This week, I worked on trying to get more interviews given the results from the previous week. I was able to conduct an interview with a senior who identifies as a white male, which was perfect because I was looking to interview students who did not identify as people of color for the sake of mitigating the influence of race and possible culture. However, this student is an international student, so although they were not coming from a BIPOC in the United States background, the prominent influence of cultural factors and behaviors (that I, admittedly, tried a bit to avoid this time around with white interviewees) still became a prominent tenet of this interview. This was in regards to their cultural habits regarding health as raised in a socialist country in Europe. One thing I found particularly interesting from their interview was the general idea surrounding the concept of the “First-generation, low-income” title in the United States and in universities/colleges here. They mentioned that this was ultimately a relative condition for them given that back home, they are considered to be decently well-off or more-so middle class in the U.S.-adjacent whereas here, they are considered low-income by light years. This is all to say that, in general, this made me reevaluate what we are considering for this project when it comes to using FGLI as a proxy for a class-based understanding of health. Why are we not just using low-income as the criteria for our “subjects” and for the sake of our research. After discussing this with Sarah, we agreed that the first-generation component is just as important for the sake of the influence a college education can have on the general understanding of health. It seems to all be sort of a domino effect. You go to college, you have more of a white collar understanding of the world and profession (not exclusively but speaking on the majority), then you may raise your kids differently after said education may move you out of the previous low-income bracket. This goes more into the details of our research, but in general, if there is more of an awareness on health and that that may critically come about from a college experience or then the habits resulting from a better job, and so forth, then we can see the eventual effects and influence of being first-generation or not in regards to health. So essentially, I and Sarah, for example, who are both FGLI students will socialize our children differently regarding health in comparison to how we were socialized in ACS that intersect our educational experiences and financial ones. Although the differences are unclear, we can assume that said socialization must look different if we had just been low-income without a college education.
Dani,
This project is really taking shape, and it has been great seeing the project evolve these past weeks to consider some complex questions about CHBs as it relates to first-generation students. I think that interviewing white students or students with greater experience navigating the resources at the college illuminates important questions about who feels they belong to an institution like Bowdoin. Faculty of color have been engaging this debate at the College, especially as it pertains to questions of mental health, and I cannot help wonder how the expressions of physical health and wellness might map onto these as well. In other ways, students from wealthier backgrounds might feel an entitlement to these services in ways that first-generation students and students of color might not feel. And if that is the case, a new question emerges: how can institutions do better to educate students about these resources and help them see these resources as being for them. I am very excited about your presentation tomorrow, to see how this has evolved in your time since.