April 4 – April 21: Redirection + Making the Best of What’s Happening

Goals for this Week:

1. Talk to Ms. Bessias & advisors about redirection

2. Talk to NGOs and gather info about what people in NC are facing

3. Reach out to Arab-American literature in the Triangle to see interest in an op-ed about healthcare inequity parallels in the Arab world and the West.

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Hi everyone! I apologize for a long period of inactivity. To be honest, I was having a lot of difficulty with my study. For one, a lot of the original plans I had fell through— after a couple of emails to each of the professors that I had originally wanted to email went without any response, and I’d originally learned that I wouldn’t be able to individually talk to patients, a lot of the original content for my study was derailed. In my conversations with Mr. Klein, he suggested reaching out to local healthcare equity NGOs (which was a fantastic suggestion, and I’ve scheduled meetings with them).

In truth, my study had become both overwhelming and disappointing.

I knew I wouldn’t be happy with an academic paper— the original final product of my study— because I knew it would literally just end up being the background research portion. Thus, I stopped posting. I didn’t have anything meaningful to post, and I’d been treating the blog posts like formal weekly essays when they were literally just trackers of my weekly progress.

However, in talking to Ms. Bessias yesterday, I reached two conclusions:
1. Independent studies are not meant to act like a formal class. They are an exploration of something I am interested in. Things may not follow the original plan, and that’s okay! To be completely honest, I have difficulty accepting when things veer from the original course. Of course my study veering from its original course overwhelmed and disappointed me!

2. The blog posts don’t have to be formal essays! They are just a marker of my progress.

So, we decided to change the original plan from an academic paper which would ultimately be disappointing to me, to an op-ed that would hopefully be published in both DA and outside of DA. I’m searching for Arab-American publications in the Triangle Area who would be willing to publish an op-ed. Furthermore, to fully present, I would have a small presentation during some sort of club period or tutorial or whatever in Assembly Hall. This would mainly be for my content advisors, but anyone who is interested— like AP Human Geography or AP Environmental Science / AP Biology students— would be able to attend.

In the coming weeks I will be much more consistent with my blog posts, because instead of treating them as essays, I will be treating them as what they are— markers of my progress.

Thank you for reading!