We Have Only Just Begun

Our research begins tomorrow, I can't even believe it. Already! The time! Has flown!
After all that work, Dwight has pushed through all the essentials and tomorrow we will throw their interpreters and voice recorders at them to accomplish the capstone of the course: qualitative research.

They'll leave tomorrow at 8am and have 2 and 1/2 hours to research 4 people individually about the their income, their expenses, their relationships within the community, and their dreams for themselves. In sociology we call it a baseline but what we're doing is akin to taking a photograph. We ask about their income to see if children selling flowers is actually a substantial part of what they make. If it is and it's unfair to the children, the Church of Christ of Thailand can possibly consult about the issue. We ask about their relationships because if it turns out that all of their bonds are within the community, it means they are isolating themselves in a way that won't achieve the things they say they want for themselves. We ask about their dreams to see through their eyes, not ours for them, and provide information that could help set them on their way.

This stuff is important because it's actually for somebody. It helps.
It's not like the research paper you do in school where you're nervous because someone's going to grade your being with an ink letter of the alphabet. The presentation to the community is not like a presentation you make in front of a bunch of suburban undergrads who are measuring your abilities against their own. If you do this well, it has an impact on how an organization can make its interaction with a community more meaningful to them. The leaders want to know where they can improve and provide. To present to them is to honor the people you have spent the whole semester learning about.

I've learned so much from Dwight Jackson having taken the class a second time and the ability to problem solve with him behind the scenes. The man spoke my higher educational aspirations into existence, who does that? I spent a whole afternoon researching "Development Anthropology" and it encapsulated everything I've been trying to say for the past two years in a grad school program I've been searching for but never satisfied with. I wasn't even giddy; it was more like, "well, duh, of course this is what you should get your masters in."

I sit in class and I love every minute.

The tragedy is that in some eyes it's just another class, just another A, just another thing to do to get your piece of paper. They come late and skip out quickly and I can't help but feeling a little offended. I want to write: "this is about other people" in red white-board marker because it is about other people, more than foreign romances, and songthaew rides, and clothes. If anything, it's to help them do the things they want to do better. If you want to "help" people, you actually have to learn what questions to ask first and what things to avoid. The class teaches you how to evaluate your progress as an employee, or manager, or innovator. I'd leave it there for days to soak into skin, to make it hit the heart. Maybe this is how some math teachers feel about middle school students who ignore the material and doodle in class. For the rest of their lives, they're going to have the hardest time knowing how much paint to buy, how much change to get/give, and what interest rates are going to wreck their credit forever.