Fast/Slow, Now/Later

I am someone who likes to go as quickly as possible, or as slowly as possible. I either pay attention to every minor detail, or no details at all. I want things now, or I could wait for years. I may be hungry, but I would choose not to make food. I will walk half an hour to save a dollar, but then I won't walk down the stairs to pick something up. The first field visit I had was in Ghana nearly four years ago. At the time we would pick our highs and lows for the day or week. I remember mine often being one in the same. My high would be the trotro ride where I would indulge in plantain chips and fanyogo. While my low would be the exact same trotro ride that took 3 hours in stifling heat with a crying baby on my lap and a goat under my legs. I share these personal character traits and brief experience to illustrate my often fluctuating motivation and strong ability to be selective in my attitude to a situation or task.

I mentioned in my previous post about attending the Inquiry Conference. There is another topic from the conference that I wanted to devote more time to thinking about. This was the idea of motivation. This topic came out in several presentations that I was able to watch. It was most commonly associated with being able to recognize our own motivations and biases in cross-cultural interactions and research. I have been thinking through how this relates to my project on multiple levels.

What are my motivations for going on a field study to Chavadi Pudur, India? I had life changing experiences on my previous studies. I am excited to have another experience. I am especially interested in being able to be participate in another culture that I am not familiar with. Everything that I have read about Tamil culture only makes me want to visit more. I love learning about people and cultures. I think the best ways to do this is to be within the culture making mistakes and being open to new perspectives and ideas. I think it is equally important to be able to admit that part of me is just ready for a new adventure.

Learning/study as a motivation. I am highly motivated by the opportunity to be able to learn more about the aging process including perceptions and experiences. I am fascinated by the aging process, and because of my experiences with individual who have grown older I want to learn all that I can about it.

I believe it is also crucial to acknowledge similar themed biases in order to have ethical and accurate data. If I am going to Chavadi to prove that aging is one way or another I guarantee that as a researcher I will be able to support it. I think that any research with enough of a bias recognized or not is capable of doing this. This is a concern that I have had for a while. I want to learn what is happening not determine what I may already perceive to be the case. I hope that by being aware of this I will be able to mitigate my biases with appropriate methods. Particularly, through the choosing of interview questions and making sure that my field notes are descriptive.

Recognizing motivations and biases will help in all of my preparations and through out the field. Taking the time to think through my motivations and painfully acknowledging them will likely make the subtle difference between my perception of my experience as being a high, low, or in most cases both. Which will make all the difference in the world.