Education & Socio-Economic Status

This quarter has been a crazy one.

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I feel like I have learned so much information about writing and research in such a short amount of time. My researched argument really pushed me out of my comfort zone because it forced me to be a more mindful researcher. Reading different sources made me want to work harder to complicate my own argument. The annotated bibliography allowed me to utilize the skills I learned within the library session with Gail. The multimodal assignment encouraged me to be more creative. The lower school and high school I attended were very academically driven.

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Because of growing up in that environment, it was sometimes difficult for me to complete assignments like the blogs and the multimodal assignment. Right now I am struggling to make sure the “voice” of my blog doesn’t sound too professional. Regardless, because we did the multimodal assignment, I was able to see how something academic can be turned into a form of media that sends the same message but is less serious in tone. This is such a valuable asset because not everything that we do in the world will be academically researched 10 paged essays with cited sources. This class has offered us a variety of skill-sets that will be useful in any future profession.

After reading Margaret Kantz’s “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively” one thing she discussed stood out to me. She says, “Some students think that if they can’t do the paper in one draft that means that something is wrong with them as writers, or with the assignment, or with us for giving the assignment. Often, such students will react to their drafts with anger and despair, throwing away perfectly usable rough drafts and then coming to us and saying that they can’t do the assignment” (80-81). This quote resonated with me because for as long as I can remember I never understood the importance of drafts.

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I always envisioned them as being so unnecessary. I am the type of person that likes to sit down and write for hours, and I felt like that’s when I produce my best work, but college showed me that that just wasn’t true. Kantz also says that “we can use the sequence of drafts to demand that our students demonstrate increasingly sophisticated kinds of analytic and rhetorical proficiency” (81). In our class specifically, I saw myself doing just that. With each draft I noticed where my argument needed more analysis or where I needed to completely remove a statement. I was able to organize and then reorganize the structure with each revision to improve the flow of my essay. Kantz described what I was doing wrong and told me how to do it right, and our class allowed me to execute those lessons in an academic setting.

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http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.libproxy.scu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=51b28361-6e70-4673-9165-386e7562f902%40sessionmgr101&vid=1&hid=111

In jstor, I discovered this source that speaks to the impact systemic racism has on minority students in higher education. It talks more specifically about the disadvantage minority students have when preparing for college (because of systematic racism) and the trajectory that leads them down.

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It discusses the way that higher education was intended to serve the white majority. White students benefit more before, during and after college because of being apart of the “elite” class. While minority students are consequently disadvantaged because of lack of resources and discrimination and bias within post-secondary education and opportunities. This creates inequality on the structural level as well as on the personal one. Minority students face discrimination in almost every aspect of higher education and this source evidences that fact. 

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Additionally, this source looks not only at the experience of minority students in higher education, but also the faculty experience. The small number of minority faculty at universities (that mimics the low number of minority students) is because of the school’s inability to put in the effort to recruit, hire, and promote these professors. The author looks at the discrepancy between the fact that many universities boast about supporting diversity while simultaneously failing in many areas of representation.  

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For my multimodal project I decided to expand upon my researched argument and work to prove the points that I made in it even further. At first I was stumped because I know that race is a touchy subject that students tend to shy away from talking about.

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I wanted my project to be approachable but powerful. Even though what is discussed in my video might make some people uncomfortable, the importance of it’s message should not be lost. I assumed my audience would be mostly students because I pictured it in a social media setting. Because of how quickly information can be spread and shared on social media, I wouldn’t be surprised if the video eventually reached faculty, staff, administrators and individuals at other schools.

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After our library session, I knew that I wanted to use Camtasia. I thought that a well edited video would be both effective and interesting. Personally, I think students are more likely to click on a video rather than read through a page of information. After deciding on creating a video, I was reminded of a video one of my friends in Igwebuike made about the personal experiences of minority Santa Clara students. Her video entitled #IAMSCU showcases brief instances in which students felt discriminated against on campus. I was so excited to be able to utilize her video because it related completely to my researched argument. Even though I focused on the voices of past SCU students and minority students across the nation, the voices of current SCU students are no less important. Including them in the video strengthened the argument that I closed my essay with. “So while SCU might be just a small, private university in Santa Clara, California, it is obvious that the influence of our nation’s ideals and values have infested it, and many other college campuses across America.” Speaking of how my video related to my researched argument, I also included the issue that lies within being a Jesuit education and promoting ideals of equality and compassion while simultaneously maintaining a (somewhat) hostile environment between students. I used SCU’s vision statement straight from the website to highlight the values first, and then followed them immediately with the experiences of students to demonstrate how those two factors didn’t align. I also used the voiceover feature in Camtasia to connect the videos together.

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I had a little bit of trouble figuring out the mechanics of editing. The end product seems seamless, but a lot of work went into transitions, cropping, editing and music and sound levels. After this project I have a lot more respect for individuals who produce influential pieces of media. So much effort and thought is necessary to produce compositions like these, and too often they are overlooked. This project not only helped us to develop our own arguments, but also instilled in us a larger level of appreciation for multimedia projects that send similar messages.

