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This week we continued developing our proposal and prototyping. Based on the critiques received the week before we put some more thought into our goals and how were going to accomplish them. The goal of our common ground discussions is to both acknowledge the existing knowledge and beliefs of the community, while spreading evidence-based knowledge to empower people to get vaccinated. We decided to implement safeguards such a fact check during the videos of the middle ground discussion to ensure that false information is not spread and that the goal of empowering people to get vaccinated is realized. Focusing on key turning points during the creation of our innovation arc helped my group to be able to concisely and effectively convey the purpose and plan of our intervention.

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This week we continued developing our proposal and prototyping. We created a real Instagram a account, made some mock Instagram posts that included infographics about COVID-19 vaccination, and discussed how we would implement our “middle ground discussions.” Essentially these discussions would involve people in the community who have different feelings and opinions about vaccination. During our practice pitch, one of our classmates shared her concerns with this idea, stating that anti-vax sentiments should be quelled, not acknowledged or given a platform. While this is a valid critique, we believe that changing beliefs and behaviors is not such a simple task. The article attached below discusses in length some theories regarding the science of why it is so hard to change someone’s beliefs and why facts are often not enough. Some of theories include arguments that the evolutionary purpose of reason is not suitable for today’s hyperconnected society, that confirmation bias, caused by dopamine rushes received when reading information that confirms belief, prevents belief change, and that community knowledge prevents belief change. The community we are trying to impact are not hesitant to be vaccinated because they are ignorant. They are making understandable choices given the historical and current treatment of Black people in healthcare settings, and in America as a whole. Therefore, I think we need to acknowledge beliefs held by the community and introduce information through discourse, rather than forcing information upon them.

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New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.

In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. In each pair, one note had been composed by a random individual, the other by a person who had subsequently taken his own life. The students were then asked to distinguish between the genuine notes and the fake ones.

Some students discovered that they had a genius for the task. Out of twenty-five pairs of notes, they correctly identified the real one twenty-four times. Others discovered that they were hopeless. They identified the real note in only ten instances.

As is often the case with psychological studies, the whole setup was a put-on. Though half the notes were indeed genuine-they'd been obtained from the Los Angeles County coroner's office-the scores were fictitious. The students who'd been told they were almost always right were, on average, no more discerning than those who had been told they were mostly wrong.

In the second phase of the study, the deception was revealed. The students were told that the real point of the experiment was to gauge their responses to thinking they were right or wrong. (This, it turned out, was also a deception.) Finally, the students were asked to estimate how many suicide notes they had actually categorized correctly, and how many they thought an average student would get right. At this point, something curious happened. The students in the high-score group said that they thought they had, in fact, done quite well-significantly better than the average student-even though, as they'd just been told, they had zero grounds for believing this. Conversely, those who'd been assigned to the low-score group said that they thought they had done significantly worse than the average student-a conclusion that was equally unfounded.

"Once formed," the researchers observed dryly, "impressions are remarkably perseverant."

A few years later, a new set of Stanford students was recruited for a related study. The students were handed packets of information about a pair of firefighters, Frank K. and George H. Frank's bio noted that, among other things, he had a baby daughter and he liked to scuba dive. George had a small son and played golf. The packets also included the men's responses on what the researchers called the Risky-Conservative Choice Test. According to one version of the packet, Frank was a successful firefighter who, on the test, almost always went with the safest option. In the other version, Frank also chose the safest option, but he was a lousy firefighter who'd been put "on report" by his supervisors several times. Once again, midway through the study, the students were informed that they'd been misled, and that the information they'd received was entirely fictitious. The students were then asked to describe their own beliefs. What sort of attitude toward risk did they think a successful firefighter would have? The students who'd received the first packet thought that he would avoid it. The students in the second group thought he'd embrace it.

Even after the evidence "for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs," the researchers noted. In this case, the failure was "particularly impressive," since two data points would never have been enough information to generalize from.

The Stanford studies became famous. Coming from a group of academics in the nineteen-seventies, the contention that people can't think straight was shocking. It isn't any longer. Thousands of subsequent experiments have confirmed (and elaborated on) this finding. As everyone who's followed the research-or even occasionally picked up a copy of Psychology Today -knows, any graduate student with a clipboard can demonstrate that reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant than it does right now. Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way?

