Artifact 4: Reflection

Of all of the courses I was able to take during my time at Bryn Mawr College — both within the Education Department and more broadly —, “Advocating for Diversity in Higher Education,” which I took as one of my final education courses during my third semester of education studies, was by far the most impactful class I ever had the privilege of taking. The conversations facilitated by Professor Wilson during our time in the class touched on sensitive subjects, such as the ways in which institutions of higher education exploit, undervalue, or fail to support their students of color, that none of my other courses had ever touched on before; students seemed willing and able to share on deeply personal subjects in a genuine, open manner. There were occasional moments when classmates challenged one another that were personal and tense, but the issues were always able to be resolved in a way that ultimately taught an even more impactful lesson than the original matter at hand. While I wish I could share these conversations as an artifact, as they will undoubtedly inspire how I seek to structure my future pedagogical practices and class norms, I ultimately must dedicate this reflection to what I learned about the interview process through the self-designed field work component of the course.

Rather than visiting other institutions of higher education and conducting field work in such a manner, students were asked to choose a topic relating to diversity and inclusion that they wished to learn more about and to then design and conduct a series of interviews with various agents from around Bryn Mawr’s campus. The practice of interviewing, based on the research I have been exposed to during my time in the Education Department, truly seems to be at the heart of education research. Despite this, however, I had no previous experience in arranging and conducting interviews until asked to do so by this assignment; in attempting to do so, I learned that the process of arranging and executing an interview that touches exactly on the points desired for your project is extremely difficult to arrange.

This being said, the process of learning how to conduct interviews also taught me the valuable lesson of being ready and able to accommodate for these shifts and tangents in my research. Rather than attempting to approach a central question with an unbending thesis statement or result in mind, this process taught me how to follow the flow of others’ thoughts and ideas, since it is ultimately in what naturally arises that the truth of research truly exists.

I felt it best to include this artifact, as well, because of how important I believe the lessons I have learned from attempting to conduct self-designed research will be in my future studies. Though I do not plan on progressing immediately on to graduate school, because of this process, I feel more confident about my ability to do so and my ability to arrange and conduct successful, impactful research.