Eric Breedlove-Journal #6

As of now what I know about my fieldwork project is that there is a pretty large movement for cancer awareness, but it is unsure how successful it is at the moment.  I feel this is a good topic to do fieldwork in because cancer affects a lot of people and it is important to get the message out to as many people as possible.  I would like to know more detail on the programs that are set up to spread information around about cancer.  This topic affects me because there are a lot of people in my family that have gotten some kind of cancer, and through that process I have learned a decent amount about them and I think it's important that other people learn as well.  Unfortunately, I do not think that cancer awareness programs are very successful or as successful as they would like to be.  I think that there are a lot of people that still don't get it.  For example, I would go to relay for life near my home and it would be a huge event that a ton of people from my high school would go to.  However, it turned into just a different place to go hang out for a night and most of them did not really know much about cancer or how bad it affects people.  Any community is part of our topic because anyone can be affected by cancer, but for the purposes of our fieldwork we did decide to stick to Virginia Tech students.  The identity groups that I belong to are male, student, Christian, and American.  I am part of a dominant culture first because I am American and our entire country was built on being dominate and colonizing here.  When interviewing I need to make sure I do not show bias or include any of my own personal interests or thoughts.  Also I need to stick to more open ended questions than closed ended so that the interview will go smoother and be more natural like a conversation than an interview.