Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies

Webinar Transcription

2021-02-07 Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies

[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. Welcome to the CollegeAdvisor’s on Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies. To orient everyone with the webinar timing, we’ll start off with a presentation. Then answer your questions in a live Q&A on the sidebar. You can download our slides and you can start submitting your questions in the Q&A tab.

Now let’s meet our panelists.

Hey, I’m sorry about the, if I’m, my audio is not working really well and it’s lagging a little bit, but just, and I’ve turned my camera off [00:01:00] because to improve the speed, the processing speed, but yes, that’s me. I’m Daphne graduated from U Chicago in 2017 and today I’m a mental health therapist and social worker in Eastern Arkansas.

And I still do community organizing and activism in Memphis.

Hi everyone. My name is Marty . I’m a current senior Yale college where I’m double majoring in the history of science and medicine and ethnicity, race and migration. I’m originally from California, Los Angeles. So most of my community organizing work is rooted in particularly the Japanese American and black communities there, but I’ve also had the wonderful privilege of getting to work with folks on the east coast as well.

Okay. Great. Thank you both for being here today. The first question I have for you, what led you to your major?[00:02:00]

Oh, I can go. I. Had considered majoring in whole, we call Kress a U Chicago for quite a while, but spent most of my time in like different public policy and sociology classes. And at one point I realized that I had gone across disciplines so much that I needed to graduate and need to get it all together under one major.

And so I did committed comparative race and ethnic studies and comparative human development altogether. I realized I was gravitating towards questions of race and ethnicity in lots of my other classes and just made sense to put it all together. And I think for me for a lot of folks who are interested in ethnic studies it’s first of all on her late personal, in terms of my identity as a black indigenous person of color, in terms of my identity as a queer person, as a gender, non binary person. So all of those things were factoring into my decision and. I’ve always known that I want to do public health. I’m specifically looking at how we can understand race as [00:03:00] a health problem.

And and racism specifically as detrimental people’s health. So I ended up. Choosing this as a second major, because I was able to do that, was able to explore some more topics and other things that I was interested in, like indigeneity and settler colonialism, and a big part that I want to emphasize, because I think it’s a really important part of the history of majoring in ethnic studies, regardless of which program you’re in.

Almost all ethnic studies programs are rooted in protest and in student activism and organizing, and Yale is no exception in that regard. But one of the things that really motivated me in particular was that in the spring of 20. And of 2019 Yale had refused to give tenure to several ethnicity, race and migration professors, and refused to appoint people solely into that department.

They were always doubled in something like American [00:04:00] studies or something like English. And so all of the senior tenured faculty presides. And there were a lot of student protests to ensure that these promises that Yale had made were going to be kept and being a part of that because I was just active on campus in different communities, really persuaded me to join the major and actually declare myself as a second year on a payment manager.

Okay. Next question. What extracurriculars did you do in high school?

I did a lot of random stuff in high school. I played rugby for a little bit, but most of what I worked, I was circulated around different model UN competition. And I also did knowledgeable and Quizbowl and was my senior year defacto organizer of it that like we kept, I’ve got this going on trips and set up an invitational [00:05:00] tournament for there.

And my mom also connected me with somebody. Had was acting who he was a pastor whose church was provided a space for meeting space for lots of the Chinese community. And that’s how she knew him. But she also knew that he had a workforce development, nonprofit, where I became a GED tutor and started having like really rich conversations with like human relationships.

And that really started my interest in various questions of like poverty and incarceration that later I followed up on college classes. Yeah. I think for me, I was also all over the place. I’m sorry, Daphne. For me it was also all over the place. I think one of the main things I did in high school was I was a two sport recruited athlete.

So both softball and water. And I still play water polo today at Gale. Although not right now, obviously. And also again, being involved in the Japanese American community. Southern California. And so that meant more specific leadership programs like this organization called kina which really did a lot of, the.

Development of like leadership and advocacy and campaign [00:06:00] tools for young folks. But also things like junior YBA, which is like the big sort of youth Buddhist organization. That’s primarily Japanese American in California. So that was more like social, cultural also again, pre health interests.

So pre health internships, everything from like clinical dentistry to like ear nose and throat stuff. Did not end up deciding to be a doctor, but all of it was super useful background. And then, yeah, I was one of those speech and debate kids, but that was more for fun than anything else.

