Inquiry Conference

     For my second hour of conference attendance, I went to presentations given by Sarah, Averyl and Nick, who are all in the prep class currently. It was great to hear some presentations given by people who have experienced a field study. Nick talked about his time in Tonga, which sounds like a really lovely place. One thing that he talked about that could be applicable to my field study was an issue he had with an interview question. He would ask people why they designed their yards the way they did and would always get one answer - "for the beauty." He changed his questioning method a little and was able to get better responses. It is important for me to remember that in South Africa the way people understand or express things might be different then how I understand or express myself. So interview questions might take some tweaking.

      Sarah talked about her time in Rome studying the Pantheon. The take home message for me from her presentation was that some things cannot be understood in just three months. Regardless even of how much preparation before being in the field, three months is not that long. And that is OKAY! It sounded like Sarah did not really feel that she reached any concrete conclusions about the Pantheon and how Romans view it, but she still had a valuable experience and learned things. Averyl talked about the value of doing a field study versus library research. This is slightly more obvious for my project then it was for hers. I loved that she changed her opinion on "whiney" Queen Elizabeth after visiting some of the places talked about in the play about her life. Anyway, my project kind of requires being in the field. I guess I could do it in the library but it would be boring and it would be harder then being in the field, with the zoo keepers and the zoo animals. And I do not think I would learn nearly as much in the library as in the field. A field study educates in many ways other then academically - Holly and I were just talking about how we are going to come home from this summer completely fearless. We will have spent all summer dealing with people, learning how to talk to, approach, and befriend many different people. I am looking forward to it!

Rose Colored Glasses

      This week we only have Friday class because of Inquiry Conference. Instead of going to the other classes, we are supposed to go to two hours of the Inquiry Conference. Today I went and listened to the Keynote Speaker - Dr. Brown. I didn't realize it before I went, but I heard him speak before at an Honors dinner given for Freshman last year. I really liked what he had to say then and was glad to hear him speak today, particularly because he was talking about the value of getting out in the world, which I will be doing in just 2 and 1/2 months! One of the titles that he threw out for his address was "Exposing Yourself". He talked a lot about context and perception and how leaving the country you are used to can help you gain new perceptions. He also talked a lot about the lenses that people have, which reminded me of that phrase 'rose colored glasses'. This refers to when you look at something in a way that makes it more pleasant or nice than it actually is. It is a little naive. The lenses Dr. Brown was talking about were the different ways that people see things depending on their upbringing, who they are, the contexts that they are used to. Some of my lenses will come from the fact that I am a 20 year old, American, LDS, female who has not been out of the country since she was a little girl - 10 years ago.

       I am trying to think of specific ways that this will affect my time in South Africa...it would be easy to be afraid, I think, using those lenses I listed. A young, white female in an unknown country surrounded by poor people desparate for money. But right there I am doing two things that Dr. Brown warned against. One of them is stereo-typing people. A big problem Americans have is that we stereo-type a huge group of people based on just a small group of radicals. The example he used was Muslims, and that is the one that immediately comes to mind. I have been listening to This American Life a bunch lately, and today I listened to a story about a Muslim family living on the East Coast during and after September 11th. There was a 4th grader in this family and she was picked on mercilessly at school after her teacher taught a lesson about 9-11 and blamed radical Muslims, majorly stereo-typing this huge, diverse group. The family was eventually forced to move because all of the children were treated so badly. Listening to this really made me feel sick to my stomach. So, I need to work on not stereo-typing South Africans. The second thing Dr. Brown warned against was fear. People are afraid of the unknown, of foreign countries, languages, customs. The world is viewed as this awful, dangerous place. And yes, there are horrible things going on, but the world cannot be all that bad! But here come the rose-colored glass - I do not want to be naive about the dangers that do exist. That means being smart and aware, wherever I might travel. One thing I am hoping to gain from this field study experience is some street smarts; an awareness of my surroundings and the ability to deal with whatever comes up. I am so excited to "expose myself" to the world, to gain new perceptions and be able to encourage other people to go visit the wider world, the glorious world.

The Parable Activity

In Monday's class we did the Parable Activity. We were given a brief story about the interactions of five different characters and then asked to rank those characters from most approved to least approved. This was a very interesting activity - it was hard to judge the characters just with the bare-bone facts that we were given. None of them were terribly likeable. This activity raised many questions. How much did our culture influence the way we ranked the characters? There was one group in the class who used LDS theology to rank them into the three kingdoms of Heaven - clearly they were highly influenced by the culture of BYU. But one of the girls in my group was disgusted at how all the men treated the sole woman character - she is a declared feminist, so clearly her ideas and values affected how she would rank the characters. I am curious to know how South Africans would have ranked the people in the parable...would their rankings be similar to our prep class or completely different?

On a different note, I have been thinking about my project and how I will benefit from doing this project in South Africa, as opposed to a library, or a zoo in the U.S. Some of the benefits of actually going to a zoo are: seeing how the zoo attempts to educate the zoo goers; how the zoo brings in the entertainment side; I could survey zoo goers in person and see how they feel about zoos, if they feel like they are learning, if they even care about learning or just want to see a lion eat something; I could observe captive behavior first hand and see how zoo enclosures are designed to work with certain species; I could talk to the zoo managers and keepers, see where they get their animals from, if they have breeding programs, how they deal with animal health.

So why do I need to go to a zoo in South Africa? Besides just being a great chance to travel and interact with people of a completely different culture, going to South Africa would allow me to research or work with their conservation groups close up and personal; I could go do stuff at the Lion Park as well as the zoo, and maybe other parks as well; is there wildlife in the zoos or parks that is completely unique to that area, hard to find in other zoos? As I mentioned in my Statement of Intent, going to South Africa would be a great way to start networking, and a great way to get used to working with people and organizations from other countries, something a wildlife biologist has to do a lot.

I think I have a good argument as to why I should go do this project in South Africa.