Update: blog 6
1054 words by lcoop
Week 6 blog asks for an update on the implementation of my project so far. Well, I do not seem to have much to say so far because no one has gotten back to me at the common ground site as of now. For now, however, I have been becoming more familiar with this problem mostly by talking to my peers about the problem and looking up the biggest problems in the world dealing with healthcare. I found out that many of my fellow Xavierites understand and are aware of this problem as well. Considering most of the students here at Xavier are striving for a profession in some medical field, hope for the future of healthcare is bright since we are being educated about its problems at such an early age. My second attempt to inform myself of this problem was to surf the web. Through web surfing I found that one of the biggest problems that always seems to surface in a search is AIDs, a major problem around the world but not the leading cause in deaths around the world. Although AIDs cannot be cured it can be controlled with medicines for awhile which most people for lack of funds are unable to attain. The leading cause of death, however, is heart disease. Heart diseases can be prevented mainly because they stem from lack of a heart healthy lifestyle and not monitoring the body correctly. Again a lack of healthcare can lead to things not getting done. I learned that inadequate healthcare can create more problems that possibly could have been avoided. So, although my project has not quite gotten off the ground yet this project is forcing me to take a better look at the state of the world and the problems it has even in countries where everything is supposedly great.
I have taken religion classes since the day I was born. My mother is catholic so it is a way of life. It was a way of life all through grade school and an imagined burden through high school. I am a practicing Catholic, I was baptized and confirmed and I still did not see the point of taking religion classes except for the fact that I needed it to graduate. Once I arrived here at Xavier and was handed my schedule I was at first disappointed to have been assigned a theology class. I thought I had left that behind once I left high school but obviously I was wrong. On top of that I could not see how this would help me in my medical school pursuits. So as I prepared for the first day of classes, theology being my first class of the semester, I was not looking forward to the day at all. I have a predisposition to religion classes. I always expect them to be boring and repeating the same things over and over again with seemingly no end. I step into class and find that I have not immediately fallen asleep mainly because Dr. Homan does not start off in a conventional way but begins with the bloodiest time in the bible. Many times after that he manages to keep my attention as well. So now I seem to enjoy going to class just to see what he is going to say next. I realized that this class can help me with my professional goals. Religion teaches morals which are definitely needed to succeed and the need to care for less fortunate people which will surely be helpful. Since I would like to one day become a doctor it seems only right that I would need to have good moral standards and the need to help others because that is a doctor’s job, to serve the people. This class has also taught me to be open minded towards a lot of things because sometimes things can surprise you such as how this class surprised me. I will probably end up in many classes I will not want to take but I will just need to persevere through them. Biblical studies also opened my eyes to the fact that no one is perfect, except God of course, but that no human is perfect. Even the most holy of people made mistakes, sometimes big mistakes at that. This class reminded me that they are just ordinary people as well which makes it easier to relate to them.
Feminist criticism is a critical reading of texts in a women’s favor. It does not fit within the normal confounds of criticism mainly because it denies the boundaries people try to set on them like they have put on women all through the history of the world. Feminist criticism is a useful tool because it reveals how men have put women in subordinate positions by interpreting texts a certain way and the reasons why women have placed themselves into these subordinate positions as well since all the blame cannot be on the men. It serves to free the women from certain rules placed upon them from the historical texts by reexamining those same texts. Feminist criticism allows for a women’s point of view in interpreting texts originally written and interpreted by men. This form of criticism has its work cut out for it because our world is male dominated. We use words like freshmen and interpret unidentified speakers of novels as “he” if we are uncertain of their sex just through habit. To look in the way of a feminist critic is to then not look at what is in the text but what may be missing from the text. The Bible is no exception. It places women in subordinate positions and portray them as evil beings corrupting men such as in the story of Adam and Eve. There are some exceptions though to this commonality for example the story of Judith and how she saved her town of Bethulia from a whole army. So feminist criticism is a useful tool in that it requires a reader to examine not only what is in the text but also what is not said and also in a feminist view. This causes for a more close reading which may lead to new findings not seen in the initial reading of the text.