(Blurry blackberry photo of a card that's been on my bulletin board for years)
Dental hygiene education was intense. I spent three years of my life immersed in early morning classes, late night clinics and rubrics for every little project. Perhaps it's because I was so used to having every assignment, clinical task and exam laid out in little boxes in rubric form that I find graduate studies to be a very difficult concept to wrap my brain around. As many sources as I need? As many pages as it takes? These are foreign concepts to me.
Also foreign is truly applying the theories and discussions to real life practice and using them to hopefully foster real change in my life. Yes, I learned clinical skills in my undergrad that I apply daily in my life, but actually understanding how the social determinants of health come into play in my clinical practice? Definitely different now. (I'm embarrassed to admit that I spent a lot of time attempting to sleep with my eyes open during the public health classes on the social determinants in my 2nd year of university!)
I thought the active living journal part about social determinants and life course would be challenging or that I would feel as if I needed to come up with something extremely profound (and probably not relevant to my daily life). Thankfully, through our class discussions, reading other classmates' blogs, and amazingly even the social determinants text book, I'm finding that I'm relating the social determinants to my daily life. I'm not seeing them as something that effects only the marginalized members of society. I'm seeing how it's effecting me and my daily pursuit at being a healthy, active woman.
Last week I pretty much failed at active living. Being sick, it was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning. Without my support network (thank god for my husband!) the dog wouldn't have been walked, I wouldn't have clean scrubs to wear, and I probably wouldn't have nutritious dinners to eat. I used to believe that since running was a 'free' (not really because you still do need to purchase things like shoes!) activity, everyone could run within their ability. This week I saw that even those relatively blessed in the social determinants department can still be side-railed in their healthy living pursuits without the critical component of a support network.
Here's to making more links between class and life! What a novel concept! :)
