Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Intersections

At the beginning of the quarter, Professor Garcia emphasized intersections. She told us to be on the lookout for all of the intersections we would see during our time in her class and beyond. The focus of the class is on Animals. However, the ideas I have been exposed to in this class and the lessons that I have learned are applicable to everything beyond it.

Last class, we talked about how important it is to keep the animal in focus as we discuss different issues relating to animal welfare and animal politics, etc. It is so easy to get side tracked and forget that we are even talking about animals. As I pondered this idea today, I was struck by how applicable it is to everything else I am involved in at UW.

I have an internship with Ink Aleaga, an advisor in the Student Athlete Academic Services building called Conibear Shellhouse. I help him plan community service and outreach activities for the UW athletes. My official title is Campus & Community Engagement Assistant. Our two main projects I have been working on recently are Women in Sports Month which just finished up last week, and Football Education Month in May. For Women in Sports Month, I coordinated visits where athletes went to surrounding Seattle public schools and talked to the elementary aged kids about how to balance athletics and academics, how to live a healthy lifestyle, and what it's like to be a woman in athletics. For Football Education Month, we are planning a whole month worth of activities for the football players including similar visits to the schools, career building workshops, and an NFL motivational speaker. The kids absolutely loved the female athletes and the visits that they conducted at their school. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go, but am very satisfied with the outcome.

Ink and I meet for a total of about three hours every week. We discuss very technical aspects of planning the visits and what we think people will enjoy, what's too much money, how to fit in everyone's schedules - and what's so easy is to forget who I am working for. I am obviously working for Ink because he approves my paycheck, but ultimately I am working for people. I am working to improve the lives of others, however simple the action. I need to constantly remember to keep the athletes and the children being affected by the athletes in the center of my work.

At the beginning of this quarter, I joined a Core Group through the INN, a Christian worship center right by campus. My core group consists of five other girls my age and a leader who's about twenty-eight that also went to UW. We meet weekly for a couple hours to discuss how our week is going, what we've been up to, what we need to pray for, and then study a critical message either from the Bible or a Christian novel we have selected. All of our conversations every Monday night come back to one idea - keep God at the center of your life. This is much easier said than done, for it is very easy to forget that God is with us all the time and to thank him for all of the blessings in our lives.

Recently, we've been talking about the difference between following a religion and having a relationship with God. Those things can definitely go hand in hand, but sometimes they don't. It is very easy to get caught up in the politics and details surrounding religion. I always have to bring myself back to the center - God and love. God loves me, and I love him. It's that simple, but yet so complicated when our minds are led astray.

I'm also a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, a sorority in the Greek system. Lately I've been struggling with the fact that I don't have a huge amount of friends in my house. I like a lot of the girls - but I'm also very different from a lot of them. Sometimes I think how easy it would be to conform to fit the mold and be like everyone else (not that everyone is the same, but you get what I mean). However, I love who I am; I'm very content with being myself. I must strive to keep my values and my passions at the center of my activities and not change to conform to a mold that's not me.

In my Global Health 101 class, we talk about a multitude of issues, practically infinite amount, surrounding global health. There are so many factors to consider when learning and teaching and making decisions relating to global health - political, economical, educational, physical, logistical, social, moral, ethical, etc. I have come to find that global health is a broad term that is a synonym for "the world". As complicated as global health may be, we must remember that at the center of global health is health, and at the center of health are people. The people that are affected by global health in a broad sense are everyone.

As for my Chemistry class, I haven't quite figured out where the philosophical intersection lies...but I do know that I'll find it someday.

The common thread running through all of these different groups and clumps of knowledge is life. Animals, athletes, students, God, love, personal values, people all make up life. As I've demonstrated, it's so easy to be distracted and focus our attentions of everything else - and that's not necessarily bad all the time because everything needs some of our attention. But we can't forget that life is at the center of it all. In the end, all that I learn, teach, and experience should be in order to improve the lives of others and my own life. Life should be at the forefront of everything I do. If not, I run the risk of overlooking the most important gift that I could ever imagine: to live.

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