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Hello again! My name is Louisa Strohm and this is a second blog post in continuation to my first post about Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). If you would like to read that one first, which I do recommend you can find that here. In my first post I talked about what MCI is and what kind of effects it has on elderly people physically and mentally. I also talked about my personal connection with MCI, which is my grandmother. She was diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment in 2013, and it affected not only her, but our entire family. We changed the way we did things around the house to try and help her condition. In this blog post I’d like to talk about some new facts and statistics I’ve found. I also got to sit down with my grandmother and my mother, her caretaker, to ask some questions about MCI and how they deal with it.

The first interview I conducted was with my grandmother. The first thing I had her tell me about was her daily routine. She told me that 3 days a week she babysits her 2 year old grandson Leo. If she isn’t watching him she’s doing laundry, watching her favorite game shows such as The Price is Right, or if it’s nice out she sits on the front porch, or she gardens. She also told me that during the spring and summer there is one thing that she never misses and that’s the Phillie’s game. During my interview she expressed many times that the medication she takes makes things much better. At the end of our interview she told me specifically to let the people know that if she didn’t have us girls, referring to me my sister, and mother, she would be sad, she said that she would hate to be alone.

The next interview I conducted was with my mother, the caretaker of my grandmother. She told me that her initial reaction to being told her mother has MCI was that she was upset with herself at first for not recognizing the signs and in denial about my grandmother’s condition. She told me about some of the things she does like leaving notes and filling my grandmother’s medicine for her that may not sound like they make a difference, but they do. She told me that she she normally is fine with my grandmother but sometimes gets frustrated with having to repeat herself but knows that it’s just part of her condition. She got emotional towards the end when I asked things people might not know when living with a person that has MCI. She got teary eyed and told me that it takes a lot of patience and love to care for anyone with any disease.

Since my last blog I’ve done some more research on the effects and ¨cures¨ of MCI. This Scientific American article I found, suggests that the risks of MCI and dementia are falling. Studies done in America and Europe tell us that over the past 25 years the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease has been steadily falling. A study led by Carol Brayne at Cambridge University surveyed people over the age of 65 once in the 90’s and again somewhere around 2010. The results led them to believe that the dementia rate was decreasing by 24 percent.

There is lots more to discover and uncover in the always moving world of MCI, Dementia, and Alzheimer’s. I hope to come to some more conclusions and help more people overcome MCI.

If you would like to see my sources here’s the link to my Annotated Bibliography.

https://sites.google.com/scienceleadership.org/amigas-de-tu-viaje/home?authuser=0

The content of the last post addressed what The Affordable Act and Obamacare wa\. The fight for affordable healthcare is being fought through the Obamacare. Obamacare is threatened of being terminated by President Donald Trump. Even though, Obamacare opens opportunities to poor families and middle class families, Trump still wants to take it away. The Affordable Healthcare Act is the same as Obamacare. The Affordable healthcare Act is called an act because it was an attempt to increase the Healthcare market and making insurance available to more people.(First Blog Post)

Since last blog post, I’ve gathered information from multiple sources and conducted research on my own. I’ve interviewed a nurse at my mother’s clinic. I am well acquainted with her so it wasn’t a problem interviewing her. I initially was supposed to interview a rising RN (registered nurse) that mainly focuses on The Affordable Healthcare Act but his schedule was too busy. As a result, I ended up interviewing another nurse dealing with Obamacare. I’ve conducted the interview over the phone with nurse Jelysa. Questions I asked involved the Obamacare users, the nature of Obamacare, the benefits of it, the downsides of it, and some opinionated driven questions.

Jelysa isn’t only a nurse, she gives patients information on Obamacare. She first offers the patients the opportunity, then explains how it can benefit them. If the patient’s accept the offer, she sets them up for Obamacare, as other workers would do in the clinic.  My newly found information also had a humanely “touch” to it. Jelysa expressed how she felt about the President taking away Obamacare and the flaws of it. She said Obamacare isn’t perfect because participants have to pay a fee at first. However, she believes Obamacare should not be taken away because it has helped the poor and Middle class. Interview with nurse Jelysa.

Jelysa(right) and my mom(right) at work.

