Introduction

Reflective Introduction: What It's All About.

My name is Marlene Pimienta, I am currently a freshman at the University of California Irvine. This quarter I have delved deep into the medical humanities, specifically focusing on racism in healthcare. For me, this topic was the go to issue within medicine. I began researching the effects of racism in healthcare, and the ripple effect was much larger than I anticipated. I went through a multitude of sources from research papers to articles. I had to keep narrowing my topic because of how broad I was going, but it was not easy to say the least. Some things were too specific for my liking, I felt that they would be hard to argue for, or even just read about since not articles or papers were specifically talking about it. And then some topics were way too broad. They were made up of many different parts and really could go in any direction. Eventually I settled on the effects of historical racism on African American willingness to seek healthcare.

Personally, this topic means a lot to me. Being a Latinx person in the United States of America it is hard not to notice, not to care. There is so much going on now, racism has always existed, but it feel like its now where we are at our breaking point. The pot is boiling over so to speak. Just because the physical chains are gone from people's hands does not mean that the effects of our past get washed away. Looking back at what has been happening, the trump presidency, Black Lives Matter protest, hate crimes rising, racism against Asian people for corona virus, and more. It is really tragic what has been happening. These are the issues my generation has to tackle, we cannot live in this hate filled world anymore. I knew I had to choose to do my projects on racism, I had to.

In this class we did a context project, basically an essay discussing a topic relating to the medical humanities. My topic was around racism in medicine. I found a depressing yet educating amount of sources dedicated to this topic. For my context project, it was very difficult to narrow down such a large issue into one that could be written about clearly. This is why we were required to do drafts. Honestly, before this quarter I never wrote drafts, I wrote my entire essay all at once, and I did not revise whatsoever, I believed every piece to be as good as I could do. I had just written it, how could it not be the best I could do?

However, I see now the importance of drafting and revising. With feedback I have gotten from my teacher and peers, I feel like my writing has definitely improved. Having multiple drafts definitely allowed me to better express my ideas. It is difficult to turn you thought into easily understandable essays. The thought process has to be clear, because although you understand logically how your idea is progressing, it may be hard for others to recreate your same thought pattern if you are not clear enough. Back to the feedback aspect, I really appreciate what my peers had to say about my essay. It was helpful to identify weak points in my writing pieces, as well as what others would do to improve my work. I am especially thankful for my teacher’s feedback. It was the most constructive and detailed, a lot of what I knew to be lacking in my essays were pointed out in my drafts. This allowed me to revise very key elements and overall just tie together my ideas better.

I went through this same process in my advocacy project. This is where I argued about solutions to my aforementioned issue. Personally I really enjoyed this project the most in this class considering it dealt with solutions for problems. Racism in healthcare does not have a one size fits all or easy solution. With my specific topic; how can medicine regain trust with the African American community, You can tell how difficult of an issue it is to solve, considering racism is still alive and well today. This did not discourage me from my topic however, I felt it is extremely important and should be addressed, despite less than perfect solutions being available. I found a few solution to the problem I posed, and tried my best to elaborate on them are find the best one I could.

Writing these papers was not easy, but the impacts of covid-19 definitely did not help. Because we are not on campus, we were not able to use the library to gather resources. I prefer online sources to physical ones, but I also wanted to take out books on the subject. Something about having physical papers is very different from just using online sources. Not attending campus in person was a big hit to my work ethic. I tend to be unmotivated, and not having to attend actual classes meant that I had to be responsible for myself. More than that, covid definitely did not improve my mental health. Not being able to see my friends, staying home all day doing nothing, gaining weight, it took a toll on me. Physical health is connected to our mental health, and I have felt the decline due to not moving around as much. I got stuck in a routine, lazing around, and stressed by school.

Looking back at this quarter, and this past year in general, I feel like I grew quite a lot. I believe my writing has improved since the beginning of the quarter, my flow feels better and I can more easily translate my ideas into writing. Not to mention how much I learned in class, from how to find reliable sources, to properly citing, and how to incorporate more 'style' if you will, to my writing. I have never taken a college level writing class before this one, I had placed out of the previous class. Honestly, I kind of wish I would have been able to experience that class, writing 39B, university is a whole other ball game, and I feel like I could have been better prepared. Overall, this was a learning experience, and a fun one at that.

Above are links to my final projects. My entire quarter has accumulated to these pieces.