Category Archives: Work in Progress

Best of: Passion and Spain

Over the course of this semester, I explored España in my Passion Posts – all in an effort to share some culture from across the pond.  I have elaborated on music, literature, dance, and food, among many other vivacious and intriguing aspects of the Spanish.  Throughout this journey via cyberspace, I hope that my fellow RCL classmates have learned just as much as I have! Although I’ve visited Madrid for a couple of days, elaborating on many of the topics in this Passion Blog has allowed me the opportunity to further explore the country as I delved into history and culture.  If anything, this Passion Blog has served as wonderful preparation for my next spring in Seville!

For my first chosen blog post, I picked my competition-winning Swim Suit, Birthday Suit? post.  Here, I explored the topic of nude beaches found in Spain, explaining the implications as well as the misconceptions regarding their existence.  I especially like this post because I believe the topic of nude beaches exposes the significance of cultural context well; while nude beaches here may be perceived as risqué and sexual, such is not the case overseas.  As a part of a broader European culture all-around more comfortable with nudity, Spain embraces the freedom of enjoying the beach sans free.  However, because it is a slightly risqué topic to us Americans, it was ultimately intriguing to fellow classmates, which allowed for much discussion and commenting.

Secondly, I chose The Fighting of the Bulls, one of my first posts, as an exceptional representation of Spanish culture within my blog. It takes a potentially controversial topic and presents it within the context of an adoring population that elevates matadors to celebrity-athlete status.  Furthermore, I was/am especially intrigued by how Alexander Fleming and his amazing discovery of wonder-drug penicillin plays into the story of the glorious, dangerous, controversial sport of bullfighting.  Plus, I have real pictures from la Plaza del Toros de las Ventas!

It’s been a great year for blogging for ALL of us students – I was always so intrigued by what everyone had to share! I’m sad it’s over, but then again, I was running out of Spain topics!

http://smwagnerportfolio.weebly.com/

Advocacy Project!

Although I also have a poster for part of my Advocacy Project, here is a link to the website I designed as well.  Yay, Weebly!

http://rethinkingmedicalschool.weebly.com/index.html

 

Also, here are photos of my poster hung up around campus (I tried to home in on Liberal Arts buildings) :

 

Burrowes Building

Burrowes Building

Sparks Building

Sparks Building

IMG_1128

 

^Willard

E-Portfolio in Progress

Ah, our final project in RCL. Like, what? I thought it never ended?!

Kidding. Kidding!!

Anyways, my e-portfolio (now that I’m all knowledgeable regarding weebly) will most likely be a website using that platform.  However, I must say, I had a hard time picking out templates that I really, really liked for my Advocacy Project so maybe I’ll play around with sites.psu.edu as well.  The problem, though, is that I’m having a hard time deciding on one specific theme.  You see, I’m actually a bit grateful for this e-portfolio project, as I do see it as a nice opportunity to have something to show to future employers/admissions boards/whoever you gotta impress.  However, because I’m not planning on going into anything like graphic design or art or something fun like that, I feel like the practical option for my eportfolio would be a pofessional look.  But that sounds so boring to me!

So there’s that issue.  And also, in my mind I’m trying to categorize my RCL work, and in a way it kind of works.  Throughout the course, after all, I generally wrote/talked/did projects on subjects that I was genuinely passionate about: running, education, medicine, women, work-life balance, etc.  So in class the other day, I was considering going with a theme of presenting myself according to these different passions, but I’m not quite sure if that is practical.  In addition, I particularly like that I have somewhat included my love of different cultures (Spain) in my RCL work, and I’m wondering if I should incorporate some of my written works from Spanish classes here at Penn State as well.  Only thing is, the essay I’ve written in Spanish are really only literary analysis ones, so I don’t know if that’s necessarily showcasing my ability to be innovative and share ideas.  …Thoughts?