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Source: SCU Archives

Archival research was one of the most useful practices in constructing my researched argument. The items I found there influenced my entire essay and created support for my thesis. One source that I found was extremely interesting. It was entitled “Open forum exposes sexism, racism, and violence on campus”. In small text the front page indicated that this was a newspaper for Santa Clara University faculty and staff, so it can be assumed that the general public did not have access to it. Throughout the article there were accounts from students about being sexually assaulted, receiving racist and sexist jokes from faculty and generally feeling uncomfortable in the social climate of Santa Clara.

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This document in particular really opened my eyes about the ways that SCU decides to deal with issues surrounding discrimination, and more specifically how the university decides to not deal with them. Eleanor Willemsen, who was the chair of the Psychology Department at the time recounted that the forum dealt with “old issues that have never been properly addressed. Individuals have tried to help students with specific situations, but there has been no top-down actions in the past.”3 The forum even discussed the fact that because no action was taken in the past, women began to silence themselves when they experienced sexual violence. Over and over again this forum proved that the university has refused to completely address the problems facing students. 

Why is it So Difficult to Be Original?

In her blog post, Faith discusses the difficulty in creating an original argument amongst so many well established others. She explains that because her topic was so heavily researched and discussed, she found it almost impossible to come up with a thesis that did not mimic or copy someone else’s. Thankfully, she eventually was able to discover a thesis that did just that.

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I decided to respond to this blog post because it is so relatable. She touches on a problem that all students experience at some point in their writing career. It’s so easy to get discouraged about your own ideas when you are researching about a subject that is covered by scholars. The complexity of their arguments is often intimidating and overwhelming, and you can lose sight of the importance of your own voice.

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I’ve also struggled with this in writing and in life in general. I think it’s just important to remember that there is always going to be someone more educated than you, but that doesn’t mean what you have to say doesn’t matter. Your ideas could broaden the conversation and add a new and important perspective on the issue that’s being discussed. Publishers wouldn’t consistently publish new essays and articles if there wasn’t value in differing perspectives.

Library sessions are always useful, but this one in particular took the win. Gail started out by telling us that to keep us interested we were going to play a game. The game consisted of giving us small sheets of paper that had instructions on them, following the instructions and then returning the sheets back to Gail to see if they were correct or not. We worked in teams and together we learned about how to properly cite sources, give brief summaries of them and discover the background of each sources authors.

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Although the session was very informative, it was also fun. Since we were in groups of two there was a level of competition between all of us that was very apparent. We would hurry to figure out the best way to describe the abstract of an article to beat the team next to us. Then we would work to research where the article came from and whether it was a scholarly or  informational piece of literature. Without realizing it, we were learning integral tools about annotated bibliographies that would help us to construct the one for this class and future research essays that we would embark on in college. Thanks Gail!

Source: SCU Wall

During class, my English teacher brought this image to my attention. It is essentially a poster that emphasizes that SCU students speak against sexual violence, bias, harassment and discrimination. This is because (as the poster puts it) SCU works to build a culture of care.

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I don’t mean to constantly play devils advocate but…what? I’m not sure if the ad is encouraging people to speak out, or confirming that SCU students do speak out, but either way it’s problematic. SCU advertises to the world, and also inside of the school about a level of activism that just isn’t there.

There are two sides to this. I could be upset that it’s false advertisement, but there is also a possibility that the poster will inspire someone who looks at it to be a more socially aware and active individual. However, because of the fact that my English teacher had to point it out to me for me to notice it says a lot because I do consider myself as an activist. In school students are caught up in their lives, who can blame us? College is stressful, overwhelming and fun all at the same time. It makes sense that we wouldn’t pay attention to posters like these, regardless of their importance.

Creating a researched argument was definitely difficult for me. At the end of my senior year in high school I wrote a 25 paged research paper, but it was a little different. Our instructor gave us very clear guidelines and due dates for different parts of the paper, so when it all came together it didn’t feel like we had to sit down and churn out 25 pages. We only used jstor to find our sources and were focused more on our argument instead of the conversation we were entering.

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Learning about Greene’s “Argument as Conversation: The role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Argument” was interesting for me. It forced me to be more aware of the sources I was reading and therefore more aware of what  I was saying. When you don’t think about the fact that you are entering a scholarly conversation as a student, sometimes it’s easy to repeat ideas that have already been put forth without even realizing it. However, as Greene says “Seeing research as a means for advancing a conversation makes the research process more real” (11). When you are bringing new ideas to the table and expanding on previous ones, your argument is undoubtably stronger. That tool is one that I will be able to use for future research papers in college, so I’m glad that I got to learn about it.

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When I first thought about turning my researched argument into a multimodal project, I was stumped.

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Primarily, I was worried about my projects approachability. I know that sometimes talking about race is a touchy subject that many students like to avoid. I didn’t want to come off too abrasive but I also didn’t want to lose the importance of my argument. I tried to think about the ways that I could get my point across without being boring or making anyone uncomfortable. Then it hit me.

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I remembered watching a video that one of my friends in Igwebuike made about the personal experiences of students at Santa Clara. Because my entire essay focused on the experiences of past SCU students and students across the nation, I thought that including these stories of present students would complete and expand upon everything I had built. But that wasn’t enough.

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In my researched argument I also talked about the problem that lies within being a Jesuit university and promoting values of equality and compassion while allowing a (somewhat) hostile environment. So to display that discrepancy I decided to show the SCU vision straight from the website. I proceeded to use the voiceover effect that we learned about during the library session to make my point clear.