In a new book, "The Enigma of Reason" (Harvard), the cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber take a stab at answering this question. Mercier, who works at a French research institute in Lyon, and Sperber, now based at the Central European University, in Budapest, point out that reason is an evolved trait, like bipedalism or three-color vision. It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to be understood in that context.

Stripped of a lot of what might be called cognitive-science-ese, Mercier and Sperber's argument runs, more or less, as follows: Humans' biggest advantage over other species is our ability to coöperate. Coöperation is difficult to establish and almost as difficult to sustain. For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.

"Reason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for themselves," Mercier and Sperber write. Habits of mind that seem weird or goofy or just plain dumb from an "intellectualist" point of view prove shrewd when seen from a social "interactionist" perspective.

Consider what's become known as "confirmation bias," the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them. Of the many forms of faulty thinking that have been identified, confirmation bias is among the best catalogued; it's the subject of entire textbooks' worth of experiments. One of the most famous of these was conducted, again, at Stanford. For this experiment, researchers rounded up a group of students who had opposing opinions about capital punishment. Half the students were in favor of it and thought that it deterred crime; the other half were against it and thought that it had no effect on crime.

The students were asked to respond to two studies. One provided data in support of the deterrence argument, and the other provided data that called it into question. Both studies-you guessed it-were made up, and had been designed to present what were, objectively speaking, equally compelling statistics. The students who had originally supported capital punishment rated the pro-deterrence data highly credible and the anti-deterrence data unconvincing; the students who'd originally opposed capital punishment did the reverse. At the end of the experiment, the students were asked once again about their views. Those who'd started out pro-capital punishment were now even more in favor of it; those who'd opposed it were even more hostile.

If reason is designed to generate sound judgments, then it's hard to conceive of a more serious design flaw than confirmation bias. Imagine, Mercier and Sperber suggest, a mouse that thinks the way we do. Such a mouse, "bent on confirming its belief that there are no cats around," would soon be dinner. To the extent that confirmation bias leads people to dismiss evidence of new or underappreciated threats-the human equivalent of the cat around the corner-it's a trait that should have been selected against. The fact that both we and it survive, Mercier and Sperber argue, proves that it must have some adaptive function, and that function, they maintain, is related to our "hypersociability."

Mercier and Sperber prefer the term "myside bias." Humans, they point out, aren't randomly credulous. Presented with someone else's argument, we're quite adept at spotting the weaknesses. Almost invariably, the positions we're blind about are our own.

A recent experiment performed by Mercier and some European colleagues neatly demonstrates this asymmetry. Participants were asked to answer a series of simple reasoning problems. They were then asked to explain their responses, and were given a chance to modify them if they identified mistakes. The majority were satisfied with their original choices; fewer than fifteen per cent changed their minds in step two.

In step three, participants were shown one of the same problems, along with their answer and the answer of another participant, who'd come to a different conclusion. Once again, they were given the chance to change their responses. But a trick had been played: the answers presented to them as someone else's were actually their own, and vice versa. About half the participants realized what was going on. Among the other half, suddenly people became a lot more critical. Nearly sixty per cent now rejected the responses that they'd earlier been satisfied with.

This lopsidedness, according to Mercier and Sperber, reflects the task that reason evolved to perform, which is to prevent us from getting screwed by the other members of our group. Living in small bands of hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were primarily concerned with their social standing, and with making sure that they weren't the ones risking their lives on the hunt while others loafed around in the cave. There was little advantage in reasoning clearly, while much was to be gained from winning arguments.

Among the many, many issues our forebears didn't worry about were the deterrent effects of capital punishment and the ideal attributes of a firefighter. Nor did they have to contend with fabricated studies, or fake news, or Twitter. It's no wonder, then, that today reason often seems to fail us. As Mercier and Sperber write, "This is one of many cases in which the environment changed too quickly for natural selection to catch up."

Steven Sloman, a professor at Brown, and Philip Fernbach, a professor at the University of Colorado, are also cognitive scientists. They, too, believe sociability is the key to how the human mind functions or, perhaps more pertinently, malfunctions. They begin their book, "The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone" (Riverhead), with a look at toilets.

