The homeless, a population of people I really do not think about to often. Only when I've seen someone walking down the street asking for money or carrying a large load of items around is when this population may cross my mind. I am from a town called Isanti, we have a small population of a little over 5,000 people. So I really haven't had to experience this unless I was in the cities. Although I know little about this population, I do have some strong opinions toward it. I do not feel bad or pity homeless people at all. I believe that everyone has been an equal opportunity to receive an education and compete for some sort of job. When I see a homeless person all I think is that they should be out trying to get a job and not waste their time begging for money. If a person were to have a physical or mental disability that would prevent them from learning at the same pace as others and limits them to only certain types of jobs then that is a different situation. But I am talking about people who are able and just have had a tough time in life. I think that they just need to put a little work and effort into it, and after awhile they can succeed in some way. Some people may completely disagree with this, that is why I want to research it. There is so many different opinions about this subject and I have never really looked into it. My opinions all came from my own deductions and from my dad. We were in California once and a homeless person asked him for money, he didn't give them any so I asked why. He explained to me that he had a tough time in school and his family had little money, but he just worked really hard to find a job. He believed that they should do the same.
Although I am very interested in learning about this topic, I am also a little wary. I am afraid that my strong, harsh opinions may hold me back in my research. I feel that I a may not be able to open up to new ideas and this may cause me to be less interested in the topic overall. I will make sure I focus on overcoming this.
Overall, I think this project has a lot of potential. It seems very interesting and I feel I can learn a lot about the homeless population.
Hi Shana,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your honest post.
It's true--one of the biggest challenges that people have when doing research on other human beings is being objective. Sometimes our opinion of people will affect the research questions that we want to ask, and those questions will often lead to biased or incomplete answers, biased research results, or flawed research design.
I believe that you are going to learn a lot in this class. I look forward to working with you this semester!