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It is very difficult to buy into the apathetically correct wisdom of the meaningless of the dissertation exercise.\u00c2\u00a0 Specifically, this becomes difficult when I am confronted several times a week by people who actually, really, and truly care about it.\u00c2\u00a0 People who thank me for talking to them.\u00c2\u00a0 Comment on how I’m the first to have asked and how much better it feels to talk.\u00c2\u00a0 Who act at first surprised that I want to know, then hesitant that I should listen, and finally rest on the relief of sharing.<\/p>\n
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A few weeks ago, I dragged my Schweitzer cohort out of the comfortable confines of our usual space within the Louisiana Public Health Institute.\u00c2\u00a0 From the bright steel and chrome finishes of the modern downtown offices down a hard-to-find narrow road lined with modest World War II-era slab homes, to a damp and crowded trailer turned community center.\u00c2\u00a0 The Harahan meeting place for a small Hispanic Church.\u00c2\u00a0 There, several parishioners made us fantastic baleadas and coconut bread while we held our monthly meeting.\u00c2\u00a0 I gave a short talk based on my prospectus defense about race, racism, acculturation, and the health of immigrants from Latin America.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, our chefs joined the meeting and spoke about their lives.\u00c2\u00a0 Although I’d planned the logistics of the meeting, I had no idea who would come or what they would say.<\/p>\n
By happy accident, Paul and the kids were there and ended up providing some companionship for another child (daughter of one of the church members).\u00c2\u00a0 Will taught her to play games on the Ipod, she supplied markers and Jesus coloring sheets.\u00c2\u00a0 Kate played the faithful sidekick, thundering up and down the small hallway past our meeting space.<\/p>\n
Since that meeting, where some of my peers cried and all expressed deep thanks and appreciation for my risk-taking in how I’d conducted the session, several fellows have written to tell me about the impact of the night.\u00c2\u00a0 One specifically described how it had changed her interactions with patients in her current med school clinic assignment.\u00c2\u00a0 Another said that my talk was one of the best she’d had in graduate school and made her re-think how she looks at health research.\u00c2\u00a0 Other fellows have asked if I could bring members of the community to future events so that we can give larger voice to their experiences.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe linking theory to practice isn’t as elusive as it seems.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’s just a point of asking and listening?<\/p>\n
And then there is this dissertation.\u00c2\u00a0 The one that matters to no one.\u00c2\u00a0 The one that is a means to an end, a task to be finished so that I can move on, hopefully, to more important things.<\/p>\n
What a mess of information I’ve got!\u00c2\u00a0 Transcripts are en-route, surveys from last weekend’s health fair sit boxed on my desk, and somewhere on my computer is the prospectus… that document I defended as my research plan, my approved manual for what I was going to do to finish this degree.\u00c2\u00a0 Did I do what I intended to do?\u00c2\u00a0 Did I answer my question?\u00c2\u00a0 Honestly, I’m not sure.\u00c2\u00a0 I think I’ve strayed from my original purpose.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps because I keep getting distracted by what matters to someone.<\/p>\n
Does a dissertation that matters to someone count?\u00c2\u00a0 How esoteric must I be to contribute to knowledge?\u00c2\u00a0 And whose knowledge, exactly, must be furthered for a dissertation to qualify as a quality document?\u00c2\u00a0 I used to understand the situation and was comfortable with it.\u00c2\u00a0 Now it makes me feel unsettled and unsure.\u00c2\u00a0 Whom do I disappoint?\u00c2\u00a0 My informants, the community I’ve worked so hard to be a part of, to show my support within?\u00c2\u00a0 Or my committee, who doesn’t care?<\/p>\n
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It is very difficult to buy into the apathetically correct wisdom of the meaningless of the dissertation exercise.\u00c2\u00a0 Specifically, this becomes difficult when I am confronted several times a week by people who actually, really, and truly care about it.\u00c2\u00a0 People who thank me for talking to them.\u00c2\u00a0 Comment on how I’m the first to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[102,105],"tags":[106],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2451"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2462,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451\/revisions\/2462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}