I recently had a conversation with a woman who handles all of the internships for my department. I will be meeting with her this week to discuss details of how my project can count towards my capstone, and what other classes I can use that align with my project. This has got me thinking about whether or not I may need to change my focus a little bit in order to incorporate more class-friendly attributes in my project. There are a limited amount of classes that are offered that kind of relate to what I want to be studying (parenting styles in Tibetan families), but there are things that I could perhaps incorporate into my life abroad that will be applicable to a class. For example, there is a class called "Teaching English to Children" that I could perhaps fulfill by volunteering in an English teaching center in the community. I will not know much about volunteering opportunities such as this until as late as arriving in the community, so I don't want to take the chance that I won't be able to fulfill the requirements for this class.
However, there is another class called "Religion in the Home" that I can tie into my project pretty well. I would love to incorporate observations about how Tibetan Buddhism affects parenting styles, because it is very much part of the home and culture of Tibetans. I'm wondering if Tibetans consider good parenting to include a thorough teaching and involvement of children in the religion.
It will be interesting to see how my project changes as I come across unexpected "bumps in the road," or how it will change as what I DID expect isn't present or available in the community. How am I going to handle dramatic changes such as these? I need to be able to have a project who's puzzle pieces can shift and change as needed.
One of the number one skills (or sets of skills) you'll want to be practicing through the prep class is being able to adjust to navigate the bumps in the road. You'll definitely have to keep adjusting once you get to the field.
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