Virtually everyone in the United States, and indeed throughout the developed world, is familiar with toilets. A typical flush toilet has a ceramic bowl filled with water. When the handle is depressed, or the button pushed, the water-and everything that's been deposited in it-gets sucked into a pipe and from there into the sewage system. But how does this actually happen?

In a study conducted at Yale, graduate students were asked to rate their understanding of everyday devices, including toilets, zippers, and cylinder locks. They were then asked to write detailed, step-by-step explanations of how the devices work, and to rate their understanding again. Apparently, the effort revealed to the students their own ignorance, because their self-assessments dropped. (Toilets, it turns out, are more complicated than they appear.)

Sloman and Fernbach see this effect, which they call the "illusion of explanatory depth," just about everywhere. People believe that they know way more than they actually do. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people. In the case of my toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily. This is something humans are very good at. We've been relying on one another's expertise ever since we figured out how to hunt together, which was probably a key development in our evolutionary history. So well do we collaborate, Sloman and Fernbach argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and others' begins.

"One implication of the naturalness with which we divide cognitive labor," they write, is that there's "no sharp boundary between one person's ideas and knowledge" and "those of other members" of the group.

This borderlessness, or, if you prefer, confusion, is also crucial to what we consider progress. As people invented new tools for new ways of living, they simultaneously created new realms of ignorance; if everyone had insisted on, say, mastering the principles of metalworking before picking up a knife, the Bronze Age wouldn't have amounted to much. When it comes to new technologies, incomplete understanding is empowering.

Where it gets us into trouble, according to Sloman and Fernbach, is in the political domain. It's one thing for me to flush a toilet without knowing how it operates, and another for me to favor (or oppose) an immigration ban without knowing what I'm talking about. Sloman and Fernbach cite a survey conducted in 2014, not long after Russia annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. Respondents were asked how they thought the U.S. should react, and also whether they could identify Ukraine on a map. The farther off base they were about the geography, the more likely they were to favor military intervention. (Respondents were so unsure of Ukraine's location that the median guess was wrong by eighteen hundred miles, roughly the distance from Kiev to Madrid.)

Surveys on many other issues have yielded similarly dismaying results. "As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding," Sloman and Fernbach write. And here our dependence on other minds reinforces the problem. If your position on, say, the Affordable Care Act is baseless and I rely on it, then my opinion is also baseless. When I talk to Tom and he decides he agrees with me, his opinion is also baseless, but now that the three of us concur we feel that much more smug about our views. If we all now dismiss as unconvincing any information that contradicts our opinion, you get, well, the Trump Administration.

"This is how a community of knowledge can become dangerous," Sloman and Fernbach observe. The two have performed their own version of the toilet experiment, substituting public policy for household gadgets. In a study conducted in 2012, they asked people for their stance on questions like: Should there be a single-payer health-care system? Or merit-based pay for teachers? Participants were asked to rate their positions depending on how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the proposals. Next, they were instructed to explain, in as much detail as they could, the impacts of implementing each one. Most people at this point ran into trouble. Asked once again to rate their views, they ratcheted down the intensity, so that they either agreed or disagreed less vehemently.

Sloman and Fernbach see in this result a little candle for a dark world. If we-or our friends or the pundits on CNN-spent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we'd realize how clueless we are and moderate our views. This, they write, "may be the only form of thinking that will shatter the illusion of explanatory depth and change people's attitudes."

One way to look at science is as a system that corrects for people's natural inclinations. In a well-run laboratory, there's no room for myside bias; the results have to be reproducible in other laboratories, by researchers who have no motive to confirm them. And this, it could be argued, is why the system has proved so successful. At any given moment, a field may be dominated by squabbles, but, in the end, the methodology prevails. Science moves forward, even as we remain stuck in place.

