58 Reflections on Learning
Reflecting on my learning involves me, the student, to think about everything I have learned in class that day or that week and think/write about what is important, what surprised me, do I have any questions, or any other comments that will keep my gears turning in this class. I can also write about any concrete experiences or thoughts I may have.
What I know about health humanities:
Health humanities is so much more than medicine. It highlights the important distinction between medicine and health. Health humanities covers many other issues surrounding gender, race, culture, etc., that go beyond medical humanities. Health humanities is a more encompassing and inclusive label. This topic also involves intersectionality, which is used in health humanities as a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power.
What I learned about active listening:
Practicing active listening in class was harder than I thought it was going to be as I believe I am already a great listener. What I understand to be “active listening” is giving a person your full, undivided attention to fully acknowledge and understand what they are saying without interrupting. This can be a little hard at first but is a great skill to acquire. I was able to put my active listening skills to the test when I interviewed my mother for my narrative ethnography. I believe I did a decent job at this as I didn’t ask her questions until the end and let her tell her story.
Music and healing:
Spending a lot of time learning and seeing how playing music affects those with diseases or illnesses, I was able to understand and appreciate how useful music is in the process of healing as it can do things medicine cannot. Through Rhonda Miller and a video that we watched in class, it was inspiring to see how people could play a song for a hospice patient and the song would bring them back to a specific time in their life. The songs that were played would bring out positive emotions within the hospice patient that would essentially make the patient forget about the pain they were feeling as their attention was drawn away from their pain and shifted to the music they were hearing. Music is healing in so many ways as it can connect listeners to the lyrics and bring out emotions that make them feel better.
Using AI:
Using AI can be beneficial but harmful at the same time. AI can enrich our learning by providing information from several sources that answer a specific question or it can give information on a broad or specific topic. I believe AI can be accurate for the most part, but it is still such a new piece of technology that it will have its flaws and can’t be 100% trusted, as it can grab its information from a faulty source. AI can also lack the ability to give emotional context to a health humanities question.