Next question. What was your college application process like? My college application process was rather chaotic, but still not as chaotic as I feared it would be, my, in my mnemonic, the community that I came from in the vis Tennessee, like we thought there was a very strong instances on thinking about college.

Just really. Really too much. And so I think I built it up in my mind far more than it actually needed to be. I really wish that I had known that I needed the main thing that I needed most help with staying on [00:07:00] track for deadlines. People say that at nauseum, they say that so much, but really that’s the most important thing is to have a group of people who will help you stay on track with your writing.

And to take time to really explore interesting things that you may want to study more in college and that you might find really enriching in college. Cause that’s the, mostly the point. That’s what I got, I think for me I. What I was thinking about schools. It was more important for me that I would be happy at the school.

Then it would be that the school has, it has a brand name and that’s something I would advertise for everyone at the end of the day. You’re the one who’s spending four years. They’re not your parents, not the people in high school who care about the college process. And so for me, what I was visiting a lot of these sort of region, like Ivy level, right?

U Chicago like kind of schools I knew pretty much automatically. Yeah. After visiting where I felt comfortable and where I felt, this is a great place, but it’s not the place for me. And that was also really influenced for me again by right recruiting process. And my dad is a professor at a Jesuit institution.

So most of my safety and [00:08:00] my match schools were Jesuit institutions for tuition reasons. So that kind of really lined up. It made my college process, I think, a lot narrower than it is for some people. And I’m really thankful about that. One thing I do wish I had known is that know. You’re spending a couple of weeks at a particular school.

Isn’t the same thing as going there. And that’s okay. They roll out all the stops for you during admin weekend and they’re supposed to but the actual act of existing day-to-day in a particular space might be different than you imagined. And that’s all right, too. You’re supposed to adjust.

You’re supposed to learn and grow.

Great. Next question. What extracurriculars did you do in college?

This one hadn’t this question had to make me think for a little bit, because it’s been a while for me, but I did lots of different student activist activities, so much of what Michael had mentioned. At the university of Chicago, we had a campaign for the university of Chicago medical center to open what’s called a trauma center and the, they have an emergency room, but an actual place to.[00:09:00]

Car accidents, gunshot wounds, stabbings, things like that. Actually, it doesn’t exist on the south side and the hospitals opened them based on whether they wanted that prestige and wanted to be able to train medical students on that. And whether or not it was something that was out of actual need. And so there was a campaign for your Chicago medical center to open one because there was a community need for that.

And. I was a part of that, that visually we were successful in 2014, but it took a long time and lots of other efforts. Those are the things that I think I learned the most from, and really think about the most and the people that I’m still in connection with today. I still have group chats still have.

Yeah. So reading groups of people who we went through, some strange things together, back in the 2000 tens. And so we still stay connected even though we’re in lots of different places. And I also did lots of little one-off. I was in some people, my friends, short films, and I was at the Institute of politics PR community programming.

And I also volunteered at one point, helping people studying for the U S citizens should have exam [00:10:00] pact practice, the English verbal section.

I really tried to experience everything. Yeah, I can definitely identify with that. There’s so many opportunities, in college, in general, at these higher education institutions for me the way that Yale works is that a lot of the communities of color and generally marginalized communities are really rooted in Yale’s four cultural centers or five cultural centers.

Excuse me. Yeah. The, and so for me, the two that I identify with are the Afro-American cultural center and the Asian-American cultural center. So I actually worked at both centers the Asian American cultural center for my first year and a half, and then the Afro-American cultural center for the next year and a half.

As a senior, we tend to take a step back and work on our thesis, but the, that was a really big part and is really a really big part of, my life as an undergraduate. I think one thing to emphasize is that Yale. Three-story physical spaces. You don’t live there, but you do go there to attend activities and to plan events and things like that.

And so most of my event planning worked [00:11:00] actually at bridging the sort of bridging the intersections between different centers. So specifically for mixed race folks like myself, and really working on making sure that there was programming devoted to people who. Will spaces on campus. And I also was part of the black solidarity conference at Yale, which is the largest undergraduate conference in north America on that’s a student led.

And so that is just a weekend where in February, People from all over the United States, different undergraduate students get together and talk about black identity organizing culture, et cetera. And that’s been really cool. And again, I play water polo. So I’ve been on the student leadership for most of my time in various positions.

