My first semester in the Honors Program, and also the Social Work program, is coming to a close. I explored several areas of interest over the past four months, but each remained true to the theme of barriers. I looked at how trauma and other adv
erse childhood experiences hold students back; zero-tolerance policies which aim to punish rather than understand and prevent inequities; and refugee experiences with barriers to empowerment. Although I haven’t yet decided on a population that interests me more than another, it is now clear that I have a passion for justice.
The Discovering Evidence course I took this semester empowered me to explore inequities of power and social justice in my future career as a student and as a social worker. We learned the language of research, and it has even been shown that learning the methodologies and practices of research, like taking an ethics course, increases one’s abilities to reason.