Back To School For Me

Why the Dictionary is My New Best Friend

A dictionary has become my constant study companion, along with Youtube videos with twelve-year-old professors. I’m reading the first assigned textbook and getting a very rude awakening re academic jargon.

Try this word – endogenizing, and this one – verstehen, and I started laughing when I saw this one – sinicization. All excellent words and not so scary when you know their meaning.

I am back in school working on a doctoral degree in social sciences. My research topic is menopause, which is the reason I decided to go back. How can there possibly be 1.9 billion women worldwide going through perimenopause right now, with most of them not knowing? I have conversations with women everywhere about “the strangest things are happening to me and my doctor doesn’t seem to believe me/understand/know what to do”, or worse, “the strangest things are happening to me and I’m frustrated/scared/angry/do you think it’s Alzheimer’s?”.

It makes me angry.

Did you know that twice as many women as men get Alzheimer’s? Did you know there is a correlation between women getting their ovaries removed and an increased chance (70%) of getting Alzheimer’s?

I want to blow this whole menopause thing up so that it must be reinvented. In fact, I want to burn the boats and rebuild from the ashes. There has to be a better way.

I don’t know what my specific research will be yet. I’m just at Day One, Step One, with my little lunch bucket and my dictionary.

And it’s time to bring it on.