I took the Honors Citizen 110 class Bodies and Citizens with Dr. Hannah Dudley-Shotwell. It fulfilled my Inquiry to Citizenship Foundation.
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I really enjoyed Dr. Dudley-Shotwell’s class. Over the course of the class, I learned through reading, listening, and watching personal accounts of history. There were many annotations to write for the reading materials, but I learned how to annotate and that not only what the material of paper is, but also that my thoughts and opinions are important as well. In Bodies and Citizens, I also received the chance to speak up within class discussions. I am an introverted person, so it was new and challenging to discuss topics openly to the whole class and to present a presentation standing in front of everyone as well. I presented on the topic of pregnancy and problems that can occur. It was really fun researching and finding new information that I previously did not know, but a lot of what I was finding also affected me emotionally. I found out that there are so many complications that can arise throughout pregnancy and how hard pregnancy is for women. I had heard stories from my mom and grandmother of how painful giving birth was, but what I did not know was that there are so many women that die from problems of pregnancy or during childbirth. It is an alarming amount of maternal deaths and cesarean sections that happen. I was frighted and angered by the rate of unnecessary c-sections that occur, and how if a woman had one previously, she is more likely to have another, which creates further complications that may result in death. It was hard thinking about the reality of healthcare for mothers. They are not focused on as much as they should be after childbirth because then attention is moved to the baby; however, the mother is the one that went through the labor of giving birth. I definitely learned that there are problems and under-researched topics linked to pregnancy, and that I will most likely will not be having children in the future.