Anyway. For my chosen artifacts to showcase in my portfolio:

-Persuasive Essay on Medical Education Reform.  Although I believe I could probably work on this piece forever and still not be 100% satisfied (or want to say more), I truly am passionate about what I’m talking about and I spent a lot of time researching the issue, and I believe it was a good piece.

-“I Believe in Running Away from My Problems” podcast.  Aside from lending an incredibly personal perspective to my life and my passions, I like how it’s not necessarily writing.  Plus, running is such a big part of my life – I feel it deserves a spot on the list.

– Civic Issues blog where I explore different problems/aspects of American education.  Although I didn’t necessarily have an arc to my four posts, I tried each week to approach education in a different, unexpected way as I tied in the CI topic education with other CI topics.

– Paradigm Shift Paper (women in the workforce) – man, this paper took a lot of research too. But I liked it! I honestly learned so much, and it benefited me in more ways than just creating a paper I was proud of.

-This goes with the Paradigm Shift paper in a way (so I’m not sure I’d want to do both..) but I really did enjoy the Rhetorical Analysis paper because I STILL love that Olympic commercial. Gets me every time.

…or a compilation of Passion posts from last semester? There were a couple of those that may as well been pages ripped out of my mental diary.  But, hey, the best writing comes from genuine revelations, and some of those optimistic posts could serve as inspiration for someone, hopefully.

Hey, I know this is all pretty much writing, but I tend to do better with words than technology anyways…

Oh, I also would like to at one point include a resume on my site.  However, my current one on file is all my high school stuff, and apparently once you get to college no one really cares what you did in high school…soo….summer project?

Thoughts About Advocacy…

So, for a little background, you guys may need to read my last WIP post! See, I’m still trying to figure out the medium through which I’m going to do this project (although, I am leaning more towards a poster campaign of some sort of “Profiles of the Prospective Medical Student” – specifically Liberal Arts majors.  I would conduct interviews with Seniors who I know are going to medical school, and create these eye-catching posters to hang up in Liberal Arts buildings. A sample of some initial questions so far:

 

What is your major and how did you decide on this major?

Did you intend on applying to medical school once you entered college?

What sort of challenges have you faced that you believe are unique to liberal arts majors?

How do you think experience with these challenges have helped and/or hurt you?

Do you feel you have an advantage over science majors in some way?

 

If you guys have any ideas beyond the poster idea, though, please let me know! Also, my other specific question is which buildings specifically would be best for hanging them up.  My target audience is Penn State Liberal Arts students, for my purpose is to try and get more diverse students to consider and thus maybe apply to medical school  (My essay talks much about how the different ways of thinking acquired from different undergraduate studies/ majors would comprise a more innovative and creative team of future doctors).  Because there is this focus on the role of one’s major in  deciding whether or not they want to go to medical school – and my desire to dispel the idea that only Bio majors are med school bound – I would design each “profile” poster with a theme based on that student’s major.  For example, a Spanish major would have a Spanish-themed poster, Psychology major would have some brains, etc.

But I definitely need some feedback guys!! Please let me know!

Go to Med School for the Sake of Society!

For my advocacy project, I’m still trying to suss out my particular form of delivery.  However, I am sure that I will be targeting college students (particularly Penn State students) with the intent of encouraging students to consider medical school.  Specifically, I will try to communicate with non-science majors to consider that their diverse educational background is valuable within the scope of prospective med students.  I will be operating under the kairos provided by the Affordable Care Act, which will exacerbate the need for many more physicians and health care professionals.  Therefore, college students, the closest prerequisite to medical students, need to be – for lack of a better word – targeted  for marketing medical school.

