Exploring Community

The student run organization that I found that was related to my field of study is called the Future Forensic Scientists of Michigan State. This new group has only recently become affiliated. Their main goal is to create opportunities for students to network with students and professionals in the field to further their careers. To get a better feel of what they meant by this, this week I attended one of their meetings. The community of the students and professionals were very open to new students. Although they were very open to me I did feel somewhat of an outcast because I was new to their community. Since most of the members of the community have been to all the meetings before that, they all had shared common practices and language. For example, their discourse that the professionals had I would only understand if I had a deeper understanding of specific terms and procedures. Each of the speakers also had a professional tone when they were talking about their specialization of forensic science. Also from going to the meeting I was able to reinforce some of the cultural assumptions that I had going into the meeting. Some of these include commitment and the want for knowledge. Every student was willing to put a lot of their own time into the club and spent a lot of their time finding speakers and organizations to help out the club. Also the members of the club knew that there was also something more that they could learn and research. I enjoyed going to the forensic science club meeting and hope to get to go to more meetings!