And I also work with the mixed race, Asian students. At Yale, which is called Asian ish, because funny, but yeah, so I do some of that. And then I’m also participate in spoken word with duke songs, which is our Asian-American spoken word group.

Okay, great. [00:12:00] Next question. What are some common college classes say someone who’s majoring in racial, ethnic, or cultural.

So Daphne, do you want to take the first year? Because we don’t actually have required credit classes our first year. Sorry. If I’m cutting across my ear, the audio is lagging a little bit for me. I really apologize for that. I’m posted up in a Panera bread because it’s my apartment. I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Yeah, you’ve been good on my end

now hear me. Can you hear us? Okay. Awesome. All right.

So I strongly encourage [00:13:00] different individual students to go onto the websites of schools that you’re interested in. Actually look up the. That your like the classes that are in the different core schedules for whatever the ethnic studies major would look like at your school. For me at U Chicago, you’ve completed the core classes.

They have really emphasized the course sequence. And then you would expand on that in your second year for the, for civilizations and other things. And I see the medical listed the introduction to ethnicity, race and migration and. It was also something that you would take in sophomore year classes.

Excellent. So for us, it’s a little bit different because you don’t actually declare you’re not required to declare your major until the end of your sophomore year. So if you know that coming into Yale or you, that you might be, or are you that you are going to be an ethnic studies major, then you can take it.

This core class our introduction to erm, class earlier, as well as if you want to take a couple of lecture classes [00:14:00] that will count towards your major requirements, you can, but really you won’t get into the bulk of your coursework until your junior year, which is where you’re taking our other required class, which is our comparative ethics studies class, and probably a number of upper level courses and specific subject areas.

So at Yale, we either have really large lecture classes or really small seminars. And these seminars can be a little bit difficult to get into if you’re not a junior or a senior. And so that means that, your junior and senior year, you’re moving towards taking these more specialized courses that are focused on either specific subject areas that you want to study or what we call methodology.

So the different kinds of ways of creating yeah. College that are going to be useful in the course of your major. And so that can be everything from statistics to oral histories, death tography. Yeah. And and then as a senior you’ll then complete your senior essay or essay equivalent, which is your sort of final individual piece of research.

That will basically be a culmination of all the work that you’ve done in the [00:15:00] major and all of the study that you’ve done on a topic of your choice. So mine looks at Japanese Americans in healthcare, big surprise. But yeah, definitely. Do you want to mention anything else about upper level classes that you should cover?

Right.

okay. Good. I see it. the chat. Thank you for doing that. The next question I have for you guys, what is your favorite class related to your major? All right. My absolute favorite class was a class called race and incarceration in the United States was taught by Kyle Williams. Who’s now a full professor at an anthropology at Harvard and.

I think that you can really tell which professors are the ones that made the greatest impact on [00:16:00] you because you really stay connected to them as a human and really cheer for their successes at just like you share for those of your friends and stuff who were also in that class. I think that this was one of the classes at first, maybe appreciate anthropology as a discipline and not realize that it was something that I realized it didn’t have to be something that was purely, Old people from long, long time ago, looking, going into societies that they didn’t understand and making strange observations, but really something that a tool that could be used to help understand everyday life.

And so this class really broke down ideas of race in the United States and the development of mass incarceration. And at one point it just became this almost like a study group of people, really trying to struggle out of how to live in a world ethically. Given constraints and difficulties that exist.

That’s what I say. That sounds like a really cool class. For me, I think it would be writing tribal histories, which was really the first time I had been exposed to a large amount of literature. [00:17:00] And research about native folks that was also by a native folks. And so I feel like, anyone who’s living in the United States is living in honestly most of the colonized Western world. We are on land that is stolen. It, isn’t something that’s talked about or engaged with in a really contemporary sense. There’s this sort of idea that indigenous folks are relegated to the past and that they’d all died out. And so bringing that into the present and listening to what are people dealing with today, especially as we recognize with issues like climate change, that these communities are going to be super important and have been super important in imagining. A sustainable future for all of us. It was really meaningful to be able to do that kind of work and to learn from net BlackRock, who is one of the foremost and earliest professors in native American, like indigenous studies.