Since walking from my conference with Sarah, I’ve been toying with the idea of recruiting these potential medical students hidden in the crowd.  I plan to do this by using a method utilizing people.  While I first considered promoting some sort of communicative mentor-like relationships with those with the field and prospective students, I’m leaning more towards this focus on Liberal Arts students, and considering the older students that I actually know who are in fact Liberal Arts majors and going to medical school.  Specifically, I have connections with a Spanish major as well as a Psychology major from Penn State who are medical school bound, so I am pondering conducting some sort of interviews (either audio or video) and using some medium for distribution.  The purpose is to promote communication with Penn State students, especially those in the College of Liberal Arts, in order to show how such students can and should consider health care fields.  Perhaps I could include science majors as well and create a kind of profile of the prospective medical students?! Showing the diversity of them (in an effort to dispel the idea of cookie-cutter pre-med student…which, I mean, is often true).  And so, the turned-in proof of advocacy would most likely be electronic in some form in this case.  I still, however, am not sure if this should be through social media ( and so, which), shown on Penn State TV somehow, etc.

A Complex Issue in Medicine

To preface this hopeful-beginnings-of-an-outline, a disclaimer: this paper/project is going to be a doozy.

In a way, this is going to be a good thing. For instance, I believe I will have no problem whatsoever reaching the 6-8 page limit; if anything, I feel I may have to hold myself back.  In truth, once I started really delving into research regarding the future of health care and med ed, I realized just how much is out there.  This issue is complex, at its simplest.  It is touched my politics, business, finances, and personal sacrifices.  Health care (and its physicians) are, at the same time, both improving and backtracking towards decline.  And, as my plethora of blog posts, articles, TEDtalks, etc. indicate, the world is talking about this.  A lot.

First, I’m actually going to start with my presentation of the problem, which is, in fact, tied to my personal ethos regarding the problem.  At first, I was concerned because I didn’t think that I, a freshman student in undergrad, had much to say about the future of physicians and education.  However, I realized just how pertinent the information presented in my argument and call for change is to my life; after all, I am a student contemplating health care as a career, and it looks like health care needs to be sold to my generation.  So first, some pessimism: medical professionals will continue to decline if they remain unhappy and regretful of the state of their career choice, and apparently misconceptions of the profession run rampant.  However, I am not quite sure how to incorporate this into the introduction.

Thesis: In order to repair a field paradoxically declining with its increasing demand and knowledge, a paradigm shift in which medical education embraces creativity and relevant cultural and technological progress is necessary to create an ideal health system comprised of financially-competent, empathic, and imaginative physicians.

 

Herein lies the layout of the rest of the essay.  Potential solutions to these problems.  I apologize; this is a rough layout, and I really am not quite sure how to organize it just yet.  But, these are the common themes I came across in my research that I definitely would like to incorporate somehow:

Reform starts with the rejection of conformation: When it comes to med school, the bullet points comprising the checklist of “Who You Have to Be to Get Into Medical School” leave very little wiggle room for individuality; with research, volunteering, stellar test scores/MCATS, and more, these cookie-cutter applicants lend very little diversity and creativity to the pool of medical students. Medical reform starts with applications process and the would-be students themselves.  So: we need to open up the realm of medicine to those who think differently, creatively, and unconventionally.  Medical school is not merely for the cut-and-dry life sciences kids.

Diversity with technology creates connectivity and innovation: With the incorporation of diverse angles of thought in medicine, we take ideas from biology, technology, math, etc. and bring them to their full potential with the support of the others.  Reality, including the reality of medicine, does not function within itself.  As stated earlier in this blog post, it is multi-faceted with politics, business, etc.; however, it is also multi-faceted in its innovation.  Medicine needs expertise of many disciplines of study beyond just biology, and these experts need to communicate with each other.  They need to share ideas – they need to learn from each other.  Medical school could/should be that vehicle.

Technology Opens up Unique Opportunities for Med/Med Ed: Here, we can bring together these ideas for specific suggestions for med ed reform; for example, a call for creativity is also a call for sacrifice of something else.  This something else could very well take the form of previously-memorized minutia that could just-as-easily be accessed via technology.  This also brings up the suggestion of doing away with (some) of the force-feeding of large amounts of information via texbook, lecture, etc. in medical school in favor of more clinical and practical experiences early on, or perhaps more application/critical thinking/open-book-problem-solving medical school evaluation (aka tests and grades).

