Life Updates: From Mexico, to Cambridge and Back Again

I cherish some romantic ideal of releasing well-crafted blog content on a weekly basis; an ideal that consistently proves itself to be incompatible with my life. There is, however, some nostalgic value in each posts’ correlation with memorable moments in my life. My last posts clung to exuvial memories from my time in Central America. Now, I write to you from the baron scenes of Newark airport at 00:28. This entry details the events that have unfolded in between.

I returned from my travels (just) in time for my graduation ceremony. Four long, hard years culminated into a big send off in McEwan hall. The day, the degree and even the weather were cause for joyous celebration. With a first-class honours in anthropology and a third-class honours in drinking red wine on an empty stomach, I snoozed my way home in the back of my mum’s car.

I spent the rest of my summer preparing to begin a master’s in health, medicine and society at Cambridge University. Much of this preparation involved fine tuning my fabricated response to questions surrounding what this MPhil programme entailed and where it would lead. The resultant fable was enthusiastic and excited. My solitary reality concealed a complete detachment and unenthusiasm for this ensuing chapter. Such hidden sentiments index how unknowingness and apprehension can produce negativity. Perhaps such pessimism is a marker of immaturity, but I also think of it in relation to intruder syndrome owed from the beginning of my Cambridge journey.

I quite literally applied because a close friend of mine applied for a masters at Oxford. I entertained this distant possibility based only on the fact that I failed to imagine what could follow my undergrad. Oxford didn’t have any courses that suited me, but the HMS programme at Cambridge immediately piqued my interest. The content synopsis was both intimidating and intriguing, aligning with a module in ‘Health and Migration’ that I was taking at the time.

The application process involved submitting previous written work alongside a research proposal for the thesis component of the masters. The only issue was that the deadline was 4 hours from the time at which I discovered these criteria. The research proposal I typed out in that time is the reason I’m currently on route to Texas. Its content was inspired by an essay I previously wrote on the indeterminacy of the concept of health in relation to migrants’ experiences at the US/Mexico border. That essay was, in fact, incredibly mediocre. However, I consult the marker’s 3-4 sentences of feedback on a weekly basis. Those few words of criticism helped me to write one of best essays (grade wise) in undergrad and continue to inform my current academic endeavours. Rather than an ode to markers’ feedback, this is perhaps more of a note on mindset. I clung to 4 sentences of criticism because they simultaneously insulted my perfectionism and nourished my brutal self-assessments. Yet I had very little appreciation for my offer from Cambridge, despite the rarity of such an opportunity. I was grossly ignorant of the possibilities for advancement and growth that this masters would offer.

[This is an embarrassing admission] I even remember telling a friend that I planned to treat my masters like a 9-5. I would work hard but independently. I wouldn’t got out much because my peers would (of course) be incredibly studious, serious and far more academic than me. In my spare time, I would go to the gym and become incredibly fit. Thus, in 9 months I would emerge in prime physical and intellectual condition. The reality was radically different.

o My gym membership lapsed in my first month and I’m doing a stellar job of avoiding its renewal.

o I’ve never had such a consistent succession of social (drinking) events.

o I've met a brilliantly broad cohort of people. Some ridiculously well read and articulate; others wonderfully chaotic; and many a remarkable combination of the two.

o Whilst I had visions of myself being chained to a desk, eyes reddened and teary from never ending screen time and pressing deadlines. The latter may have happened once (likely connections to Bullet Point 2) but in general its much less hellish than I foresaw.

o I’ve learnt that everyone crams, everyone stresses, and everyone has moments of self-doubt or struggle (although some are particularly well versed at hiding it).

o Of course the work is hard, but I’ve never been so academically stimulated, nor have I ever delved so deeply into my discipline. My no means do I intend to continue deep driving towards a PHD but treading within an MPhil’s level of submersion continues to provide enjoyment and intellectual trial.

With experiential knowledge, I no longer need to fabricate explanations of or enthusiasm for my course. The HMS masters offers teachings from disciplines of history, sociology, philosophy and anthropology in specific relation to medicine, health/health institutions and the body. The course invites consideration of how ‘health’ unfolds within different historical, social and cultural contexts and in response to underlying structural conditions, interpersonal relations and political economies.

That was a pretty broad explanation. I’ll give you an example (duck out here if you’ve lost interest).

My first assessed piece of work was written in the register of medical sociology. It explored the emergence of ayahuasca assisted therapy in the treatment of conditions including depression, anxiety and addiction. I used this case study to problematise the distinction between biomedicine and alternative medicine. Clinical epidemiology and randomised control trials have been defining features in the epistemological framework of biomedicine and specifically evidence-based medicine. Randomized placebo-controlled trials (RCT), in particular, have been leveraged as the ‘gold standard’ of scientific objectivity. Such a methodological commitment has animated biomedicine’s proponents’ claims to rationality, reason and unwavering precision. Accordingly, biomedical knowledge is constructed as objective truth whereas alternative medicine’s claims are relegated to the domain of belief. Yet in recent times, biomedical epistemologies are now being brought to bear upon a much broader range of interventions including that of alternative medicine e.g. ayahuasca. This is true particularly in areas where biomedicine has consistently had little remedial success (e.g. mental health treatment).

Ayahuasca assisted therapy marks one example of the increasingly hybridised state of contemporary medicine wherein non-western remedies are being subjected to greater scientific testing and implemented into biomedical treatment regimes. In Euro-America, the rising use of online medical resources, the enhanced commitment to self-tracking (calories, weight, BMP, steps), and the rising interest in alternative medicine signals a shift in what was once an absolute confidence in biomedical practitioners. This is wedded to other cultural movements towards individualism and the valorisation of self-discipline commonly associated with a neoliberal landscape. This essay didn’t suggest that we are moving away from biomedicine in any totalising fashion (pharmaceutical usage, for example, would disprove this immediately). Rather, it suggested that the progressively diverse field of medical intervention is no longer amenable to generalisations of alternative medicine and biomedicine. Instead these categorisations may be complicit in further marginalising the non-western insights, when in reality we have much to learn from diverse epistemologies.

Without going into as much detail as above, my current research is related to this task of broadening our understanding of how ‘health’ comes into being in different contexts. Here on the US/Mexico border, I am conducting research with asylum seekers crossing into Texas. I seek to understand if/how their mobile material and social experiences shape the way they conceive of health. Furthermore, I am interested in how health comes to matter or not matter within their contexts and how different values (such as the value placed upon family safety or economic security) come to matter much more. In this vein, my research considers how structures of global, racial and gender inequality can make health an absolute imperative for some and unattainable or irrelevant consideration for others.

More on that later….