I’ve gathered new sources explaining more of the Affordable Healthcare's nature. The act’s three primary goals are to make affordable health insurance available to more people. The law provides consumers with subsidies (“tax credits”) that reduces costs for households with incomes between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level. Expand the Medicaid program to cover all adults with income below 138% of the federal poverty level. Support medical care delivery methods designed to lower the costs of health care generally. Compared to my interview, these goals seem to be true and are the main goals the act wants to achieve.

Agent of Change is the process of doing something that relates to my topic that will have significance. My Agent of change will involve me working in a clinic that verifies patients for Obamacare. I will be working with nurse Jelysa and in some cases by myself in the clinic verifying patients for Obamacare. I will spend long hours working with patients and helping them getting set up for Obamacare. I understand that I am literally working without pay but nonetheless it will be a great experience working with various patients and helping them get acquainted with health insurance.

Family Practice Care Clinic. Where Jelysa works at and where I’ll be working at

Annotated Bibliogrophy

Remember me? The kid with the Black Lives Matter project. If not, let me catch you up. Previously in my last blog post, I spoke about the significance of the movement, and why it was important to me. I think it’s safe to say I did pretty well. But let’s not get off topic because I’m sure you’ve been waiting for more. In my research, I’ve dug up more interesting facts and information that I’d like to share with you and the world.

That was the statement I most agreed with because in the media, when we hear about an African-American being killed by police, we only tweet the hashtag for a few days before we move on to the next thing. This is not how I think we should handle situations. Unity is key. We should scream until our voices are heard. We should fight until the truth hurts. This is the only way we’ll make a difference. Once we realize that as a community, we’ll be successful.

Thank you for making it to the end, and for coming on this wonderful journey with me. If you learned something new, feel free to let me know! That means I’ve done my job. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me: rpowell@scienceleadership.org. Until we meet again, I’m signing off.

See my annotated bibliography here.

Hello again, are you ready for round two? As you may have remembered, I have a passion for discussing rape culture and victim blaming. Here is some previous insight into my research on the topic. To recap, rape culture is a society that tries to justify rape, as well as other forms of sexual assault. Whereas victim blaming is putting blame on the victim as if rape is their fault.

Before I get into my personal research, I also did more online research to get more and more insight into what the internet has on my topic. What I found was a site that showed me common myths about sexual assault. Some included myths about how sexual assault cannot be performed by a spouse,  how people with disabilities are not common to be sexually assaulted, that men are not victims of sexual assault, that if you stay away from strangers you are less likely to be raped. This source showed me common ideas about sexual assault in the world, and it also showed me some statistics to break those myths. For instance, I learned that 60% of child sexual abuse cases are performed by someone the child knows outside the family, and 30% are assaulted by family members. I also learned that a person is sexually assaulted every 107 seconds, which is about a minute and a half.

In my first post, I talked more about examples of rape culture and victim blaming. In the beginning of this post, before my survey results, I am going to share some sad and shocking statistics. In my source, I read statistics that ranged from 2012-2015. Furthermore, I found that 91% of sexual assault are female, and 9% are male. I was also a little surprised to learn that eight out of ten of rape cases, the victim knew their attacker. I found these facts, and more, believably heartbreaking.

Onto my survey. After doing my research on my topic, I was really excited to get my real life research. Get to know what the people thought. Those “people” being my fellow peers in the SLA community. And in order to get the information I wanted, and the information I wanted to get was whether there were examples of rape culture and victim blaming in my own school community. So to get this information, I crafted a survey with five central questions. There was the basic question of what gender people identified with, and then I got into more heavier questions.

This picture above shows the results from one of my questions. I asked this because I knew it would be a sneaky way of tricking my survey subjects without pressuring them into the answers I wanted. These results show how 15/44 people believe flirtatious behavior is a possible cause of rape, and 13/44 believe that revealing clothing is another cause of rape. These percentages are just to name a few.

This was another one of my big questions I wanted answered. You might ask why. Why is this question so important? It is so important because results and percentages like are examples of rape culture. Are examples of victim blaming. People that believe modest clothing, less selfies, and ladylike behavior are the people that are representing rape culture in the SLA community.

My survey helped and taught me more about my topic. I mean, I had people I know, my own age, represent rape culture and victim blaming. And that really disappointed, upset, and saddened me. If you would like to view my full survey results, here it is.  

I am still wondering on how I can make a change in rape culture and victim blaming. Whether it be going around school and doing something, or going to a sexual assault crisis center, I am still figuring out what I want to do. What change I want to make on this issue.

