Self Evaluation and Reflection

            Throughout the semester, I have been interested in pursuing the disability studies perspective in medical decision making. At the beginning of the semester, I had focused my thoughts on how medical technology impacts the disability community. As the semester progressed, I became interested in topics related to how our perception of disability shapes our decisions when faced with questions regarding informed consent or physician-assisted suicide. Through exploring these topics, I developed the idea that the relationship between disability and health is largely responsible for the stigma related to disability. My understanding of both medicine and disability expanded as a result of these reflections.  

I recently realized that my understanding of disability was rather shallow when I joined this course. Now, I can say for sure that I have a much broader grasp of disability, its impact and the people in and associated with the disability community. I think that was mostly because of all the different stimuli, specifically authors that I was exposed to over the period of this semester. Looking back on my earlier posts on Serendip I found that I was way more unsure about the messages that were being conveyed through texts and portraits at the start of the semester than at the end of it. I believe I became more confident and sure of my interpretations of what we studied but I still feel like I could improve on that.

This class has been partially a new experience and partially a confirmation of ideas I already held to be true. I have certainly learned things about disability culture that are valuable not only in terms of how I will treat people with disabilities but in terms of how I treat all people. Still, the disability specific knowledge I gained will prove to be invaluable, I am sure. But at the same time, some ideas covered in this class were affirmative to the understanding I already had, not specifically of disability, but of the treatment of all people. These ideas helped me to frame this understanding in the context of disability. This can be explained with no better example than supercripping.

In comparing my earlier Serendip posts to my later posts, an obvious progression I have made is my increased comfort in asking questions. Initially, I struggled to make what I assumed should have been obvious connections. Using only the few sources I had available to me, I made unspecific claims and observations. As I learned more and was exposed to more sources of information, however, my attempt to make clean conclusions evolved into a process that more closely resembled hypothesis-formation. I believe this shift reflects a more nuanced understanding of the disability community, or more accurately, my understanding that the disability community is nuanced and multifaceted.

My experience in this class has greatly expanded my view of disability.  My perspective on disability has always been through the lens of my disability and my brother’s disability, and it has been difficult for me, in the past, to take my own experiences and emotions out of the equation and just absorb the authentic experiences of other people.  The knowledge and understanding that I have gained from this class has taken me outside of my own experience, and I have started to see disability outside of myself.

I enjoyed last class in which we discussed activism and how our personal experiences with other people shape us and the kind of work that we do in our lives. It was nice to be able to open up to another classmate and talk about difficult topic and how that has shaped me and influenced me in the kind of work that I want to do in the future. Their stories were heart warming and inspring, they were a very intelligent and nice group of ladies. As for my last praxis visit, Aubrey and I spent the entire time fixing the website again (which is still not done). I'm sure once we're done with it it's going to look amazing-- so happy that she's good with tech stuff.

When we arrived at the site Aubrey and I already had a project waiting for us. We worked together to reshape and add to the organizations website that had been unkept. Aubrey is very tech savy so I mostly just gave in my input and ideas while she made it happen. I would say that it was very frustrating because the website used to create this website was really weird and would move things that we hadn't clicked on or would freeze. It took us the entire visit to update and fix one tab on the website. That's how uncooperative the website was. But we got that done and there's so much more to go. Thinking about it makes me tired. I had also missed my nap that Friday so I was already very sleepy. But I'm happy we worked together and I wasn't there doing it alone. If that was the case...

I'd like to make a comment on scientic literacy and how my mind has changed on what that actually is. When asked "Are you scientifically literate?' I responded "no" because I though about my struggles with Biology, Chemistry, and Physics in highschool. But, I didn't take the time to think about the different sciences there are like social science which is the study of the interactions of people. So, I would say it depend on what kind of science you're really taking about when you ask the question-- unless it's just in general. I also thought about my school and why most of the students that were good at Bio, Chemistry, and Physics were men. I started to think about how the women in my school were better at subjects like English.