Monday Jan 30 2012

I received and interesting phone call last night from my sister-in-law. She is a postdoctoral research scientist at Vanderbilt university in Nashville TN. She is in my opinion one of the sweetest girls on the planet and not to mention the brightest. Her call was really quite an unexpected surprise for me as usually ill chat with my brother on occasion and when we are talking if she is around he will pass the phone and I’ll chat with her briefly. Her call was out of her concern for my India Field study this weekend. As she started off with her concerns regarding my proposed trip she outlined what would not be the usual concerns of a loved one when they are trying to convince you to not do something. Instead of her telling me that it might be dangerous or that the change in diet might kill me, she went off on how the kind of research that I would be doing in India would not be up to par or even close to the standards of scientific research that we can do here in the states. She was concerned that if I went and did some sort of hypothesis based research in India that I might come back with a stain on my resume instead of a positive experience.

As I listened to here opinion I realized that she had missed the entire point. She didn't know that I would be going to India to do a form of anthropological/medically-based research. My goal was to not document the protein structure of a particular vaccine. It was to go and see maybe how people feel about vaccines in general. Are they of any use to the people that I will be serving? Do they see westernized medicine in any for as beneficial or do they want to stick to their traditional medical practices? I found myself defending this opportunity that I have to do something great and I fell in love with the idea of effecting a change in the way that we view the people and culture of Tamil Nadu or Chavadi.