So he’s really well known in that field. Also a really cool part of that class was I actually got to take a trip to Oklahoma, which. Has a very I don’t have time to get into it all, but a really interesting history of [00:18:00] how indigenous nations operate within that state. And so I actually got to visit this trip was cut short by COVID, but we actually were able to visit four or five different indigenous nations in the course of a week and get to meet with all their governments, learn, what policy is get to meet with students, high school students, college students.

And so that was really meaningful for me too. And it was just a really incredible opportunity that was also free. That Yale provided and so was really grateful to everyone onboard in the ELA of community. Organize that.

Okay. Now what career options I have at all? I can take the first part of it since I think that was what I wrote. But, I think there’s this sort of construct that if you’re gonna do ethnic studies, that, the only thing that’s going to be available to you is community organizing non-profit work, where you won’t get paid very much.

First of all, there’s a lot of nuance in that, what nonprofit work can look like and what. What [00:19:00] community organizing can look like has a lot of different lenses. You can do a lot of different kinds of work. Everything from policy to social work, to on the ground, right? Organizing there’s a lot of different options to working with foundations to matching donors with causes that they can help support.

And so there’s a lot of that. You can also. Consulting be it more financial consulting or consulting. That’s more like helping organizations like nonprofits streamline their planning and things like that. There are also a lot of folks who are involved in really important law and advocacy work and also community health and human services work.

And then another thing that you can do is research and evaluation. And so that can either be. Academically, like you can go back into the academy and be a professor and do that. Or you can just be a community evaluation specialist. Which means that like your whole job is to say okay, if people create this program that, that, where the goal is to help a marginalized population or folks who aren’t getting the resources they [00:20:00] need.

What’s working what isn’t what we need to advocate for that kind of stuff.

And then also, art, visual, performing. There are a number of people who are doing really wonderful work that are ethnic or ethics studies majors at Yale. One of whom I think is on American idol this season. So go with Xavier and you can even do things that are like architecture and urban planning.

So working to make the like structures and the cities and the places that we live in more accessible for everyone.

Okay. Now we can move on to the, and I, that was the end of the presentation. Part of the webinar. Hope you all found this information helpful. And remember that you can download the slides and handouts tab, or I’m sending a link to download them into the chat now Moving onto the live Q and a I’ll repeat the questions that you’ve submitted in the Q and a tab, paste them into the chat so [00:21:00] everyone can see it.

And then I’ll read them out loud before our panelists give an answer. You can direct your question to one specific analyst, or I’ll give an answer as a heads up. If your QA tab, isn’t letting you submit questions, just check that you joined the webinar. There’s a custom link in your email and not from the webinars.

Okay, perfect question. And CA does an ethnic slash racial slash cultural studies major cooperate with political science courses?

Yeah, I think Daphne, I’m not sure for audio is working, but she did. This question in the chat as well. And so I’ll just read her answer. She says, hi, there were a lot of ethics studies, political science slash political science majors. It worked well as a combination. At Gail that’s also pretty common.

You’ll see a lot of people who double major [00:22:00] in political science and ethnicity, race and migraines.

Question I’m seeing it’s where it asked me. And I believe she answered that in the chat that I’ll be in the whole thing out loud in case anyone has to watch the recording later because I’ve been receiving a bunch of flooded from you, Chicago, to you enjoy your college. And after you answered you, Chicago was a wonderful place to go, but I think, and a lot better if I ask what academic and other forms of help when I, okay.

I just did that into the chat too, so everyone can so I’m not seeing any more questions in the Q and a everyone in the audience. They’ll feed us any questions that you may have. And we can get some of those pre panel questions that were submitted before.[00:23:00] This question is what’s it like studying the subject that you could go to the day in the life of a student

I think, for me, it’s been really rich and enriching and rewarding. I think a lot of the stuff that we talk about in our major is stuff that you don’t get in high school. Especially in our history classes, you don’t get to hear a lot of stories and a lot of voices about people, often look like you or are just not really well-represented in, in standardized curriculum.

So I’ve really enjoyed that in terms of an actual sort of daily life. I normally have. Oh, ethics classes, maybe two or three times a week. So at this point I’m mostly in the seminar phase, so it’s mostly like one, two hour long seminar for class. And. A couple of days before that class and do the readings because there’s normally readings that we’ll go over in class.

Some of the classes will require a written response to those readings. So I normally honestly ended up writing that right before it’s due. I’m not [00:24:00] gonna lie. And then I go ahead and go to class where we participate in discussions, maybe watch a movie interact with a film. One really cool thing about COVID the COVID obviously is not an ideal situation has been that we’ve been able to bring in a lot of really wonderful guest speakers who normally.