In "Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us" (Oxford), Jack Gorman, a psychiatrist, and his daughter, Sara Gorman, a public-health specialist, probe the gap between what science tells us and what we tell ourselves. Their concern is with those persistent beliefs which are not just demonstrably false but also potentially deadly, like the conviction that vaccines are hazardous. Of course, what's hazardous is not being vaccinated; that's why vaccines were created in the first place. "Immunization is one of the triumphs of modern medicine," the Gormans note. But no matter how many scientific studies conclude that vaccines are safe, and that there's no link between immunizations and autism, anti-vaxxers remain unmoved. (They can now count on their side-sort of-Donald Trump, who has said that, although he and his wife had their son, Barron, vaccinated, they refused to do so on the timetable recommended by pediatricians.)

The Gormans, too, argue that ways of thinking that now seem self-destructive must at some point have been adaptive. And they, too, dedicate many pages to confirmation bias, which, they claim, has a physiological component. They cite research suggesting that people experience genuine pleasure-a rush of dopamine-when processing information that supports their beliefs. "It feels good to 'stick to our guns' even if we are wrong," they observe.

The Gormans don't just want to catalogue the ways we go wrong; they want to correct for them. There must be some way, they maintain, to convince people that vaccines are good for kids, and handguns are dangerous. (Another widespread but statistically insupportable belief they'd like to discredit is that owning a gun makes you safer.) But here they encounter the very problems they have enumerated. Providing people with accurate information doesn't seem to help; they simply discount it. Appealing to their emotions may work better, but doing so is obviously antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science. "The challenge that remains," they write toward the end of their book, "is to figure out how to address the tendencies that lead to false scientific belief."

"The Enigma of Reason," "The Knowledge Illusion," and "Denying to the Grave" were all written before the November election. And yet they anticipate Kellyanne Conway and the rise of "alternative facts." These days, it can feel as if the entire country has been given over to a vast psychological experiment being run either by no one or by Steve Bannon. Rational agents would be able to think their way to a solution. But, on this matter, the literature is not reassuring. ♦

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New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason.

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This week we had to continue to build upon on our intervention idea, but with a new stipulation: we had to incorporate dogs somehow. I initially thought of this as a somewhat annoying obstacle that my group would have to overcome. However, I understood the purpose of this activity when we were all presenting. All of the groups were literally forced to think outside the box to incorporate dogs without sacrificing the purpose and desired impact of their projects. This led to some really good ideas. Some of project ideas were actually strengthened by the inclusion of dogs. While I don’t think my group’s project is one of those that benefitted from the addition of dogs, I do appreciate this effort in forcing us to think out the box. I talked about how this was a bit of an issue last time, so this is very timely and beneficial. Its interesting that adding parameters like these broadened our horizons rather than limited us.

This week my group also took a concrete step in our prototyping and actually made a Instagram page for our project. We each created a rough dog-related infographic and posted it (mine’s the dark blue one). None of this is permanent, but it is helpful for planning out general layout and how to best go about disseminating information.

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This past week I wasn’t able to make it to class (election news kept me up till 6:30 am. My bad.). However, I have been in touch with my group members and Elsie during the week. I learned that we started the prototype phase. We have come up with several good ideas, but we haven’t fleshed any of them out yet. I am interested to see prototyping yields and what activities we will engage in to prototype. I know Dr. T said normally we would have had walls covered in sticky notes. Since we can’t meet in person, I assume we will continue to use mural extensively, as well as other activities like role-playing. I also looked at the PowerPoint that was made. I enjoyed looking at everyone’s drawings and seeing that some of my classmates actually had a lot of talent. Seeing everyone’s perspective of “how to appreciate a flower” was interesting because everyone had very different, yet equally valid thoughts. Some thought that meant smelling the flowers, some looked at their flowers, and others watered their flowers. Some kept their flowers in a vase, while others left them in the ground. The “how to appreciate flowers” question yielded a lot more variability than the “draw a vase” prompt. We can bring this concept to our prototyping phase. Asking more complex questions will cause more varied and creative responses among my group members. We struggled with thinking out of the boss during the ideate phase so this practice will be crucial during the current phase.

