Journal #10

This week has been long to say the least. My classes keep me so busy and I feel overwhelmed all the time. I am taking 15.5 credits which doesn't seem like a lot but 6 classes tend to fill up my day with endless paper writing, test studying, and researching. I don't mean to complain but sometimes life just really gets you stressed out. I have had a couple phone calls to mama this week which have helped me to just vent. I love the prep class but I feel like there is an endless amount of stuff to do for it. Six blog posts, methodology reports, contract reports… I don't know it now, but all this work will pay off once I'm in the field.
In Friday's class we talked a lot about the language identification and used the example of the car. We discussed how there would be a definite language between a car expert and someone like myself that knows absolutely nothing about cars. My uncle owns somewhere around 22 cars (most vintage) and is obviously very passionate about cars. He doesn't talk much but I did try to get him talking about his cars and he sure did talk my ear off. However, I understood about 10% of the conversation so I found myself tuning him out and focusing on other things in the room. I'm a horrible niece I know but I really couldn't understand half of the things he was saying. But in class it got me to thinking I could definitely do that to someone on accident in Ghana. I am a part of so many "groups" that have their own language. My non LDS friends aren't going to understand what Relief Society is or what the Word of Wisdom is. If I'm not careful in Ghana I could find myself accidentally alienating people with my topics of conversations. I am a white mormon american girl from the south that attends BYU. There alone are so many different groups I'm apart of and could easily find myself reverting back to my usual language. I have to analyze what I'm asking them and defining anything I feel may be confusing. I don't want to create another language barrier when there is already one there to begin with. If I understand their community and values I can better phrase my questions so that I can get the most effective research done. There was a story presented in class about someone who wanted to do their research on insects but the country he was doing research in actually didn't have a word for insect. The word he was using meant more of a pest which included chickens and crickets. Personally because I am researching primarily in the medical field I understand that they don't use the same terms as we do. In America if you say a certain medical issues like arthritis or a stroke, most people will understand you and the topic. In Ghana I have no idea if they call arthritis arthritis or a stroke a stroke. That is something that I can try to find out through research but I feel I am only going to truly know once I am out in the field.