Similarly, this need of connectedness transfers over into the needs of patient care: There is a current, idealistic phenomenon garnering attention, and that is the call for Whole Patient Care.  WPC requires that, again, communication is essential for the patient. This is in terms of our increase in specialists (who need to talk to each other about the same patient), but also can apply to the role of compassion and empathy in doctor-patient relationships.

 

Guys, I’m stopping here.  But honestly, there could still be so much more. Do you see any holes? Any questions or sides of the issue that you would like me to address?

Additional Source Stuff:

http://www.tedmed.com/talks/show?id=7331 , http://blog.tedmed.com/?p=2779 , http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-ansary/future-medical-education_b_2699375.html , http://www.tomorrowsdoctor.org/visions , http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2013/03/08/what-my-home-renovation-taught-me-about-practicing-medicine/ , http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2013/03/02/not-in-my-name-real-patient-centeredness-means-sharing-power/

Me? Persuasive?

For my online deliberation assignment, I chose to deliberate on a health care blog.  The site was bursting with information, and I found that I very much enjoyed perusing through the multitude of articles about current, innovative medicine (this is probably a good thing considering I’m going after a career in health care, here).  Because the subject the subject holds so much interest and relevance to me (and also to the current public too – more on that later), I’m am, as Sarah put it during class, “going towards health care”.  The subject is vast, but it leaves me with many, many options.

Specifically, though, I’m thinking along the lines of the Affordable Care Act and its implications.  Herein lies the kairos of this issue – although I may be ever-so-slightly past its peak, interest in our nation’s health care system is still high.  Because we recently signed into law a drastic change, this means that in order for it to work, other changes need to take place as a type of “coevolution”, if you will. This could mean addressing the physician shortage, or perhaps I could even challenge the current medical school curriculum.  My audience would obviously change depending on what exactly I decide to focus on, but it would be easy to direct it any way.  Students, lawmakers, the American Medical Association, medical schools, etc.   Click.  Take a look at the homepage.  Clearly, the level of kairos is high – well, I guess, specifically 82%.

So, I suppose that in writing this blog post, I’m realizing that my two biggest contenders for my persuasive essay are, specifically, encouraging students to pursue a career in medicine (or some other way to address the physician shortage…although I’m not about to advocate medical robots), or encouraging medical schools/AMA to revamp Med. Ed. in a specific way.  However, I’m wondering if I should be concerned that I would be trying to persuade them to do something that they’re already in the process of doing.  But there has to be a way to work around that, right?

In order to reach this ultimate purpose – making people consider medical education in a new, nonconventional way – my “persuasive” research would include much about how medicine looks today as opposed to how it looked when traditional medical education was first established.  Specifically, this could refer to technology, increased number of people needing health care due to merely public health or population demographics, and also increased number of people with access to health care due to the Affordable Care Act.

And, perhaps for my advocacy project, I could submit my own proposal to the AMA  for what medical education should look like? You know, with all my experience in medical school and all. Yeah… just kidding.  Well, I mean, I’m not quite sure whether or not that would be possible.  However, I could somehow campaign Mt. Nittany health professionals to start/endorse a PSU student-physician shadowing program to encourage students to consider health care, or perhaps direct students and teachers themselves to push health care careers.  It’s weird – it’s almost there’s a stigma on freshmen coming in thinking they’re going to med school.  Sure, a lot of these plans do end up changing, but what if a fewer number of these plans if fellow students, TAs, and professors took them seriously when they come in making this claim?  Not sure of the details, but a viable advocacy project could include encouraging students and professors to encourage each other/help each other in this goal.

