Thursday, February 28, 2013

Carrie Ortel- Journal #6


As of right now, I don’t know much about my fieldwork topic. My group decided on cancer awareness and how effective the awareness projects we have been exposed to are.  Growing up, we were all surrounded by Race for the Cure and Relay for Life, along with D.A.R.E. and Just Say No, but I am curious how having those constant reminders around us really changed our everyday choices now.  I personally don’t have anybody close to me with cancer, and as fortunate as I am to say that, I know that this lowers my awareness about cancer.  I am very curious how aware people around me are to cancer, and what made them that way.  Throughout my entire life I have interacted with the topic of cancer awareness, but I want to know if that makes me more aware than others, or if I am ignorant of the disease and don’t even know it.  I believe that as part of the first generation to have had classes about healthy choices and had so many events all around me, that my generation is probably more aware than the one before us at our age.  This also makes me hope that the trend will continue and the next generation will be even more aware than we are. 
The college community will be the group used in our study because we want to see if the D.A.R.E. and Just Say No Classes had an effect on us, or if the constant news reports and events affected us.  Something that we will need to keep in mind is that the college community here at Virginia Tech is more educated than the average person, and therefore might be more aware.  Some identity group that we could use are year in school (freshman, sophomore…), gender, race, age, hometown, and college major. 
We could be part of a dominate culture, because we are so aware, and have been educated.  In a way our study will be measuring how dominate or marginalized our culture is, because if we are ignorant of cancer, such an important topic, than it is clear our society needs to educate more.  I would consider myself part of a dominate culture, pursuing a higher education and experiencing many new opportunities.  

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