Originally published in the Spring issue of etc magazine.
One Saturday night, I cram into a small apartment that’s already alive with the words and laughter of 40 other people. As I make my way toward the back, someone climbs onto a chair and speaks. Immediately, everyone takes a seat on the floor but me. Dolla looks up at me, laughing. “They said, ‘Sit down,’” he says. "We’re meeting just outside Seattle, but no one’s speaking English, here."
I’m at a home-church service with Dolla, a Burmese refugee who’s lived in America for only five months. He’s spent that time becoming a part of the community of resettled refugees in the Seattle area, and I’ve tagged along for the ride. Seattle has one of the highest refugee resettlement rates in the country, but not many people know about the diverse refugee community that’s here and the struggles they face. I’m trying to help change that.
My senior year at Seattle Pacific University has focused largely on this project, which I’m completing as a part of SPU’s University Scholars honors program. UScholars spend their senior year producing an extensive, research-based honors project in their respective disciplines. This project is meant to be the culmination of the knowledge we’ve gained from all our classes at SPU. For my honors project, I’m writing literary journalism stories about one family’s experiences assimilating to a new culture. I plan to publish the series when it’s complete.
I’m one of only 21 students working on a senior honors project. The professors at SPU know how to help students pick a topic that really excites them — whether it’s an analysis of ’60s song lyrics or exploration into mathematical law. Brianna Pogue, a fellow senior UScholar, is using her project to combine her love for people with her love for science.
She spent last summer in South Africa researching the impact of HIV/AIDS in a small township. While much of her research is anchored in science, she’s integrating narratives from the patients she worked with into the project.
“Narrative brings humanity,” she says. “I’ve loved seeing the power stories can have." Brianna plans to work in the health care field. As a science major, she worried that her project would have to take place in a science research lab. “But we have the freedom to do what we want,” she says. “This has been a lot of work, but it’s OK, because it’s work I like.”
For Evan Harris, an economics and finance major, his honors project explores how a Christian moral framework can fit into capitalistic business. “I want to be a financial planner because you basically get to make a living helping people,” he says. “Through studying ethics, the honors project becomes a chance to find out the best way to do that.”
For many of us, our honors projects become such invaluable components of our educations that we can’t imagine SPU without them. This is because we find topics that both intrigue us and relate to the work we want to do. For Evan, it’s business. For Brianna, it’s medicine. For me, it’s journalism.
The day I met Dolla was the day I knew that my honors project was going to be much more than just another item to cross off the list of graduation requirements. That day, I told him I wanted to tell his story.“We are so lucky,” Dolla said. “People need to hear." That’s when I realized that this isn’t just another project. It's work that matters.
Posted: Thursday, May 24, 2012