Since I last posted I have been on my winter break for over a month. I successfully finished my 5th semester at MSU and am now preparing to fly to the Czech Republic to spend a semester at Palacky University in Olomouc. Last semester was incredibly challenging for me academically, so it has been nice having a break from all of that. I've been in Muskegon working at Ryke's Bakery and helping with some things for my dad and stepmom at Clock Funeral Home. I'm really happy I have these jobs to keep me busy (and help me to pay off my credit card) before I leave for study abroad... my departure is fast approaching!
I do have some very exciting news I would like to share... This past semester one of the classes I took in James Madison was a 300 level course titled "Women and Power in Comparative Perspective". I took this class because it met requirements in both my Comparative Cultures and Politics major and Women and Gender Studies Minor. My professor was Dr. Zahra Jamal, and boy did she challenge us! Never before had I read so many different authors in one class. At first it was very overwhelming and I had a hard time keeping up and writing successful responses to each article or book. However, when Monika, Sam, Gaby, and I began to work on our final paper and project for the class, we soon found out all the work in the class was for a reason.
Our final project was a 25 page paper and 25 minute presentation on a topic of our choice, but related to the themes of the course. We chose to research on the topic of Women in Grassroots Organizing and somehow landed on the specific topic on Latinas in Labor Organizing in the United States. Monika came up with the interesting idea of using Chicana feminism as a theoretical background and together we came up with the case studies of the United Farm Workers of America (my focus in the paper), the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, and the Garment Workers Center and their boycott of Forever 21. I really love research because no matter how daunting the task at hand it seems as though somehow everything can fit together... and the moment you find that connection and everything clicks is the most satisfying moment for a young researcher and writer. When that moment happened for us, and when we were praised for our presentation to the class, we knew we had done something great!
As we continued working incredibly hard on our research and the paper we decided that, since we had been getting such good feedback from our professer, we should enter it in MSU's Center for Gender in Global Context's undergraduate research competition on women and gender in global context. We were very proud of our work at the time of its completion (and after a few very late nights at the library) and were hoping for the best when we turned in our work to our professer and entered it in the competition.
I am very excited to say that yesterday we received the news that we had been awarded Honorable Mention for our paper, "We have Guts, We Have Spirit: Feminist Applications to Chicana Labor Organization in the United States"!! We didn't win the competition, but the committee doesn't always give honorable mention and they felt we deserved recognition for our hard work. It is so exciting to be recognized for this and I am looking forward to the reception next week!
I am very proud of myself and my friends for writing this paper and am even more excited to continue my studies and to hopefully continue researching women in a global context. I am now more confident in my research and academic skills and am excited for my future. I wonder what I will find in my semester studying Central Europe? I can't wait to find out!
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