This week, Dani and I have been working on our presentation. We have been working on consolidating the messiness in our interview and research findings. We have settled on an idea that, despite an increase in accessibility to healthy food and other wellness resources, there are still certain barriers present that may prohibit the change in socialization for first-generation low-income students to inhabit the classed culture of health and wellness that persists at Bowdoin. There is a certain standard of health that many people feel pressured to adhere to, yet socialization based off of class, culture, geographic region, and many other factors for FGLI students mean that this standard of health is not always attainable, despite the resources being there. For some, this standard of health is attainable, yet there is a shared recognition that the health practices that FGLI students may engage in here are not practices that will be available and/or attainable forever.
Additionally, we extracted interview themes. We separated themes into three categories—diet, mental health, and physical activity/exercise—and placed themes accordingly, though many themes relate to more than one category.
For diet, we found themes of peer pressure, food & culture, food security and affordability, quality/nutrition content of food, awareness that access to “healthy” food can be temporary, and a newfound and/or temporary awareness of good versus bad foods.
For mental health, we found themes of unlearning of “grind-behavior,” recognizing the privilege of access to mental health care and taking care of that while they can, Bowdoin providing more financial security, peer pressure to take care of yourself, and having more time for self-care versus the guilt over doing self-care.
For physical activity/exercise, generally all respondents found this less important relative to the other two forms of health management. They considered exercise a luxury, whereas food is considered a necessity for survival. Some respondents mentioned the class-based incentive to take care of the physical body, implying that physical exercise is important for engaging in manual labor for survival.