Back to school and thoughts

Soooo… First week of school…. I don’t think my brain has been this active for.. well, I can’t remember the last time I thought this much and I think a lot!
Anyway, things are going fantastically. To start with, thus far the work seems manageable. I’ll see if that changes as I actually get into everything. But, I feel that I have a great advantage in this program considering that I have an undergrad degree that involved a lot of research and I have all the work experience in social services.

A few of my projects that I am excited about…
For my History and Philosophy of Social Work class, I have to do a project exploring the history of a local social issue, agency, or event. This will be about a 15- 20 page project. At first I thought I would look at the history of Freeport West, the agency I work for. Especially since my Dad’s friend was one of the people who started it. I figure I have a lot of connections to explore that. Then I started thinking about it, The Bridge started around the same time as a reaction to large numbers of runaway youth. The cool thing about Freeport is that it was started by some high school students. The Bridge was started by a group nuns… http://www.csjstpaul.org/ (check out their social justice stuff)

Anyway, I have decided to explore grassroots reaction to runaway youth in Minneapolis (in particular the West Bank) during the 1970s. I am so excited to start this history project!

Onto my project for my Methods and Research of Social Work class… I have decided to study body image and how it differs between women of different cultures (I am focusing on African American women and White women). In this sort of “fake” research that I will do, I am using exposure to feminist ideology as an intervention for negative body dissatisfaction. I am definitely finding the skills that I learned about research in my undergrad degree are so useful now that I’m back in school!

Anyway, on a very unrelated note, this food blog is so fun to read. I still haven’t made any cupcakes from it. I like the recipes with weird ingredients… check it out and make some cupcakes since I don’t have the time to right now!