My first blog post informed readers how ballet is known to be dominantly white sport. I also stress how the black community of dancers is slowly growing but still fails in being showcased in big productions. I showed how discrimination in an art also ties to social issues. If social justice is something you believe in, my blogs should resonate with you. Different forms of the arts are meant to express the human creative skill. Skills can be mastered by anyone with practice. The main idea and question focused on is; why are colored dancers discriminated? From past research I found out how old sayings and practices got in the way, of their being colored dancers, and  more.

There is one more topic to add onto my past research on roadblocks in the dance world for African American ballerinas. That is the fact that “raising graceful little toe-touching, leotard-clad ballerina children—now, that's a big ticket item,” according to Katy Osborn’s truthful blog “This is how much it Cost to Raise a Ballerina. As you may know, dating way back to Civil Rights Movement Era and before then many African Americans didn’t receive luxury, high paying jobs due to racism. Besides the fact that many African Americans weren’t allowed to dance, I believe ballet not being diverse relates back to that point in time where many couldn’t afford its expenses.  Therefore, children doing extracurricular activities such as dance wasn’t possible. The items needed to practice and train as a dancer include leotards, tights, costumes, tuition fees, ballet shoes, $100 pointe shoes, and that’s not even all.

I created an amazon shop cart including, the basic necessities for practice. Imagine thes prices times maybe 2 or 3, because you need more than one thing to practice in, and have just in case. Also, imagine adding additional items such as dance school tuition, and costume fees. This picture is just a small expenses to cover a dancer.

In addition to my last ballerina’s who sought to defy racism, there’s also Misty Copeland's mentor, Raven Wilkinson. Raven Wilkinson made it to the well known, famous Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1955. This was way before the Civil Rights Movement begun. During, her time as the first black ballerina touring the Jim Crow South she was told to blend in, even by applying white powder to her face. In WEB exclusive interview with her, she told them how if someone asked if she was black she’d have to lie. She even said in the interview, “I didn’t want to put the company in danger, but I also never wanted to deny who I was.” Margaret Fuhrer, the interviewer asked Raven a question that's centered around what my project is about. “What are your thoughts on ballet’s continuing diversity problem?”, was the final question. Raven Wilkinson responded in a series of question many do not know. “My never-ending question is: When are we going to get a Swan Queen of a darker hue? How long can we deny people that position? Do we feel aesthetically we can’t face it? I think until we start seeing it regularly, we’ll never believe it. But I’m sure that won’t take another 60 years to happen.”, she said.

Besides investigating other interviews done by others, I decided to hold one of my own with an African American dancer since the age of three, Sabree Primus. She is one of my teammates at “The Pointe Dance Studio” and “Straight to the Pointe! Dance Company.”  She also dances at The High School for Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA), a place she believes is diversified to it’s best ability. My first question for her was: Do you believe when dance departments/theater is searching for new dancers do they look for a specific race? Sabree gave an interesting reply saying, “Yes, I do believe they look at race, because they’re looking for the race that fits in with the race they already have.”  She then touched on what I wrote in my last blog about how African American bodies are different than others. She also believed that white people have better technique because, of that.

This is “Straight to the Pointe Dance Company.”

Next, I wanted to speak to Sabree about blacks in dance worldwide. Some of her beliefs were very different, some were also the same. Sabree Primus said Blacks in dance get the recognition they deserved which surprised me. When I followed up with the question;” Does it depend on the style?”, her answer was still no being that she thinks blacks get recognition for the new styles and creating new techniques. She gave Hip-Hop as an example to look at. Her answer for this was skeptical for me. We then talked about differences in black and white dance schools, and how we think white dance school focus more on technique and black dance schools focus on the soul, embracement in movement, the performance, and some technique. As black dancers we also talked about how being an African American dancer is physically and mentally hard. It’s physically hard because we have to build better techniques, and mentally challenging being that you don’t see as many professionals which brings your hopes down.  

Finally, to do something about dancing being diverse, Sabree thinks a good approach would be to have more integrated dance school, dance products that come in color, and more people spreading the word. I would love to see these changes. As an agent of change in this topic, my goal is to create a hashtag for social media. I would gather my dance team, to take professional dance pictures around the city, to spread the word.

Check out my citations!