Growing up in a bubbleThroughout my life, I have had the privilege of growing up in a financially stable household, never worrying much about having food to eat every night and having a roof over my head. My dad works as a neurologist, and my mom has had a well-established career as a representative for Washington State. Because of their hard work, my family was able to buy a home in Bellevue, a city just east of Seattle. In Bellevue, I was afforded many opportunities that stemmed from the affluence of my neighborhood, such as Math Olympiad, after-school programs, safety, and above-average school funding. Nevertheless, my privileged upbringing blinded me to the real world struggles of those that lived away from me. Many of those who do not live in Bellevue posit that its residents live in a bubble, which is not far from the truth. However, opportunities like being a camp counselor and my sister's passion for social justice forced me to have a broader world view and opened my mind up to being less ignorant about the socioeconomic issues I was so far removed from.
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One of the streets in the neighborhood I grew up in
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A photo I took at the first protest in Seattle
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Starting my journeyI would say that the beginning of my path to working on this research started at the first George Floyd protest in Seattle. I initially did not want to go, but my sister eventually convinced me to come with her. When I got there, I saw a sea of protestors chanting, and a stage where community organizers were speaking. I began talking with protestors about why they were there, and listening to the speeches from the stage. The speakers talked about their anger with the current system, and how the policing system was responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people, not just the actions of a few "bad cops." The passion from the speakers and the protestors, and seeing how they were being treated by the police at the protest provoked me to withdraw from my ignorance and start learning more about the issue.
After that summer, I arrived at the University of Denver, where I began learning even more about systemic problems that hurt low-income and minority communities through research I was doing for my papers. Some of the classes that facilitated my growth were Intro to Economics, Hip-hop as Medicine, and Writing 1733, where I wrote "Food Presents: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Learning more about our country's socioeconomic inequities fostered my passion for social justice, thus leading me to start this research project with my friend, Eli Soss. |
What I learned from our researchAt the beginning of this project, doing real quantitative research data was foreign to me. I had completed research papers before, but I had mostly used data collected from academic sources I attained from JSTOR and Google Scholar. Simply put, I had never collected my own data before. Throughout this process, I leaned on the expertise of our community partners like the Colorado Department of Higher Education and various professors to gather the resources and techniques necessary to conduct our research. The research process was and still is novel to me, and I struggled immensely with planning our project out, choosing which variables were most important to analyze, and interpreting our data in a way that made sense. I came to an understanding that completing this research was more of a learning experience than anything else. To keep going, I kept in the back of my mind that what Eli and I was doing could be helpful to a lot of people, and hopefully bring about some positive change for low-income families in Colorado. I am glad I was given the opportunity to embark on this journey, and continue my commitment to social justice.
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Eli and me working on our project outside on our friend's patio
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