Or sometimes can’t make it because of travel or things like that. And so sometimes we’ll get to talk to the people that we read their work, or we’ve watched them rasa, about their lives and about what they’re thinking about and doing right now, which is really cool. So that’s the short answer for me, but it’s been a really wonderful experience.

Okay. which you put in ethnic studies is one of the most interesting things you can physically do with your time in college, but like many liberal arts majors, it doesn’t have a direct track towards careers. You have to put in more sweat equity into making your path and developing various side hustles along the way.

The next what’s the workload? Did you have enough time for [00:25:00] all the extracurriculars that you wanted to do?

I think overall the workload isn’t too bad. It tends to be very, at least at Yale, what we would call very cyclical, which means that like I’ll have periods where I don’t have a ton of work. And then. Periods where I have a lot of work and a lot of papers that are due. But overall I think, in terms of extracurriculars, a lot of times the two are really interconnected because for example, when things happen, that are not so great at Gale that ha that often revolve around issues of race, ethnicity, and culture.

It tends to be folks that are in the ethnic studies department that are mobilized. To deal with that. And so I will say that in comparison to my other classes, my ethnic studies professors have been the most flexible. If there is something that, it’s less than ideal, that’s happening on campus and we have to put our time and our energy and our resources, or what work that instead of, showing up in class and being [00:26:00] present they’d been the most flexible compared to the other classes that I have been in.

So he’ll say that. But yeah, overall I think, yeah. Yeah you have time for what you make time for it, but also there’s never quite enough time to do everything that you want to do. Gotcha. Has also added lots of reading, lots of papers. The program at U Chicago was not as big on exams and these classes.

And do you need to have honest conversations with professors about how much read reading you need to complete and how as amended instead of getting yourself into a hole? The next question I’m seeing, how has this major and positive you most like outlook opinions, but et cetera. I think it’s just really helped me one refined my worldviews.

There are things that are intuitively knew that were true. And now I have the theory and the language and the accessibility to support a lot of the things that I had [00:27:00] seen in the world and experienced myself. And that’s been really useful. I also think that it’s made me much more aware of a number of issues that don’t At first glance directly seem to pertain to me, but that I am as a person who moves through the world and, very much involved in.

And so I think it’s really helped me and challenged me to think about the ways in which we are interconnected through forms of difference, as opposed to everyone being the same or like token diversity. So being able to do that in a really critical and thoughtful way has been really important.

And so I’m very grateful for it.

No question that you went to Vegas a little bit, but it’s the major literature happy, like lots of readings. It’s definitely going to be more reading than problem sets. There’s definitely a lot of theory that you need to be grounded in order to move through, to major as a whole.

[00:28:00] So compared to something that’s like a stem major. Yeah. It’s literature heavy, but I think that once you get into the more. Once you can get past that, then it becomes a little bit less in terms of like literature and more in terms of what kind of work are you producing. So who are you interviewing?

Who are you talking to? How are you mapping your, it starts to become more flexible as you get into more distinct methods of being able to do the work.

Yeah, Daphne, we can hear you if you want to add an answer for this question too.

But with the major literature is heavy I would say that some of the intro work and like the theory can be really dense, but my my strong. Advice is that it’s not insurmountable at all. And that people need to be more directive, more director than I was about going to office hours and connecting with teaching.

And can you help please break this down? Can you please help me understand this [00:29:00] was, I actually do want to understand it. And I don’t just want to sit there in class and be like, oh, what’s going on here?

Definitely the next question. Would you say that New Jersey and racial, ethnic, and cultural studies could help optimize how much you can advocate for and help people? If so, how. Yes. Short answer. Yes, absolutely. And also, sorry, I keep keeping my headphones in and out. I’m getting weird feedback so I can hear myself talk, which is very disorienting.

So that’s why I would say yes. But I think that, it really gives you the tools. It gives you the tools to be able to help people. It’s not just it’s. It allows you to, when you see a problem, go, okay, here are these different ways that I can approach this problem. Here are these different ways that I can potentially, I’m sorry,

whether it’s through, science, whether it’s through this, that, and like often a lot of these frameworks are [00:30:00] intertwined too. And I think it also allows you to connect with people professors people who come into your classes and talk other students that are. Doing a lot of really important work and that networking, extends way beyond college.

