My time as an undergraduate student will end in a few weeks, and the pressure to finish everything is heavy. Soon, there will be much to celebrate. In the meantime, I thought I would reflect on one of my proudest achievements and what it has taught me.
Publishing My Research: The Process
One of the most exciting accomplishments I've had the opportunity to complete this semester was submitting the culmination of my research from the past two and a half years. When I started this project, the finish line was so far away it didn't even feel real. I could barely articulate what I wanted to study and had no words to explain the method I hoped to use. The next two years would be filled with weekly meetings with my mentor, Dr. Kris Knutson, filled with many cups of coffee, qazi therapy sessions, and theoretical discussions. With her help, I discovered autoethnography as a research method. As we processed some of my experiences growing up, we identified body image and gender norms as central themes. From there, I began a self-analysis of significant childhood memories and how societal expectations for gender roles and body image affected the ways my family members raised me.
Most of this process was Dr. Knutson and I going through pieces of my childhood that stuck in my head, particularly those that resurface when I feel insecure or constrained by societal expectations. The actual writing process was relatively short, and most of it was spent developing rich narrative sections that captured the settings and emotions that I associated with each experience. My unique research method, which relied on my own experiences, thoughts, interpretations, and perspectives, required me to bring my audience into my headspace in the moment I described. After each narrative section, I contextualized my experience with existing research, explaining how societal expectations create internalized fears, biases, and beliefs that inform parenting decisions.
The Hard Parts
Talking to your parents about parenting mistakes they made or the trauma they caused you growing up is seldom easy. No parent wants to hear that they failed at any part of what they likely consider the most important job in the world. However, the reality is that no parent is perfect, and no matter how good the intention is, they're bound to do or say something that negatively impacts their child. In my experience, talking to my parents about things from my childhood that were painful rarely results in a productive conversation. They take it as if I believe they aren't enough or that they failed as parents. Sometimes it can be hard to see the bigger, societal-level picture that explains why parents make the choices they do. They didn't comment on my weight to make me feel bad about myself. They made comments about my weight because our society as a whole is fatphobic and they've internalized fatphobia from the ways they were raised. They only ever intended to protect me from the ruthlessness of our world.
One of the hardest parts of writing this paper was explaining that I don't think my family members are evil or ever intended harm. I needed to clarify that I understood the intention behind their actions, but that it hurt me regardless. It was a challenging thing to achieve, but doing so helped me process some of the more traumatic parts of my childhood in a way that didn't villainize my family. I now have the tools to have those more difficult conversations with my family, hopefully in a healthier, more productive way than we could before.
How it Felt to Hit "Submit"
After working on this project for so long, seeing the finish line was surreal. The deadline crept up quickly and I was suddenly sending my final draft to the writing interns for copy editing. Though I knew I had written a great paper and was proud of my work, I couldn't help but wonder if there was more to say. Then I realized that there absolutely is more to say, and I have plenty of time to say it as I pursue a graduate degree. Submitting this paper was only a stepping stone in my research journey. I'm excited to see where my learning takes me as I continue exploring family communication and intergenerational transmission in the future.
To celebrate the publication of my paper, my research mentor gave me a bracelet that said "I can do hard things," and finally, I really, truly believe it.