready with all of the bad opinion coming from people. Phoebe does not understand yet that she is different with other kids.
As a mother, hearing and getting so many problems from the surrounding are a hard time for Caroline. Then, the teachers of Phoebe have a lot of spirit. They give
the parents understanding that their children are not quite different. They can also
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learn, it just needs more patience to contact with them. Caroline is resistant to outside social pressure Murray, p. 100.
Thoughtless or ignorant or cruel, it didn’t matter; over the years these comments had rubbed a raw spot in Caroline’s heart. But here the teachers
were young and enthusiastic, and the parents had quietly followed their example: Phoebe might struggle more, go slower, but like any child she’d
learn. 203
Caroline joins the Upside Down Society. This society has the aim to fight for the rights of down syndrome people. This time, the Upside Down Society asks the
school board to give a chance for down syndrome children to study in public school. The controversy goes complicated. The school board is still hard to fulfill
their pursuit. This makes Caroline need to do something. There is something in her mind that the children like Phoebe deserves to get the same education the
normal children get. For them, Caroline speaks to the audience and makes a brave statement. Her achievement motivation appears when she rivals and surpasses
others Murray, p. 97. “It’s not about numbers,” Caroline said. “It’s about children. I have a
daughter who is six years old. It takes her more time, it’s true, to master new things. But she has learned to do everything that any other child learns
to do: to crawl and walk and talk and use the bathroom, to dress herself, which she did this morning. What I see is a little girl who wants to learn,
and who loves everyone she sees. And I see a roomful of men who appear to have forgotten that in this country we promise an education to every
child
―regardless of ability.” 208 After all of what she has experienced to live with Phoebe, she starts to understand
that she is not the person that she knows in the past. She has transformed into a mature woman who can struggle for anything in her life. In this moment, she feels
that has reached her goal to have a better life with Phoebe. From that time, it is
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not only Phoebe who can give her happiness. Her husband, Al, is the only man that completes her happy life.
She was Caroline Simpson, mother of Phoebe, wife of Al, organizer of protest
―a different person altogether from the timid woman who had stood in a silent snow-swept office thirteen years ago with an infant in her
arms. 286-287 There is a time when Caroline has a chance to meet David Henry, the father of
Phoebe. Caroline feels that all this time he never cares of her and his daughter. The anger comes to Caroline’s mind. If he does not even care of his own
daughter, he does not deserve to get Phoebe back. This action means that Caroline wants to rival David Henry to protect Phoebe Murray, p. 97. “For years you
never wanted to know how I was. How Phoebe was. You just didn’t give a damn, did you? And then that last letter, the one I never answered. All of sudden, you
wanted her back” 313. She explained to David Henry that everything goes right. There is nothing
to worry about. She wants to prove him that she, an ordinary woman, lives happily with Phoebe. She does not want to be underestimated by David Henry.
She tells everything that she can be proud of. According to Murray 1965, this character is included as high-achiever that she excels David Henry about the joy
she gets p. 97. “She goes to school. Public school, with all the other kids. I nearly grown I
don’t know what will happen. I have a good job. I work part-time in an internal medicine clinic at the hospital. My husband
―he travels a lot. Phoebe goes to a group home each day. She has a lot of friends there.
She’s learning how to do office work. What else can I say? You missed a lot of heartache, sure. But David, you missed a lot of joy.” 316
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Unpredictability, Caroline meets David Henry in his photograph exhibition. Then she has some conversation with him. He is wondering why Caroline stopped
writing a letter to him. He wants to talk more about her and Phoebe but he should meet the audience. David Henry asks Caroline to wait him until the end of the
exhibition, but then she leaves him. Along the way home, she remembers what she has experienced in her young life. She thinks about her waiting in love,
adventure, and recognition. The last, she realizes that her life began when she took Phoebe and left everything. She is glad to know that she has made a very risky
amazing decision. To have her family now, she knows that she had done the right thing. The family that Caroline has really encourages her to be a better person.
With her family, she can release from her difficult past life, which was full of dreams.
This was her life. Not the life she had once dreamed of, not a life her younger self would ever have imagined or desired, but the life she was
living, with all its complexities. This was her life, built with care and attention, and it was good. 322
Now, her life is complex but warmth and nothing can pay for it. In this monologue, Caroline shows her deepest feeling about her achievement all this
time. She does not regret to have Phoebe and Al in her life. This is the time when Caroline is proud of herself to take a good decision taking care of Phoebe.
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