And so that’s really useful too.

Thank you, Daphne. Do you want to try again? And we can hear you coming in and out a little bit.

Okay. We can go onto the next question. What other majors slash nighters would you recommend? Because there’s a lot of audio problems, but I would say it’s definitely me.[00:31:00]

okay. We can we can go on to the next question. What are their majors slash minors? Who do you recommend for someone wanting to double major or take on a minor? Yeah, we actually don’t have minors, which is an interesting situation. And so really when you’re thinking about something that is potentially a double major, I would recommend one major that you can have classes.

Most schools will have the ability, if you double major to overlap upwards of, two or four courses. So recommending that if you can find a major where there is that kind of overlap, it’s really helpful. And for me, because what I study in the history of science and medicine is the history.

Race as [00:32:00] science and racism in medicine. There was a lot of overlap there, but I would say that, anything in this sort of political science, American studies what else. Some of the like economics and politics majors all overlap pretty well at Yale. The main thing is too, that you just want to make sure that you have the ability to graduate.

So really take a look at if you’re taking another major, like if it’s an engineering major or something like that, making sure that you can actually count and say, okay, how many credits am I actually gonna need here? But that is what I would recommend on my end. Okay. I’m also going to bait out.

Daphne’s answer it from the chat. My answer is, yeah, social work, mental health and psychiatry has a history of racism and the diagnosing and people considered deviant or marginal such as psychosis by Jonathan mescal is a basic having a knowledge of mass [00:33:00] incarceration, et cetera, has been instrumental in how I approached the profession.

Race and ethnic studies goes along well with a lot of social science and humanities majors and health facts. Okay. We’re partway through the Q and a a quick break. I wanted to let you know about what you can do after this webinar. If you want to get help on your college apps from any of our panelists or other advisors CollegeAdvisor, we have two monthly advising plan to start your planning in the sky, but.

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I says, choosing schools and reviews and more, I’m sending everyone a link to get started.[00:34:00] This also links to a page to sign up and get started. I didn’t start college at it have had 800, 6,000 this past admission season. We had college it though, their clients get into all the ideas and every top school in the country, a client’s where that’s nine foot, eight out of 10.

And that’s because the driver has put a ton of care into working with you. One-on-one through every step of the application process. If you want to discuss one-on-one, this is a great chance to work. Okay. We can continue with the Q and a. The next question is with a foreign language requirements. No, not at all.

Okay. Quick question. I’m not sad anymore. Questions in the queue and I, so should I continue submitted? We can take. Another question that was submitted before the panel,[00:35:00]

would I be able to make real change slash shotguns in America? If I pursued this nature?

Yes, definitely. I don’t think that you need to be an ethnic studies major in order to make change in our society, but it certainly will give you a lot of tools to be able to do so in a very like thoughtful and nuanced way. And I think both in terms of how you understand the history of. Of how our society is built and therefore what needs to be changed or fixed, but also in terms of the tools that will allow you to do that in the present.

So I would say yes, I would definitely encourage if that’s something that you feel as your vocation in life, to look towards majors like this, though, again, this isn’t the only way that it’s going to happen.[00:36:00]

Definitely August says no, there was no general foreign language requirement, or there was a general foreign language requirement regardless of major for aircraft that U Chicago. And also you don’t need an ethnic studies major to make change in the us, but it can give you tools and familiarize you with historical precedents.

Okay. Next question, what research and specialized study abroad opportunities are available for this nature? Incredibly broad. There’s so much that you can do that falls under the realm of ethnic studies. Everything from right. I’ll try. I’ll try to give some examples in some different fields. I have a professor who’s doing really interesting work on food and the tracking of different food from different cultures in different parts of America.

So if you’re interested in any kind of work in that, then. If you work for her, you literally get to go [00:37:00] to different places around the east coast and try their Asian food. You can do things that are more in the urban planning, architecture type business. Literally designing buildings.

My roommate actually does that. And working with different organizations to do that kind of work as an RA. Most of the work that I do is historical. And we look at the development of the modern pharmaceutical industry because of the transatlantic slave trade. So that’s what I focus on. And, but you can also do things that are like more environmental studies, environmental justice oriented.