A Moderating Philosophy

My moderating style – or what I believe it should be, rather – is inclusive.  An invitation, it is inviting and warm. It operates on the assumptions that all comments are safe and well-received, and it is sustained through fostering an environment of low tension and overall acceptance.  My moderating style holds little power, save only for hopefully drawing out thoughts from the silence of an outnumbered guy or a shy girl.  I aim to be mostly a mere calming smile – who can be inquisitive at times.  Absolutely no condescension. Idealistic? Perhaps.  But I believe that walls and presuppositions can only be knocked down with openness, and I even more strongly believe that these walls of stubbornness must go.

Why do I strive for such idealism? As a product of an environment surrounded by extreme partisanship (and bashing) that has ultimately left a sour taste, I have grown to have little tolerance for hard-headed one-sidedness.  It has shown to create theatrics and a universal us vs. them attitude – yet little else. To me, the term moderation lends itself to the idea that people must be moderate – at least in terms of an absence of non-negotiable, steel convictions. Beliefs are okay, but that’s just it. Beliefs are okay. I aim to avoid spirals of silences and overbearing opinions, again, most likely in rebellion of my at-times seemingly brainwashed family and some friends.  For this reason, my goal is the opposite: an anti-conflict environment in which each position or possibility is explored, regardless of whether those beliefs are shared by group members themselves or instead led into discussion by yours truly – the moderator.  Eventually, opinions may and should be formed, but only as long as group members are led to truly consider the options and implications.

Civil Issues Reflections

While I cannot admit I personally admit looking forward to my week creating a well-informed post, I do truly admit that I enjoy discovering just how informed my fellow classmates are becoming on their respective issues – and also how interesting they make it to share their new-found knowledge! They do require more preparation and research seeing as the best CI posts include different forms of media as well as links to different sources, but this extra work makes for a more engaging blog-reading experience.  Additionally, these Civic Issues posts and subsequent comments feel more like a conversation than any other sub-blog we’ve had, and that is definitely the most interesting part.  I actually look forward to being informed. And not just on some fun Passion topic.  These are real issues, and not only should we be informed, but we should have a medium to create conversation – deliberation is already happening!

What I particularly enjoyed about others’ blog posts that I hope to include more in my future ones is a specific tie-in from our lives (the lives of Freshman Penn State students) to the issue at hand.  Sometimes you read blogs that are informative, but that you ultimately leave thinking – Well, so what? This noted connection and relativity to students’ lives is essential, and the less-expected the connection is, the better.  Finally, in terms of what I plan my next CI posts to look like – an interesting thing happened with my first one.  While my CI blog post is about education, my first blog post addressed gender issues in education.  This, funnily enough, seemed to have confused people into thinking that my CI blog is on gender issues! But it did spark an idea – an idea I’m planning on playing around with.  What if I connect Education to any of the other Civic Issue topics, addressing a different one each time? Like I said, I’d have to play around with this, but I’d be interested to see how many more people I could confuse.

 

For my group’s particular Political Communication and Deliberation chapter, “Deliberative Communities and Societies”, the main points of interest are that such communities must feature a leader who encourages the participation of citizens, a prominent social network and sense of public trust, and ultimately, participation in deliberation as a part of the popular culture or education.  The chapter also makes a point to show how smaller communities can still have an effect on larger community bases.

For my group’s presentation of Chapter 8, I think it would be interesting to create a sort of “mock society” out of our class.  After a couple minutes of introducing the main points of the chapter and tying it to class concepts, we could ask (in true democratic fashion” for students to vote on a leader who “serves as articulate spokespersons for the community but also are capable of empowering their fellow community members to discover and contribute their own voices” (Gastil, 219).  We then could present a civil issue to the “community” and prompt a deliberative discussion, guiding them and highlighting certain attributes and necessities in order to maintain a status of “deliberative society”.  In order to hold interest effectively, this civic issue should probably be one that pertains to the “community” we created – aka one that pertains to freshman Penn State Schreyer students.