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This week my group continued to brainstorm in our effort to design a community-level intervention for people like Rob, one of the interviewed patrons in the barbershop. We continued to flesh out some of the specifics with some of our ideas and, per Dr. Thomas’ request, we added Rob’s picture to our mural so we could put a face to our design efforts. The biggest challenge we are facing at the moment is that almost all of our ideas are, as Dr. T put it, traditional. My group has some very creative people on it, but we are all struggling to think outside of the box due to troublesome constraints such as those imposed by the pandemic. I think there were two unique ideas proposed. One was a “common-ground” type YouTube series in which people with opposing views would talk it out in a safe space. This video format is not necessarily a novel idea, but using it address vaccine hesitancy has not been done often. The other idea was simply creating “Got vaccinated” stickers that resemble, or are at least are inspired by, the “I voted” stickers. This would be very simple to implement and if we can reach prominent and trusted community members, it could be very effective.

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This week ins class my group continued to brainstorm ideas for interventions for people like Rob, one of the individuals interviewed by the barber we are partnering with. Some of these ideas include a weekly PSA YouTube series from different community leaders, scientists, and celebrities, social media posts and videos, a virtual town hall including a Q & A session, a workshop that emphasizes natural remedies but also encourages and informs about vaccination, and printed educational materials such as flyers, posters, and brochures. Regardless of the medium, my group wants to make sure we incorporate natural remedies and trusted leaders. This is because these are themes that were directly expressed by those that were interviewed. We want to acknowledge and respect the perspectives of who we are trying to serve. Instead of pushing our desired outcome on them, we think it will be much more effective to build on their existing knowledge and perspectives. 
This week I was able to attend two seminars that Dr. T was involved with. I was only able to catch a half an hour of the seminar this past Wednesday because I had work, but I was able to listen to all of the seminar on Friday. The conversation centered around both historical and contemporary reasons for distrust of health professionals and the health profession in the Black community. The conversation was very important because I have seen a trend in which many people, including some of my classmates, portray the issue as being solely caused by a lack of education or awareness. In actuality, these people are drawing of their own and others’ experience to form valid opinions about healthcare. We all need to recognize the validity of these opinions before we can improve health behaviors and outcomes.  

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One of the most impactful bits of instruction I’ve received during the “empathize” unit, is that empathy depends on my ability to perceive a story when interviewing someone. During my week 3 reflection, I talked about the specific tools we learned to create those stories, such as open-ended questions and active listening. Using these techniques allows us to craft a story that is rich and fully representative of the perceptions of the interviewee, rather than my own. During my first practice interview, I used open-ended questions, but I was still pointing the direction toward the questions I wanted answered. This isn’t necessarily bad, but I was missing the big picture. As the unit continued, I understood more and more that the story I create depends on the seemingly unrelated details. One of my favorite authors, Toni Morrison, describes it best in the video attached at the 4-minute mark. She says “It’s not fact, I know, but its truth. That’s where truth lies: in our myths, in our songs. That’s where the seeds are. It’s not possible to constantly hone on the crisis.” I think this encapsulates what Dr. Thomas was trying to get us to understand. We can ask questions like “are you getting vaccinated?” and “why or why not?” and we can create interventions from this. However, to truly be empathetic we should empower and encourage them to share as much as they are willing to from their big dreams and catastrophic events to their minute annoyances and little victories. This genuine perspectives enable the exceptionally creative approaches and interventions that can have the greatest impact.

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Video: Toni Morrison on Empathy and Storytelling | Watch From the WTTW Archive Online | PBS Video

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Last class, my group interviewed a guest who was role-playing as an undocumented Latinx man living in PG county. The issue that stuck out the most to me was the fact that he, and many others, use false information when seeking health services to decrease their chances of being caught and deported. This has been a big concern of mine for a few years now. Two years ago, a friend and former coworker had a suicidal episode and called 911 so he could be transported to the hospital. He called me before the ambulance arrived and asked if I could come with him. The entire time we were at the hospital, he was very uncomfortable. This, of course, was not surprising as he was not in a great mental place. However, it wasn’t until a few hours later that he told me that he was undocumented and that the possibility of deportation was far terrifying than his poor mental health. He almost didn’t call for help because of legal status. How many people don’t call for help or get necessary medical treatment because of the fear of deportation? This needs to change. My group and I began to brainstorm ways to alleviate this fear of deportation. We are still in the process of doing so, some ideas include educational campaigns to inform and empower undocumented individuals to seek healthcare, advocacy to rollback or revise immigration policies that are causing a decline in healthcare service use among undocumented individuals, and advocating healthcare providers strongly advertise that services such as checkups or flu vaccines are undocumented immigrant-friendly.