You can do what we call field work, which is where you’re actually going into communities and interviewing people or working with them on a specific kind of project. So it’s a very interdisciplinary major, which means that research opportunities are similarly varied. When Arie, in terms of study abroad, that’s, I would say is also the case.

There’s, there are a number of different classes where you can get study abroad, credit, everything from, Japanese language to, I was supposed to go abroad this summer and to send food and wine in [00:38:00] Spain. So very large variety of classes that you can get study abroad, major credit for.

Okay, definitely. I was going to says I did not get through research with a professor, but you can become a research assistant either with ethnic studies and most likely with faculty and sociology slash anthropology who do this kind of work. And do you can get credit for the major with some of these study abroad offers.

Next question. What about internship opportunities?

Very much the same really wide variety of the kinds of folks that, you can enter in for whether you want to pursue things like law at the national level, at the state level, at the community advocacy level. Whether you want to pursue something that is more along the lines of consulting, whether it’s art, it.

It’s such a, it’s such a broad major that you have a lot of [00:39:00] opportunities that can come out of that as you narrow your time. Narrow throughout your time in college, near your focus. And so for me, most of my internships were again, health-oriented and so I served two summers with the people’s applied research center at Loyola Marymount university.

And so we do statewide evaluation for different mental health campaigns and efforts that are targeted towards specific communities. Historically marginalized community. So right by POC, black indigenous people of color, and then also LGBTQ folks. And I did another summer at the Yale school of public health working with working with new interventions in HIV prevention technology.

So lots of different options. And this summer I’ll be working with a USA water polo on their racial diversity and equity task force.

Oh, God, I highly recommend that people, regardless of school, get a study abroad grant from your school and directly at well in a language, school [00:40:00] abroad and track down what you want. You save a lot of money this way, and you are constrained to a small group of people from your school for your time abroad, like kind of the industry.

Politics ambassador was very similar to an internship here and it was open to all majors. Stephanie was working with a long time. S E I use union organizer for time in 2014, and also started a link. You can click on that in the chat of your interests. Then next question. Is there anything that you wish you knew prior to choosing list-maker?

I think that it would be, it would have been useful for me too. No, that it was a little more theory heavy than I thought it was going to be. I was ready for the history, but I wasn’t necessarily as ready for the theory in a couple of classes. And I think it was really helpful, but definitely not [00:41:00] what I saw coming.

Especially because, and this is a good thing. There are a lot of professors that I’ve had the opportunity to take classes with are really on the cutting edge of theory in terms of how they’re talking about these subjects. So that would be useful. I also think that it would have been nice to they’re currently restructuring our senior essay requirements.

And so that’s a little bit complicated and I wish I would’ve known that was happening before it happened, but obviously that’s a one more time specific cancer. Yeah. Gosh, I wish I had sought out more help from professors structuring the final BA pieces, but all in all, I got what I asked for.

Okay. The next question, and seeing in the chat, when did you start taking major specific classes before declared after declared.

I started taking classes before declaring. Yeah. I think [00:42:00] part of deciding to take the major on was taking the intro classes then going, okay. I want to do this for the next two years. That’d be awesome.

Okay. I’m not seeing any more questions in the Q and a tab. Please continue to submit any questions if you have any, but if you don’t have any more questions, we could wrap up a little bit early.

Yeah. The information about our presenters again. Thank you for all the great questions.

That’s the end of the webinar. We had a really great time to you about racial, ethnic, and cultural studies. Oh, here. One more question. Dream jobs.

Ooh, that’s a hard one. I think really [00:43:00] anything that’s working to get resources and, It’s specifically through a health lens, looking to get resources and funding to communities that don’t. Have resources and funding, but doing so in a way that is very centered in that community. So it’s that community’s voices that are being amplified in their needs that are being met versus someone coming and saying okay, here’s your problem.

And here’s how I, as a outside person, I’m going to fix it. But instead right working with the community members to provide for their needs that they have, and ideally doing that are really large scale. So overseeing something like that on a national level either via private foundation or.

Like policy funding stuff.

Okay, great. So doesn’t the end of the webinar. We had a really great time cutting about racial, ethnic, and cultural studies. I love this club and I was helpful to you and that you feel more prepared for your college applications and your goals. We have a brand [00:44:00] new webinar series about specific features that you can see guys, thank you so much for coming out to tonight’s session.

I’m gonna, I’m still have a night out. Thank you all.