Journal # 17: Progress

As I take a break from writing the second section of my Project Proposal I cannot help but look at all the progress I have made. Before I even knew that ethnographic research was required for my graduation requirements, I stumbled upon the Ghana Field Study. I was sitting at my computer during my summer job, bored as heck and just wishing I was off in London with my best friend. As I was sitting there day dreaming about being on study abroad and looking at the various programs Africa popped up in my view and I was immediately hooked. Not too many days before I had the feeling that I was going to start preparing for something big, something that would change my life and boy was I right. I already feel like my life has been changed because of the preparations that I have had to make this past year. My schooling, my thoughts, my dreams...everything I do points to this journey that I am on. The first time I met with Andrew I really did not know much about the program or what kind of research I would be doing or how difficult it would be to get to where I am today. Never in a million years did I think that I would be where I am now, I can recognize some words and phrases in Twi for crying out loud. That itself blows my mind. I am grateful that my project ideas have all been very similar because the first ideas I had were the foundation for the project that I have now and I feel like I have consistently been able to build off of what I learned with each new day.

      It is really neat to be able to look back even at the things I wrote in my Ethnographic Skills class and to now be able to revise and add to them for this class. Learning about cross-cultural immersion and being prepared for the culture shock even helps me to make connections between theoretical concepts I learn in my anthropology courses and combine those concepts more readily to one solid idea. It is really exciting to see how much I really have learned and grown this past year. Placing an emphasis on gender and seeking out gender relationships in my own life has been an interesting little observational study to do in the back of my mind in my day to day interactions as well. Seeing the way I interact with different people in every situation and how those interactions shape me as a human being and why I interact with certain people in certain ways while with others in different ways has been very telling of the human experience and what I am all about as an anthropologist. I am very pleased with the progress I have made so far in how I think and what I think and I know that as I continue to learn and grow I will be guided in a direction that will make this project as successful as it can be.