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This past week I interviewed two individuals on their general feelings about health. I interviewed my girlfriend (pictured below) and a student on campus. I enjoyed the in-class interview, but I had already established rapport and a high level of comfort with my girlfriend. I was much more nervous to interview a stranger. Despite being less comfortable, I found three techniques to be especially helpful in establishing a genuine connection during the second interview. These techniques were validation, finding common ground and sharing my similar experience, and humor. I think the student I interviewed had her guard up somewhat because I was a public health major asking about health. However, I made sure to validate all of her answers without and condemnation or judgment. I believe she perceived this and began to open up more and more. She eventually felt comfortable enough to share that she was somewhat anti-vax, was in therapy, and planned on going to a party this weekend because she knew it was a safe space for dialogue. When she began talking about therapy, I shared about my experience with the UMD counseling service. I talked about how I wasn’t gaining much from it until I finally found a Black, female therapist who was able to better understand me and communicate without a cultural barrier. The student, who was also a Black woman, had gone through the same exact experience and seemed to be thrilled that we had this in common. From there I was able to make some jokes about our shared experience. The rest of the interview was very conversational, almost as if we were friends exchanging ideas. Moving forward, I will absolutely use validation, shared or common experiences, and humor to better empathize and establish rapport.

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What stuck out the most to this week was the manner in which Jane Chen, who was pitching her innovation reduce infant mortality, started her presentation. She asked everyone in the audience to close their eyes and imagine them holding an item like a wallet or phone. When the audience opened their eyes they were greeted with a picture of a premature baby that can fit in the palm of a hand. She then proceeded to explain the issue and her present her solution. This reminded me of learning ethos, pathos, and logos in high school. She led with an appeal to pathos, or emotion, and then followed up with appeals to logos and ethos. While this is not the only way to begin a presentation or pitch, I believe it is especially effective in the public health field. Far too often the powers that be and even everyday people are reluctant or unwilling to support public health initiatives targeted at the less fortunate. Some believe that efforts to improve health outcomes for marginalized groups is too costly or simply not their problem. Facts and statistics are not enough to sway these beliefs. Often the best way to do so, or at least to start a productive conversation is with pathos.

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Thus far, I have enjoyed practicing good interviewing techniques, active listening, and empathizing with my classmates. This has allowed me to truly learn about and form some connections with some of my classmates. I had all but I accepted that I wouldn't talk to my classmates this year due to the limitations of Zoom, but this class has a provided a nice opportunity to still connect. Its not the same of course, but I see myself and my classmates overcoming the medium and connecting more and more each week and it is very encouraging.
So far, the bit of Dr. Thomas's wisdom that stuck with me the most has been the importance of putting together a story when talking to or interviewing someone. I believe empathy obtains a lot of its impact and power from the stories we can construct from the people, environments, events around us. Without the principles we're practicing in class (open-ended questions, active listening, etc), the story spawned will be one-dimensional at best.
While I'm enjoying the more abstract material we've covered so far, I'm really excited to get to work. I love the idea people in undeserved communities being able to access health services, legal services, fresh produce, and nutrition education in one place. I can't wait to contribute to this.

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I've always loved Humans of NY and I loved this video. Everyone said something, whether it was wise or controversial, that sparked a lot of thought in me. One such comments was in the conversation between the 2 subway performers. At one point, one of them made used the word "b*itches" and the other one said "chill I got a daughter." The first performer then apologized and amended his previous statement with the word "females." This caused me to reflect about how many people are unable to empathize until its "close to home." I also reflected on the broader relationship between Black men and women. There was a lot to unpack from a  very simple, and not uncommon, comment.

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I'm Tim and I am a Senior Public Health Major. I am preparing for the LSAT now and plan on pursuing a JD/MPH. I love music and reading. Some of my favorite authors are Toni Morrison, N.K. Jemisin, Stephen King, Yaa Gyasi, and Khaled Hosseini. Some of my favorite musical artists are Kendrick Lamar, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, D'angelo, the Internet, and Fred Hammond. I attached the below photo because I also love the ocean and can't wait to travel again.