I feel that I unlearned a lot of things that I thought I knew about research. My first exposure to research was in an engineering context. I loved that job and learned so much about research. But having this WAGSFP opportunity really widened my view of what research is and can be. I hadn\u2019t been exposed to the humanities side of research. So, reading, listening to, and watching media, then systematically gathering facts of peoples\u2019 experiences was very different from my past research job. It required a whole new set of skills! Additionally, this experience was much more independent, as I was creating a literature review. I had to be really disciplined with my time since I worked virtually. Working online made me realize that the people who are making the media I was reviewing are actually more accessible than I thought. Two disability culture artists I have enjoyed since I was in early high schooled replied to an email I had sent about including reproductions of their work in my literature review!
I found the disability studies community extremely empowering during my work. It seemed that every podcast or documentary had an easily accessible transcript. Inclusion is built into the fabric of disability culture, whether that be research, art, or simply conversation.
For future WAGSFP fellows, it is important to remember that you are doing work worth doing. You were accepted for a reason! I definitely considered my age, level of education, and general atmosphere in the research I was doing, and questioned how qualified I was. Ten weeks is a long time to work on one project (compared to usual school projects). Because of the timeline and the lack of grades, it can be hard to tell how you are progressing. I really relied on grades during the school year to quantify my success, but research and post-college does not come with a grading scale! My advice is to be confident in your work and abilities.
WAGSFP not only allowed me to learn about the mechanics of research, but also provided me with so many invaluable connections. These connections have opened opportunities to continue my research and expand into new disability studies topics, like event programming, curriculum alteration, mentoring, and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I feel that I unlearned a lot of things that I thought I knew about research. My first exposure to research was in an engineering context. I loved that job and learned so much about research. But having this WAGSFP opportunity really widened my view of what research is and can be. I hadn\u2019t been… Continue reading Blog #4<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3878,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3878"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3372,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371\/revisions\/3372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/wagsfp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}