My Final Thoughts

Through doing this research on Dr. Epstein, I have come to the conclusion that Dr. Epstein is a fascinating woman who has done so much to advance the position of women in our society. In particular, I was most impressed with her work on professional women, especially in law, because I will be in law school next year. Dr. Epstein has been able to combine her scholarly work with activism which I also found appealing because this is often the discussion that we have in many sociology classes. Is our job to just purely do the research or to become advocates for those we are working with? Seeing how Dr. Epstein was able to combine activism with her scholarly work has been an inspiration to me. Knowing that she was also an expert witness in several different cases was probably the most exciting part of my research because of my interest in law. Furthermore, I think that her advocacy and passion for stressing that gender should be included in all sociological analyses is of utmost importance for the discipline of sociology because including elements of gender, race, class, etc. will allow for a fuller understanding of our discipline, as well as the research that is currently and will be conducted.
From doing this project I think I have really seen that the personal is political, as cliché as that sounds. Learning about Dr. Epstein’s life and seeing how her personal experiences as a child ended up influencing her work as a sociologist and what she is passionate about was one of the best parts of this project. I have discussed this slogan in several different classes and as much as I always believed it, I never researched one person in-depth to truly see how this slogan plays out in one person’s life. Doing this project has made me reflect more upon how my own life experiences have influenced what I am passionate about, what I want to study, the goals I have, and my outlook on life. I also think this project helped me see that the women and men that we read about throughout our academic career are actually people. In many classes, we read the theories, research, ethnographies, and etc. without knowing much about the people who are conducting this research. I feel that this project has also made me realize that knowing who is writing the material and their life experiences are extremely important to understanding the approach these scholars are taking in their work and in understanding the actual material. So in the end, I am more convinced than I ever was that the personal really is political.