Here is what I've come to know during my 3 + years.....

We know nothing of what we think we know because everything we know is clouded by that which we think we know (that which we hold in our own, biased and bound, hands).

We, I suppose, is human kind.  If that helps clear anything up.  I'm still working with this thought, but it keeps creeping into my subconscious, almost becoming omnipresent.

Let me give you an example....

Last semester I spent an entire course becoming an "expert" on ethnography.  I read every book "I" could find (along with the guidance of my professor of course).  I read Fetterman, Madison, Van Maan, Carspecken, Clifford & Marcus, Foley, and Bernard. I conducted a pilot ethnography, wrote a how-to guide, and gave an expert presentation.  I knew this stuff. I was proud- still am- of myself.  To some degree it was a turning point for me.  I began to visualize myself as a researcher, an ethnographer.  It sat well and "fit".

Not surprisingly I continued my development and enrolled in an ethnography course this semester.  I love it.  I am reading all about ethnography and get to conduct another "mini" version of an ethnography in a local community.  I couldn't ask for anything more.  However, the books I read now are historic and seminal ethnographic pieces conducted in various Urban American Cities throughout the mid 1900's through today, but they NEVER appeared in my "expert" literature from last semester.  They are written by African American Scholars: W.E.B Cu Bois (1899), Drake & Cayton (1945), Langston Gwaltney (1993), and Pattillo-McCoy (1999); and disappointingly no one questioned their omission from my expert products. I was professing expertise without true representation of the whole ethnographic story.  Had I stopped my quest last semester my expertise, while well informed and in good standing with the indicators "we" look for in experts, would have remained skewed and biased.

 How many other things in life have I not allowed the quest for knowledge and full understanding to continue?

What about you?