Box 12

My privileges are: having a college education that is already paid for, being born into an upper-middle class family, being American, being white, having moved around a lot when I was younger and got to see many different lifestyles and types of people, being healthy, educational scholarships, achievements and awards I received for ballet, the right to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, support from my dad and other close family members, a stable relationship, having a well-paying job since the age of seventeen, went to school through the twelfth grade and could continue without hardship, the right to have a family and/or children

My privileges will effect my research in many ways. I feel as though I will have more privileges than those that I will be working with. Many of the adults are middle aged, and the laws we have to protect them now did not exists even thirty years ago. Until 1975, all people with a disability could be sterilized without consent. One of my greatest privileges is being able to choose not only who I want to be with, but also to whether or not to have children. Also, children with disabilities did not have to be provided with an education until around thirty to forty years ago. Some of the athletes may not have had a high school education that was conducive to their learning available to them as I have. Few or none of the athletes pursued college as a choice and went straight into a work environment, with or without fair working options. Since the age of seventeen, I have had a relatively easy job working for the Indiana Army National Guard with outstanding pay. Through understanding and admitting to the privileges that I have had that many of the people at my fieldsite have not, I will be able to understand the difficulties and potential hardships that they have faced. It will help me better comprehend the people that I am working with and therefore, make my writing more accurate and fair.