Meta Reality in a Business Analogy

These past few weeks seem to really have been flying by.  They've been filled with interviews completed, surveys passed out, YSA activities, and surveys never returned (sort of the frustrating part) but the project is moving forward.  I have just a few more interviews to do, but I'm hoping to start planning the final project this week.  I want to get my introduction written and have an outline for the rest of it, that way I can simply fill in the stories of the members as they come.  I hope to be able to get this project enough underway that the members will be able to continue it after I leave. It is, after all, their project and not mine; I am just the initiator of it.  I also have this crazy idea that I will upload my project to the internet, that way the members here can all get online and write their own stories and it can become a virtual database of inspiring, personal, and local stories about members of the Irapuato stake.

It's hard to believe that I already have been in Mexico for 2 months, and during this time I have learned a lot.  I have learned, mostly, about the difficulties of undertaking a field study.  Working alone in a foreign country with a language that you are still learning has its many challenges.  I know that I'm not supposed to come home from my field study and talk about what I learned about myself, but I definitely have been learning a lot about how important it is to know yourself in order to work well and productively.  I think that we sometimes forget that when we work alone we don't really work alone, but with ourselves, and it is important to remember to treat ourselves well as we work towards our goals.  In our daily field journals we kind of need to be Sherlock Holmes in order to view not just those around us, but the reasons and patterns that we ourselves follow.  I think I explained this concept well in my field notes the other day by comparing my field study to a business:

Today I realized something interesting, and that is that a field study
is like a one-man company.  Not only am I all the workers in all the
different departments (office boy, interviewer, clerk, etc) but I am
also in charge of planning for the future, of productivity, of HR,
employee morale, and customer satisfaction.  I am every employee and every
boss.  The trick is being a good boss to yourself, and giving your
best work as an employee.  Just as a good boss needs to treat his
employees well and show that he or she loves them, so I need to do so
with myself, and, in like kind, I need to reciprocate that by being a
good, hard-working and dependable employee.  It really is a rather
interesting analogy which, if I can master, can bring me light years
ahead of where I currently am not only in productivity, but also in
understanding myself and how I work with myself and others.  Hmm, if I
can learn how to teach myself, then I will be much better at teaching
others.  If I can love and lead myself, then I will have so much more
of an understanding and a preparation to be able to do so with others.

Now to apply some of these findings and get to work getting to know better the language and the people here.  My next blog post should incorporate some of what I have learned from the application of this knowledge, and, hopefully, talk a little more about the actual progress of the project that I came here to do.

Individualism: Ser, o no ser.

Reading about the Ophelia Syndrome (accepting the framework of being told how to think/act or what is important to learn) really made me think a lot about my education and everything that I am learning in school.  Quite fittingly I heard today that Mark Twain, among his many other witty words, said "Don't let school interfere with your education." I think there is a lot of truth in that. He also said "If God had meant for us to be naked, we'd have been born that way," but that seems a little less relevant.

But seriously, there are the things that we are going to college, and paying tuition, to learn, and then there are the hoops that we need to jump through in order to get the grade we need.  Usually they are unrelated.  It is unfortunate that so much of our time is spent jumping through these hoops that we don't learn the truly valuable lessons like what type of people we are and what is important to us.

Now I understand that my field study is not supposed to be this amazing "self-realization" experience, and I will be focusing outward and seeking to learn about the culture that surrounds me, but I think that overcoming the Ophelia Syndrome for field studies is completely applicable.  In order for me, or anyone, to be successful in learning about others and their culture they must first understand themselves.

We have talked a lot in class about recognizing "the water that we swim in" or the cultural views that we take for granted and then trying to compensate for them.  But it is also important for us to understand who we are personally so that we can see where we are coming from that personal standpoint.  And the better that I understand myself and what I want to learn, and how I can best learn, the better I will be at learning those things and completing a successful and meaningful field study.

 Sometimes the most difficult search we will conduct as Sherlock is trying to find out who we really are.  It's as Ezra Taft Benson has said: "Some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul."

Framework

Up until today I was fairly worried that all of my research that I have done has been somewhat irrelevant to my actual project.  As I have mentioned previously, my mentor for my project has been out of the country for the past few months and I have kind of been shooting in the dark.  Each class period I have been required to come up with a source (such as a book or article) that is "related" to my project in some way.

Luckily, for me, there is a fairly decently sized collection of Mormon Mexican History within the BYU Library, which means that I have been able to do some research on what the basic history of Mormons in Mexico, as well as the history of several of the original Mormon colonies.  There is, however, quite a lack of readily available information concerning what I will actually be doing my project on, that is, Irapuato's Mormon history. Without my mentor here to guide me to the right information, or at least methods of searching for it, I feel like I have been hitting all around the target with my research, but have yet to get a bulls-eye shot.

In class today, though, I was able to take a closer look at the research that I had completed and what it tells me.  Because I have been, as I said, hitting all around the mark, and now that I have taken a step back I can better see what I have been missing in the middle.  I can now better define what I need!  I knew what I had been aiming for all along, but sometimes it's rather hard to define until you frame it and determine what it is not; "eliminate the impossible and what remains must be the truth!" as my good friend Sherlock put it.

So what am I looking for now?  I'm still getting the idea, but from what I understand, I am looking for things like: historical documents from Irapuato itself, statistics concerning religious affiliation during the time period of the first Irapuato Mormons, church records concerning early members of the church, and dates and names of the first appearances of Mormons within Irapuato. Where am I going to find this, and similar information? Well...

"You know my methods, Watson"