So it's been a while since I have last posted anything to this blog (if you can even call it that, there is only one post up thus far)... however several things have transpired since my last posting, which I would like to share with anyone who is reading, or at least for my own benefit of personal reflection.
I have started receiving word of the day emails from dictionary.com, starting today with the word majuscule. It must be a very obscure word, because it is showing up as a spelling error in this text box. It is basically a fancy way of describing the capital form of a letter. For instance A is the majuscule form of a... I don't know, it seems like a useless word to me, but i want to augment my vocabulary if I am to take this scholarship thing forward, so I begin.
I am at home now, and I took a very quick trip to the main public library branch downtown, and immediately I was reminded of why I am doing the project that I am doing, and why I am interested in the things that I am. My eyes have been further opened to structural injustices , or as Paul Farmer would call "Structural Violence," and how structural inequalities lead to social inequalities. I was looking at how one road: East/West Boulevard signifies the barrier between rich and poor, and more often than not between black and white, where West Boulevard is the road that leads to the poorer side of town, and East Boulevard to the other. Why is that so? It can not be because all poor people migrated to one area of town...but I digress. I was riding public transportation (to be green, and because I have yet to obtain my license), and I overheard a man in his early forties speak about how he was diagnosed with diabetes at 35. Imagine. You are in the height of being middle aged, and you are diagnosed with diabetes, not even reaching the midpoint of average life-expectancy. And I saw how most of the people in my neighborhood are overweight, and I even witness, to my dismay, the eating habits of my family which I try so hard to elucidate. We constantly speak about loosing weight, however we don't even make the simplest, slightest changes that could make A WORLD of difference... But anyway.
So, from the beginning, I have been engaged in an internal conflict (do you like the literary term?) with myself. I have these big ideas about my project, and how I want to attack it, and I want to read everything under the sun that comes even remotely close to what I want to study (In general I want to study the biological and social relationships between race and health, but more particularly, I will be looking at the figure of the African-American doctor in African-American literature). Although I would love to take a broad interdisciplinary approach, I have had conflicting advice on what exactly to do. On the one hand, a fellowship advisor gently urges me to follow my original project (based in English lit) so that I have a clear cut goal in mind as to what I will accomplish over the summer. On the other hand my mentor brought up the very good point-- Why English? I could accomplish my research goals through other methods, especially those more related to my academic and career goals of Anthropology and Public Health. Both make very valid points, and whenever that happens, I always get stuck in the middle. I have, however, come up with a remedy to solve those problems. I think for the time being, I will remain with the literary focus of my project, because it is the most focused that I could possibly get when doing a project of this caliber. I will save the anthropological/public health approach to my topic with a senior honors thesis, which allows me more writing room to further delve into methodology and research.
Other than that. I have checked out three books from the library...The Street by Ann Petry (my relief book, yet still may be related to my research), an also the two volumes of An American health dilemma. All three amount to over 1850 pages! It is Monday, and I hope to complete those books by the end of the week, at least most of them. I don't start my internship until hopefully next week, so I have all the time in the world right now.
Well, It officially begins today. Hopefully everything will go according to plan!
- Until Next Time
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