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Well, when I first started looking at schools, I saw that this art school had a program in
Tibet. I was super excited, so I looked into it. When I knew I was coming here I knew I
really wanted to do that program. Turns out, we can't go to Tibet because of the Chinese
government. So they changed the program to India and I was like, “I mean, I’ll go
to India, like that's cool too.” So, turns out I went to India and I learned a lot, more
than I could ever imagine. I got involved in the way people are treated there, by their
government. Also, you can see the effects of the World Bank. The effects of recent problems,
like water profitization is a big deal in India. I got to see all that first hand, so
that has really got me involved in a lot of the political things I'm involved in now.
When I first knew I had to do a thesis I wanted to do something really unusual because I'd
read some of the theses in the library and a lot of them seemed like people just “Ahh,
I want to graduate - Whatever.” So, I wanted to use mine as a way to get into graduate
school, and a way to really start the things I want to do in my life. So I thought about
what I could do, what I have done, and what I really want to do. With this thesis, what
I want to do is use religion as a way to understand the human condition- kind of like art and
music- in the way that changes in religion can show implications of certain people. What
I'm doing this summer is I'm going to North India and I'm going to be working with this
organization that's a subsidiary of the Tibetan government in exile. What they do is help
free political prisoners. While I'm there I'll be able to interview them and see how
they were treated while in prison, and how that affected their different levels of devoutness
as far as Tibetan Buddhism goes. And based on that, use that as a way to show that religion
can be used to understand people.